Ghanaian food:

I know I haven’t written much about this. Truth is, thus far I haven’t had much inspiration, apart from the meal in the woods at Bunso. The majority of the average Ghanaian’s calories at any given meal come from one of three things: foufou, banku, or kenke. Foufou is a gelatinous dough made from boiled cassava and boiled plantain mashed together in a mortar and pestle. Banku is a dough made from cassava flour mashed together with cornmeal and a little salt. Small measures of boiling water are added to the mixture and it is constantly stirred until it is so thick and sticky that it can be stirred no more. Kenke is a grainy dough of cornmeal and water, wrapped inside a corn husk and steamed until it reaches a Play-doh consistency.

Foufou, the most pedestrian of the three (and, not coincidentally, the prototypical Ghanaian staple food), was on the menu at Oti’s house Saturday afternoon when I went for lunch. Oti lives beyond a concrete wall with an iron gate not unlike ours at the VA house. Inside the gate one walks down a narrow cement alley and along a long cement building with a row of dilapidated wooden doors on the right side, each opening into a small bedroom. The left edge of the alley gives onto a paved courtyard dominated by a web of clotheslines. Also along the left edge the alley runs a straight, narrow, shallow paved sewer leading to a cooking alcove some thirty feet straight ahead from the gate. There, in a haze of heat rising from a charcoal stove, Oti’s mom presided over a clutter of large pots.

She quickly left her post and brought us two plastic patio chairs and a small wooden table, which she covered with newspaper. She set them at the side of the courtyard, in the shade of the long cement building of bedrooms. A few minutes later she brought over two plates, one upside-down on top of the other, and a bowl of red-orange soup with meat floating inside. Removing the top plate revealed two symmetrical flattish beige ovals, each with a smooth and slightly shiny surface: the foufou. We washed our hands with a small pitcher of water and some liquid dish soap, then Oti demonstrated eating: first he dipped the fingers of his right hand into the bowl of clear soup and used them to pinch off a piece a little smaller than a golf ball. Then with his thumb he gently depressed the middle so the foufou was like a little bowl itself, dipped the whole assembly into the soup, and fired it off into his mouth and down his throat.

I made two beginner’s mistakes: first, I didn’t wet my fingers enough with the soup, and the foufou wouldn’t cooperate when I tried to pinch off a portion. It stuck like peanut butter mixed with rubber cement. So I put the whole finger-foufou assembly in the soup and then sucked it off my fingers and began to chew. Oops!

Historical note: foufou is an ancient dish that originated—and often still exists in rural areas—as a village-wide effort in a country where, especially inland, staple food is scarce. The individual’s first goal at mealtime is to hedge against the possibility that the next opportunity to fill the belly might be a ways off. Also, by gorging oneself until full, one can convince his body—however briefly—that he has acquired life-sustaining nutrients. Hence, eat lots, and fast. Further, since the fixed costs of cooking are high, each family contributes some of the ingredients to the group meal and everyone simultaneously digs in from the resultant huge, slick globule. A classic tragedy of the commons, at first each family relied on the others to provide the highest-cost inputs: seasonings. Over generations expectations leveled and a consensus was reached: foufou is utility. Since speed of intake is crucial, it should be edible with minimal lag-time between hand and stomach. The tongue and throat are only obstacles; so Occam’s razor cuts out the seasoning, and what’s left is the thing that was sticking mercilessly to the roof of my mouth and the back of my teeth in Oti’s courtyard.

He saw my trouble and laughed: “Foufou is not for chewing.” He’s right. The whole operation needs to be well-lubricated (hence his dipping fingers and then lump in the soup) and placed deep inside the mouth as possible. If this is done properly, foufou lumps of remarkable size slide down the throat without the slightest difficulty. Indeed, the Ghanaians have achieved their objective. Nonetheless, in an amazing testament to the human need to outdo one’s neighbors, most Ghanaians will say that their mother’s foufou is the “best-tasting” available. That’s right, the taste of a dish engineered specifically to avoid the superfluities of taste and texture is a topic for argument among friends. It’s like ultra-premium vodka that way.

The rest of the meal: the soup itself, “light soup” is a mixture of water, tomato paste, and crushed little round green peppers that are hot as hell. The soup is good. It is made more delectable by the little puddles of fat floating on its surface. Those come from the various goat parts that are cooked in the soup. In our bowl, Oti pointed out three different anatomical features: meat, knee, and sac. Did you know you can “eat” all three of those?

Meat is self-explanatory. It’s even tasty to my virginal palate, marinated in the spicy soup.

Knee is where two parts of the weight-bearing leg join together. Watch a goat for a little while and you’ll see that this particular body part is almost always in use. It’s tough. In fact, it’s so tough that chewing a small mouthful over one hundred times (I counted after a few chews) vigorously with my molars was not enough to break it down. Even the last clenching of my jaw felt like I was biting a brace of rubber bands, and brought with it a sound like the crunch of wet, heavy snow underfoot that reverberated off the inside of my temples. I finally swallowed the thing and chased it with a couple foufou bombs to clean the pipes.

The final hurdle was goat sac—the wall of the animal’s ruminant stomach—served in chunks. This is green-brown and has a texture like something between moss, living coral, and the scrubber side of a two-sided dish sponge. It has a healthy backing of clear, chewy fat. A chunk is about 1”x3” and naturally curves so the bushy side (the interior of the sac) is convex. Like knee, it has the unnerving resilience of rubber bands, but of older ones that you can break if you try. Actually, once it is chewed with conviction, it becomes a not-disagreeable paste with some texture (the ridges and fingers of the bushy side), and even a flavor distinct from the spicy soup. At very least, it goes down much easier than the knee.

So I survived my first real, traditional, homecooked Ghanaian meal without insulting the chef or embarrassing myself too badly. By the end I was slugging down slippery foufou lozenges with ease. But I don’t think I’ll make a habit of it. If nothing else, it’s food for thought: to me, Ghanaians’ attachment to these dishes (everyone I’ve asked eats the foufou/light soup/goat meal) confirms that taste is almost wholly a product of nurture, not nature. Relevant as ever, CSNY offer both an explanation and an ultimatum: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”