Really Eating Like a Ghanaian

So, I’ve been promising a blog on Ghanaian food for a while now. I’ve been putting it off though because I’ve wanted to take photos of my meals, but that’s a pretty strange thing to do, even for a saliminga! But I now have a few pics to show you some of the things I’ve been eating for the past few months.

Starch dishes are staple foods in many cultures. In Ghana, traditional meals include some type of starch dish made from maize, millet or cassava eaten with a soup or stew. The four main starch dishes are TZ, fufu, banku and kenkey.

TZ is a common dish for large families in Northern Ghana. My family has it almost every night – in my two and a half months here we’ve had something other than TZ only 4 times! TZ is made from maize flour. A porridge type substance is brewed using maize flour and water in a large pot. This is cooked for a while before it is reduced. The thicker substance is stirred with a gigantic wooden spoon, folding it over in the pot. The liquid taken off from reducing is slowly re-added to the mixture, along with more maize flour and my family adds cassava flour as well. TZ can also be made from millet and when I stayed in the village this is the type of TZ they served. The texture is hard to describe. It’s kind of like bread dough with not much taste. It’s the soup or stew that accompanies the TZ that really provides the flavour.

Adding maize flour to make TZ

Fufu is gooier and you can roll it into a ball before dipping it into the soup. It’s almost like thicker whipped mashed potatoes. Banku and kenkey are both fermented dishes made from maize and are stickier and more solid. I have yet to see these made since my family has had banku and fufu only once and hasn’t served kenkey since I’ve been here.

There are many soups to accompany the TZ, fufu or banku including groundnut, fresh okru, dried okru, bura, vegetable. Kenkey is usually served with a pepper sauce. In the soups, there might be some bits of meat in the soup or a chunk in the bowl. Meat is more expensive so my family rarely serves large chunks in the soup. Some of it is pretty tough as well, and there have been times when I’ve almost flung the chunk across the compound when trying to bite off a piece!

The groundnut soup is made with water and groundnut oil, boiled in a pot over a coal stove. My family adds different spices, and Maggie cubes which are packets of shrimp flavoured powder.

Adding the Maggie cube to the groundnut soup

To eat a meal like this you take a chunk of TZ with the fingers of your right hand, scoop some soup and put it into your mouth. With the other starch dishes you can play with it in your hand to roll it into a ball before dipping in the soup.

My usual TZ dinner

Maybe not as traditional, but definitely common are rice dishes. Rice is a common Ghanaian crop, although many people purchase imported rice (American, Thai, Vietnamese). Many Ghanaian rice farmers don’t have access to processing machines that can provide a higher quality of rice, and they aren’t provided with large subsidies to grow the crop like American rice farmers.

Tonight's dinner - rice ball and groundnut soup

Similar to the four dishes described above are rice balls, which like the name suggests is a ball of rice. This is also served with a soup into which you dip a chunk of rice. Another common dish is plain rice served with spicy pepper sauce and often a piece of chicken. Another rice dish is watche, which is rice with beans cooked in a purple leaf so it comes out a mauve-ish colour. One of my favourites is joloff rice, which is rice cooked in a pot of water with pepper and tomato.

Joloff rice with salad and a boiled egg

(my favourite meal!)

Along the side of the road you can also find boiled eggs (both chicken and guinea fowl), fried egg sandwiches (usually found in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for a late-night snack), grilled maize, kose (fried bean paste – really tasty!), wageshi (fried cheese). You can also find lots of fresh foods – bananas, pineapple, mangoes, watermelon, coconut, avocado, cabbage, carrots, oranges, apples (imported from Europe).

You can find some type of bread practically everywhere. In Ghana there are three types of bread – butter bread, sugar bread and tea bread. The butter bread looks like a loaf of white bread from the grocery store - very square and very white. The texture is similar to a loaf of white bread from home but it seems to lack any sort of taste. The sugar bread is, as the name implies, sweet. It looks like a loaf of white bread from a bakery. I like this type of bread initially but it really is quite sweet (even for my sweet tooth!). Tea bread looks more like a baguette. I remember that at first it didn’t taste at all like a baguette, but now I forget what a baguette tastes like and I enjoy tea bread with tea in the morning for breakfast. If I'm not having bread and tea, or an egg sandwich for breakfast there is also coco, a smooth porridge made from maize or millet, oats and rice water.

Also available on the street for lunch or dinner are fried yams - yams cut into chunky strips and deep fried. They taste similar to thickly cut french fries. They are often served with pepper stew or another more oily fish soup. You can also get boiled or grilled yams as well.

Along the road you can also easily find kebabs of some type of meat. Intestine is often available, but I have yet to try it! Goat, cow, chicken and guinea fowl are the most common meats available. I have yet to see pork being served, but with such high population of muslims I doubt there is much available.

Some of the dishes took a little getting used to, but I've found my favourites and am now enjoying Ghanaian cuisine!