Maize, cassava, rice, beans and yam all feature heavily in Ghanaian cuisine, as does a wide range of protein including fish, seafood, beef, pork, lamb, and turkey, the protein is used from head to toe and can often be found smoked. For vegetables Ghanaians rely on palm nuts, peanuts, cocoyam leaves, ayoyo, spinach, mushrooms (wild), okra, aubergines (known as garden eggs), tomatoes and various pulses. As you can see a wide range of ingredients are available and in my opinion you’d be hard pressed to not find a single dish you like the sound of!
For this week I decided to try a stew called Red Red – make with beans and often smoked fish. In Ghana it is served with fried plantains and gari – a kind of dough made with cassava. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get hold of either (thanks lockdown 2.0!), so I served mine with rice and avocado. This dish is quite rich and spicy and I can imagine that the blander cassava gari and delicious sweet plantains would have been a great complement! I also chose to follow a recipe which used smoked pork (or bacon lardons in my case) instead of smoked fish. With thanks to Hank Shaw for the recipe I used, please see mine below – the main difference between our recipes was that I used tinned beans and tomatoes rather than cook them from raw as they are easily available.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 tins of black eyes peas/beans or another cowpea variety (drained)
¼ cup of red palm oil
1 red onion chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and greated
1 chilli diced
100g of smoked bacon lardons
1-3 tsp of cayenne pepper
1 tsp curry powder
2 tins of chopped plum tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Place a large saucepan over medium heat and add the palm oil and red onion.
Sauté the onion until they are soft and then add the chilli and bacon and sauté until the bacon is just cooked through.
Add the curry powder, cayenne pepper, tomatoes and tomato puree. Season with salt and pepper.
Add the tinned peas and ginger and simmer for 30 minutes.
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