Fu-food

Recently it has been hard to find a decent Internet cafe, even the ones used before has shown themselves disappointing. So, sorry about the delay of posting...

I thought I should cover the topic of food. In Ghana you mostly eat Ghanaian food, which the way it should be. Some imported dishes such as hamburgers or chicken with french fries are also widely available, as are Chinese restaurants with spring rolls, stir fries and all the other dishes expected from such a restaurant.

But back to Ghanaian food. People in Ghana seem very proud of their food, with Fu-fu being the crème de la crème. To me, and I will be honest about it, most of it tastes quite the same but good. I think the likeness comes from the use of palm-oil in almost all dishes and the same kind of peppery spices. I'm surprised though to experience that so far nothing I've eaten has been burning spicy hot, and Mrs can assure that I'm quite sensitive to hot spices.

Fu-fu is a very weird dish made from plantain (matbanan) and cassava which is boiled and then pounded in a big mortar into a lump of dough (Literally!). The dough is put in a bowl and is eaten together with some kind of soup, preferably peanut soup for me. It's nice, especially if much plantain is used, but I wonder why Ghanaians see it as sooo wonderful. Especially since you're not really supposed to chew the fu-fu, but swallow small pieces whole...

Other common dishes are yam served with fish or some kind of stew. Sometimes the yam is replaced with rice. All of this is tasty (Although the common practice to serve the fish with the eyes still there kid of puts me off sometimes...).

Now to the single thing I haven't liked so far, Banku with okro stew. Banku is another kind of dough lump, which I think is made from corn (I'll ask Mrs) amongst others. The banku is OK. The okro stew is a stew with fish or meat, with a certain kind of vegetable, okro, in it. The thing is though that the okro makes the stew thick and slimy, in the same way potato powder would have. The slimy texture made me unable to eat the stew even though the taste was alright. The stew formed thin threads that whipped my face in the wind from the fan, and I could only put the food in my mouth if i closed my eyes. The taste was then, as stated above, nice, but when I swallowed it felt as if my whole mouth was dragged down slowly together with the food. No more okro stew for me!

When I get access to a nice fast Internet connection I'll post highly educating pictures showing the preparation of fu-fu. Write more soon!