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Recipes from Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone shares the cuisine of much
of western Africa, including cassava, yams, plantains, bananas, red palm oil,
peanuts and other fruits and vegetables. Fish is an important protein food in
coastal areas. One slight difference in cuisine is that the Mende people in
southeast Sierra Leone eat rice as the main staple food. Cacao is grown as an
export crop to provide the chocolate consumed so eagerly in Europe and North
America. One suggestion for sharing the food with young children is to prepare
samples of individual ingredients in Sierra Leone cooking. Serve roasted peanuts
(being careful with young children because of the choking hazard), sliced
bananas, fried plantains and tapioca pudding. Tapioca comes from the processed
root of the cassava..
Fried Plantains (Sierra
Leone and most of the rest of Africa!)
For this recipe, you need 3-4 plantains. You can usually find
plantains in supermarkets in larger cities or in Caribbean or Central
American markets. They look like large green bananas.
These fried treats are found for sale as
snack foods in markets throughout sub-Saharan Africa.. Usually they are
just sprinkled with salt and hot sauce (Tabasco works!), but sometimes
they are coated with powdered ginger and/or cayenne before frying and then
salted. If you prefer a sweet taste, you can sprinkle them with sugar and
cinnamon.
Use either peanut, soybean or safflower
oil to deep-fry, as they have a high smoking temperature. If you have
a cooking thermometer, keep the oil around 350E. Heat the oil in a heavy
saucepan. Slice the peeled plantains into ¼-inch rounds. Fry the slices a
few at a time until they are golden and crisp on the outside but still
soft on the inside. If fried too long, the inside will toughen, so try a
couple to get the best timing. Remove them from the oil with a slotted
spoon and drain on paper towels or newspaper.
Recipe from Sundays at
Moosewood Restaurant, by the Moosewood Collective, Simon &
Schuster, 1990, p. 41 |
| West African Lemony Chicken
and Okra Soup serves 4 to 6
Ingredients:
| 1
large broiler chicken, cut into pieces |
½
teaspoon cayenne pepper |
| Juice
from 2 large lemons |
2
teaspoons salt |
| 6
cups chicken broth or water |
½
cup uncooked long-grain rice |
| 3
tomatoes, peeled and chopped |
¼
teaspoon pepper and 1 teaspoon ground turmeric |
| 1
can tomato paste |
2
cups sliced okra, fresh or frozen* |
| 1
large onion, peeled, chopped and browned in a little oil |
- Rub pieces of chicken with juice from
lemons. You can remove skin from the pieces if you prefer less fat.
Put the pieces in a covered container in the refrigerator to marinate
for no more than 30 minutes.
- While chicken is marinating, saute the
onion in a little oil to make the flavor milder. Set aside.
- Remove the chicken from the
refrigerator. Place the chicken in a large kettle with the chicken
broth or water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook slowly,
covered, for 12 minutes.
- Add onions, tomatoes, tomato paste,
rice, spices and salt and pepper. Cook for 30 minutes, until the
chicken and rice are tender.
(*An okra note - if you have never
cooked with okra, you are in for a new experience. Most recipes,
especially West African ones, would call for the okra to be added at
this point, as it serves as an excellent thickener for the stew. Some
people would prefer to add it at the next step because okra can have a
somewhat slimy texture after it stews, although it is usually not too
apparent in a dish like this. So add either add it with everything else,
or add it in the next step when you return the chicken to the pot. On a
linguistic/historical note, the word gumbo, which in the U.S. is
a wonderful African inspired creole dish often associated with Louisiana
and containing okra, comes from the Angolan word ngombo, meaning
okra. The Twi people of Ghana call okra nkuruman)
- Remove chicken pieces and debone as
soon as they are cool enough to handle. Return the chicken to the
kettle (along with the sliced okra if you waited) and stir until
everything is well mixed (and the okra is tender). Serve over
additional rice, with some fresh fruit for dessert.
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