Taste of Ghana

For me, half the fun of traveling is eating my way through a country. Sure enough, some of you think so, too. I’ve received a request to write about culinary delights of Ghana, so, people pleaser (and lazy list maker) that I am, I will try to describe a bit of Ghanaian chop that I’ve experienced so far. By the way, typical Ghanaian fare like much of the stuff I’ll describe below is called “chop”…they’re sold in “chop shops”. Cute, eh? This is admittedly boring for a lot of you who just don’t care, but…eh!

Oh, yeah, it goes without saying that most traditional Ghanaian foods are eaten with your hands. Specifically, your right hand (left hand=dirty, dirty, DIRTY!). Whenever you go to a chop shop, you’ll see a bottle of liquid soap on the table. The first time you see it, you'll be like, “Whaaaa…?” Sometimes, it's dishwashing soap, so you'll be doubly confused ("Uh, should I wash my bowl before I eat?"). But the soap is for washing your hands. Right before your food comes, the waiter brings you a bowl of water, plus another little bowl. You pour a bit of water in the little bowl (to reserve some clean “rinsing” water), and use the rest of the water and the soap to clean your hands before eating. Cute, eh?

1) Omo tuo and groundnut soup
Omo tuo are rice balls. Those of you who know my Chinese nickname of “Rice Tub” have probably guessed right – I like omo tuo! Actually, the rice is mushed up and tastes a bit like baby food, but that saves me the job of chewing, I guess. The balls (hee) are submerged in a soup/stew. I like groundnut (i.e., peanut) soup/stew, probably my favorite Ghanaian food discovery and which I actually learned how to make! Dude, groundnut soup is tasty. I apologize to anyone who is disgusted by this (sorry, Natalia!). The dish is also usually served with meat (I’ve had it with bush meat – antelope, yum!) or fish (Ghanaians really like tilapia. There are little cartoons of smiling tilapia fish on every fish shop sign).

Omo tuo is traditionally served only on Sundays. Some restaurants have it only on Sundays, but others have it all the time. I wish they would make up their minds. In any case, the restaurants who sell it everyday are probably in the money – ya know, supply and demand. Still, given the tradition of “Sunday=omo tuo,” I feel a bit weird eating it any other time of the week.

2) Fufu
Ah, this must be the national dish of so many West African countries. It’s made of different stuff in different countries, but in southern Ghana, it’s made of cassava (aka manioc, a root veggie) and yam (in the North, they use all yam). So what is it? Basically, it’s a sticky ball of goo that results when you pound cassava and yam together. Imagine you overmash potatoes, and it releases all the crazy cellulose from the cell walls, bypassing the much beloved mashed potato stage and, instead, becoming sticky mass of starchiness. Submerge ball of stickiness in spicy soup/stew (by the way, the Ghanaians love using hot red pepper in all their soups…yikes) and chow down. Mmmm, appetizing, eh? I’m not a big fan, but it’s a really “manly” food here. It most definitely sticks to your ribs. In any case, it’s cool to see ladies pounding fufu. The women here usually use a big mortar and pestle (as big as them!) and really pound the shit out of those yams and cassava. Sometimes there’ll be a group of several ladies standing around a large mortar, pounding together. It’s kinda scary when you think about the strength they have to do that. They could seriously kill a man with that type of strength.

3) Banku
I like banku, but I appreciate the fact that others will think it’s nasty. It’s just a ball of sticky dough – I think it’s fermented corn or something, so it’s sour. Ever have Ethiopian food and the sour bread that comes with it? It kind of tastes like that. Unlike fufu or omo tuo, the banku comes on a plate, and you get a plate of stew with meat/fish in a separate bowl. To eat the banku, you take a little ball of it in your hand, dip it in stew, and begin stuffing your face. Tasty! Just as with fufu, as it enters your digestive system, you imagine it sticking to the insides of your intestines and understand why colonic treatments are so popular for clearing one’s internal plumbing. So I like it, but I think, for the sake of my health, I shouldn’t eat too much of it.

4) Tuo zaafi (TZ) and okra stew
That’s “TZ” as in “T-Zed”. Crazy non-Americans and their “zeds”. Anyhoo, here’s another beloved Ghanaian starch fest, although it’s really a Northern dish and not many people in the South know what it is. TZ is a porridge-like, spongy mass of starch that’s made of corn and manioc flour (I think). It tastes a whole lot like…nothing. Okay, it sort of tastes like…er, paste? Okay, bad comparison. The point behind the sticky/slimy/seedy okra stew that it’s usually served with is so that the TZ can slide down easily. You’re not supposed to chew it – just swallow. Apparently, you’re also not supposed to chew fufu or omo tuo either (ahh, that explains the baby food texture…!). Anyhoo, I realize that my description of TZ as slimy paste is not particularly appetizing, but it’s not bad – I’m kind of indifferent to it. Maybe that’s because I was in Larabanga (and starving and feeling bad about my hosts starving from Ramadan fasting) when I had it.

5) Fried Rice (and an inexplicable amount of Chinese food)
Fried rice is everywhere! It’s a staple with the broiled and fried chicken here…and it’s often fast/street food, which they call “check check” (cute, eh?). Check check is usually ridiculously cheap and comes served to you as take-out in a plastic bag. Yummy – plastic! In any case, Ghanaian fried rice tastes a whole heckuvalot like Chinese fried rice, except here it’s usually served with shitto (pause for incredulous giggle/snicker), which is a spicy black pepper oil with ground fish in it. It sort of tastes like Chinese sha cha sauce, for those who know what that tastes like.

For some odd reason, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants here. I chalk it up to the fact that Ghanaians really enjoy their MSG fix as well. I haven’t seen a lot of Chinese people, per se, but it just goes to show you that my peeps are everywhere!!! I actually went to a Chinese restaurant in Accra. It was…er, well, I don’t expect a lot out of Chinese food outside of China. It was okay…kind of like bad Americanese food. In any case, the Chinese owners and I made a connection. Their eyes just lit up with happiness when they saw me. It was nice. :)

Apparently, there are a lot of really high-class, pricey Chinese restaurants in Accra. Maybe something to check out before I leave.

6) Fried yam and fried fish
Oh, man, this is a tasty combo! Again, it’s a check check meal, so you’ll usually buy it from a street stall and carry it away in a delightful little plastic bag, all while trying not to think about the chemicals that the plastic bag might be releasing into your food. You eat the fried yam with shitto (pause again for snicker), and the fish is usually “red fish”, which is snapper or something like that. You have to be careful who you buy it from though, since the street vendor may not always change the frying oil, and the yam and fish often taste like petroleum when they’re fried in old oil. Nasty! Still, once you find a vendor who changes the frying oil regularly, it’s like a little bit of heaven for only 10,000 cedis. Unfortunately, given the recent cholera scares in Accra lately, I’ve given up street food for the time being. But fried yam and fish are so delightfully tasty (and unhealthy) that I might be able to overlook disease for it…

(A funny note on shitto: it takes some getting used to, but it’s really good! Yinka mentioned that her Western friends used to call it, “Shit, oh?” Heheh, just so you get a sense of what too much of it can do to you…)

7) Jollof rice
Yinka taught me how to make this, and most of you might actually not be grossed out by it! Jollof is basically like a West African paella, rice cooked in tomato-based sauce with veggies and meat. It’s benign, it’s tasty, it’s not a ball of sticky starch. I’ll make it for you next time I see you.

8) Red red and fried plantains
Ah, red red. Yet another example of a cute name for a tasty food. Red red is bean stew, made of black-eyed peas (so it looks like), some stew-y flavorings, and lots of palm oil. The thick and strangely orange palm oil has got to be bad for you, but it’s also what makes the red red tasty (go figure). It’s served with a big pile of fried plantains and either fried chicken or fried fish.

9) Fresh fruit
Sweet tropical weather and the delightful fruits that you bring forth! The selection on the street is actually kind of limited, but it’s stuff that you can’t get everyday in the USA. The most popular fruits that I’ve really enjoyed have been papaya (called “por por” here), pineapple, and oranges. You can buy them all on the street, and the vendors often cut them up for you. You can often get fresh fruit juices here, too (Kenny, don’t get overexcited!) – fresh pineapple juice rocks my world.

The oranges are of special note here: the vendors cut them in a way that you can suck out the juice without getting your fingers sticky. Neat. The oranges are also not orange – they’re green, but still ripe and sweet. I realize that this messes up kids here, because their reading primers show a picture of an orange-colored orange and the word “orange” beneath it, but they’ve probably never seen an orange orange in their whole life. Weird.

10) Chocolate
Ghanaians take special pride that they’re one of the biggest cocoa producers in the world. They have documentaries on cocoa harvesting on TV, for gosh sakes. Anyways, this, combined with Yinka’s fondness for chocolate, has given me a greater appreciation for this fine food. The European chocolates here are actually a bit pricey, but the local chocolate is tasty and cheap. I’m very fond of the coffee chocolate – I’m planning on buying a bunch of it to hoard home.

11) Tampico
Dude, this is seriously just Sunny Delight under a different name. I even read the back of the bottle, and it’s licensed to a company in Chicago. But I don’t even like Sunny D in the states…I’ve been fooled by the African marketing! Nooooooo!!!

12) FanYogo
This is just frozen yogurt in a pouch. No, like real yogurt (the sour kind – maybe with some fruit flavor) sealed in a pouch and frozen. I’ve noticed they like sucking stuff out of pouches here. Hmmm. Anyways, the FanYogo is a nice treat and is usually sold on the streets. No, like on the streets where cars are whizzing past, and dudes weave in and out of traffic, carrying the pouches in coolers on their heads or on the front of their bikes. At a stoplight, when you’re hot and sweaty in the comfort of your car, you buy a FanYogo from one of these guys, who’ll hand it to you with a small sheet of torn newspaper, so your hand doesn’t get cold while you suck the yogurt out of the pouch. How considerate!

13) Obruni food
All right, so there comes a point in every foreign country when I get a little homesick for the familiar comfort of Western food. I’ve indulged myself a few times in Ghana already, and, yes, obruni fare is a bit pricey. There are a lot of nifty restaurants (but no McDonalds!) in Accra. In addition to the typical burger ‘n’ fries and pizza, I’ve also had some incredible pastry at a francophone African bakery (to the French: you were shitty colonizers, but thank you for bringing the delights of the boulangerie and patisserie to your West African colonies!). Today, I went to a fancy coffee shop and had a chicken salad sandwich, a salad, a cup of Twinings tea, and a slice of peach pie. When I finished, I laid my head down on the table and wept with joy. Okay, that’s a lie, but it made me very happy. As much as I’ve enjoyed Ghanaian food, I’m excited about returning to the world of sandwiches and salad (and Mom and Dad’s cooking!).