One of the most awesome parts of my experience in Ghana is eating! I've been able to try a variety of Ghanaian dishes, especially those of Southern Ghana, through my homestay and by going to chop bars and restaurants. Dinner, which I usually eat at home, typically consists of carbs, meat, and sauce. The carbs alternate between spaghetti, white rice, boiled yams (which are white, fluffy, and a little bit sweet - my friend here says "it's like eating a cloud" - I agree), and cooked or fried plantains (which have the texture of a potato, look like dark yellow bananas, and taste kind of like bananas, too). Georgina will also make a sauce from blended boiled tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers. The sauce isn't usually very hot, but sometimes it's hot enough to leave my nose running and me sweating. Only once was it so hot that I resorted to cooling my mouth off with the condensed milk that we use here. Sometimes, Georgina cooks fish or chicken right into the sauce and sometimes, she fries it separately.
Once in a while, Georgina makes groundnut soup, which is my favorite of the soups here. It's made from pepper, tomatoes, and pure peanut butter (which is called "nyamee" in Fante, not to be confused with "Nyame," the word for god). The most comparable taste I can think of that I had before groundnut soup is hot peanut sauce in Thai and Japanese food. Groundnut soup usually has chicken in it - either cooked separately and dropped in the pot at the last minute or cooked entirely in the soup, so it's really tender, which is the best in my opinion. At home, I usually eat groundnut soup with rice. But if I'm out, I usually get it with fufu.
Fufu is a doughy, slightly sweet food made from cassava and plantains that have been boiled and then pounded with a huge stick until it turns into a substance the texture of pizza dough. It can also be made from yams, but I haven't tried that kind. A typical serving is about the size of three fists and usually costs two cedis (less than $1.50) in Cape Coast. After the fufu is in the bowl, soup gets poured on top, along with some meat. You eat it by reaching into the soup with your right hand (to eat, shake hands, or point with your left is unacceptable here), pull off a bite-sized piece of fufu, make sure it's covered in soup, and then put it in your mouth and swallow without chewing. It took me a few weeks to get used to not chewing and not licking off my fingers after every bite, and I still don't eat it very gracefully (as you will see in the pictures I'm going to post soon), but fufu with groundnut soup is so delicious it doesn't matter. Fufu is a staple food for a lot of Southern Ghanaians I've met - they eat it every day, as long as it's before 4 o'clock because it takes a while to digest. But I could eat it any time! I'm definitely going to miss it when I come back to the US.
Groundnut soup is great, but it takes a lot of time to make it. So fufu is usually served with light soup or palm nut soup. Light soup is spicy and vegetable-based. It's simple to make and really yummy. Palm nut soup is made from the oily insides of a palm nut's flesh. It tastes great with fufu but I've noticed that after all the fufu is gone, the soup alone isn't so good. Soup here always has meat in it. The meat I've encountered includes fish, crab, chicken, goat, and bush meat. Sometimes the goat meat still has the skin on it, which makes me think of how some goat skin becomes drum heads, so I don't feel too enthusiastic about eating it. I still haven't tried bush meat but am looking forward to it.
Some of the soups also get served with banku, instead of fufu. Banku is a corn-based dough that tastes sort of fermented and is stickier than fufu. It also gets served with stew, which is what I would call sauce - it's like the tomato-based sauce that Georgina makes or it's okra stew. The one time I had okra stew, the unbreakable strings of sticky slimy stew really got to me and it's hard for me to remember much else about it except that it was also spicy. You can also get banku with fish or meat and pepper.
In addition to banku and fufu, there is one more dough-like food that's really common, called kenkey, which is made from corn. There are several types, including Fante kenkey, which is cooked in plantain leaves, and Accra kenkey, which is cooked in corn husks and is typically salty, depending on who makes it. Accra kenkey is usually served with fish and pepper sauce. The way to eat it is by taking some kenkey in your fingers, kneading it using your fingers or the inside of your palm, then dipping it in the pepper and putting it in your mouth and chewing because there's probably fish in the bite, too. This is one of the most satisfying foods I've had - it's my other favorite besides fufu. Fante kenkey is smoother-tasting and I think it can also be served with fish and pepper. But it can also be made into mashed kenkey by mashing it with your hands or blending it and adding water. Then you add milk and sugar to make a nice snack. Another snack that I like here is gare, a coarse white grain that you mix with water, sugar, and peanuts and eat with a spoon.
Finally, a very common dish, especially among tourists here, is red red, which is fried plantains and blackeyed peas, a great combination of flavors.
Aside from enjoying food so much here, I've been noticing some differences in social norms and expectations around eating. For example, I have noticed that Ghanaians don't consider eating to be a social activity. It's very normal to eat alone. When I do eat with a Ghanaian friend, we don't usually talk much during the meal - at least they don't. I've also been scolded for talking while eating palm nut soup. One of my Ghanaian friends who scolded me for this couldn't give me the reason why I shouldn't talk, but someone else told me it's because palm nut soup is wickedly painful if it goes down the wrong pipe. I have yet to find out. Also, the biggest meal is usually in the afternoon - any time from noon until five o'clock. Many people won't eat again after that meal, which I find shocking since I like to eat several big meals a day plus snacks. My Ghanaian friends are super generous and always offer to make something for me to eat when I visit in the evening, even when they aren't hungry. I'm very lucky.
