African Cookbook Project: Recent Ghanaian Cookbooks

Sorry about the long silence in my postings. I've started numerous blogs but keep moving on to the next thing before I put them up: on Ghana's 2nd annual Chocolate Day (Valentine's Day) and Ghana's Chef's Association; on culinary entrepreneurs; on the manioc (cassava) project; on Ghanaian restaurants and fast foods. . . I will eventually share those thoughts but today will say something about contemporary Ghanaian cookbooks.

Besides documenting recipes and helping cooks, cookbooks are a great resource for studying social history and material culture. There's currently an explosion of authors self-publishing Ghanaian cookbooks, as well as some Ghanaian presses publishing them. This is good news for African food-lovers. It's a sign that Ghanaians are proud of their food and realize there's a need to write down recipes that are embedded in an oral tradition. There's also much experimentation and modification of traditional recipes occurring, and attempts to find short-cuts for some of the more time-consuming preparation steps. In addition, a growing awareness of the relationship of diet to health is prompting people to adjust their favorite dishes to make them more heart-friendly and healthier. Finally, Ghanaians outside of Ghana want to both re-create their beloved meals when some ingredients or cooking equipment are not available, and introduce versions of them to nonGhanaian friends. They, too, realize that there just aren't cookbooks filling this obvious need.

Each time I begin to write about the phenomenon, I hear about another book, and I'm off to find it, study it, and thus keep putting off sharing here. A good number of such books are written by Ghanaians outside of Ghana, and "launched" both in Ghana and abroad. Two of the books I'm writing about today were donated to our Africa Cookbook Project. One of the books was donated anonymously, but I'd like to publicly thank Nina Chachu for the second one, Chop & Grind.

The Best of Our Foods by Christine Boahene was first published in 2003 by Afram Publications in Accra, but this is the first time I've ever run across a copy of it. A week after I saw a few copies in the University of Ghana bookshop in Legon, they had all disappeared again. The author received her degree in Home Economics at Liverpool University College of Calder, and taught many years in the Ghana Education Service before her retirement. Her teaching background shows up in the book, with plenty of advice along with the recipes. It feels like a textbook, with a lot of nutritional and sanitation advice. I especially appreciated that she celebrates "Our Foods" (i.e., West Africa's) and also features a number of West African recipes from outside Ghana, especially from Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Liberia and Cameroon (127 pages, black and white, with drawings).

Another textbook-type publication is Rosemary Ago Pappoe's Standardised Ghanaian Cookery Book, First Edition (published, 2007, but just launched in March 2008). It is an ambitious and welcome resource for culinary professionals. Ms. Pappoe is the Domestic Exams Co-ordinator of the Standard Trade Testing and Certification Department of the National Vocational Training Instititute in Ghana. She has put together a standardized cookbook, appropriate for schools training students in good sanitation practices, attractive presentation of foods, and healthy and efficient preparation. It is in many ways a complete course. Included are recipes for soups (14), stews and protein dishes (27), one-pot dishes (10), carbohydrate dishes (35), vegetables (5), sweets and savories (25), fresh fruits, juices and drinks (13), local drinks (4), breakfast dishes (11), and salads (14). Color illustrations throughout show sample presentations of the recipes (152 pages, colored photos). It was no surprise to me to find Barbara Baeta Bentsi-Enchill acknowledged (yes, my collaborator on the regional Ghanaian cookbook we're working on but have yet to locate a publisher for) and her company Flair Catering Services, heavily featured in the "ideal kitchen setup" section.

Enyonam Canice Kudonoo (author) and Professor Clara Opare-Obisaw (editor) are responsible for The Ghanaian Colour Cook Book (A Taste of Ghana, Volume 1), published in 2007 by SEDCO. This small book (49 pages) is the kind of book I've been searching for for a long time: an intelligent and authoritative introduction to Ghanaian cuisine. It contains 45 well-illustrated pictures of 25 classic Ghanaian recipes, along with helpful tips and notes. I hope volume 2 will follow soon. Ms. Kudonoo is a former Home Economics teacher, who, interestingly, taught at Flair Catering School (Barbara's school!). The editor teaches here at the University of Ghana (Food and Nutrition), Legon, where I'm based, and I fully intend to look her up very soon.

I've been a nonGhanaian married to a Ghanaian for over 35 years, but it was just in 2008 that I learned of the ISAG: The International Spouses Association of Ghana. In 2005 they put together and published a useful and interesting cookbook called chop & grind: Recipes by Ingenious Migrants (Adaptations from Different Locations). Its cover features a woodcutting of an asanka (a traditional clay grinding bowl) and the wooden masher that accompanies it. Chop & grind is made up of tried and true recipes from 22 individuals who are originally not from Ghana, though many of the recipes are for Ghanaian foods, and many are dishes from elsewhere, along with in ways to recreate other foods using Ghanaian ingredients (183 pages, black and white drawings, woodcuts). This community cookbook is a wonderful resource for the nonGhanaian who finds him- or her-self in Ghana. It appears to have been spear-headed by Pamela Clarkson Kwami and Celia Marshall. I really hope they, too, take on a volume 2.

Perhaps so many cookbooks were published last year because 2007 was Ghana's 50th birthday (it became the first black African country to achieve independence, in 1957). That's also when Cynthia Agbozo's Aromas from Ghana: An introduction to Ghanaian Cuisine (DaySprings Publishing, Canada) was released. Her mother was a caterer in Ghana (so by default she apprenticed in her mother's kitchen), and Cynthia is another "can-do" woman who decided to address the paucity of resources on Ghanaian cooking with her 101-page book, clearly illustrated with color photos.

I've been trying to get in touch with another Ghanaian, Charles Cann, a 2005 commnications graduate of Northwestern University, who has written Tropical Ghana Delights. I want to find out more about him, and how to get a copy of his cookbook to review. From his PR, it sounds tempting, heavy on fresh tropical fruits. He's apparently "launched" it in several countries. I was here in Ghana when he launched it in February, but didn't hear about it until after the event. He has not yet responded to any of my queries. Charles?

As for the 3 cookbooks at the bottom of this page, I'll save my comments about them for another day. I have a serious complaint for the publisher, but do not want to spoil this celebration of Ghanaian cookbook authors. Similarly, I could make a few critical observations about the above cookbooks, but that's not the point of this posting. I'm sure issues of indexes, tables of contents, organization, measurement information, copy editing, food photography, special ingredients, clarity of information, etc. will resolve themselves over time.

Update on Africa Cookbook Project

Here are the 3 latest additions, all paperbacks,  to the Africa Cookbook Project, which I launched semi-officially in 2007. I'm still collecting cookbooks. Two of the cookbooks are Ghanaian and one is Kenyan.

The Ghana Cookery Book was originally compiled by the Gold Coast Branch of the British Red Cross Society and published in 1933 as The Cold Coast Cookery Book. In 2007, David Saffery (who seems to have made a career out of republishing old African cookbooks) reprinted it via the "Jeppestown Press" in London, dressed it up with a glossy cover of Ghanaian GTP textiles, and used illustrations from both the original book and the 1922 South and East African Year Book). As would be expected, it is basically a "Western" cookbook, whose (unedited) recipes were contributed by residents in Ghana "upon whom the sole condition was imposed that all the ingredients of every recipe should be easily obtainable in the Gold Coast." This includes things like canned asparagus, cheese, and strawberry jam ;-)  While most of the recipes are quite foreign to Ghana, several--especially those provided by Sister Antonia (Keta) and Sister Angele (Cape Coast)-- do include some indigenous dishes (e.g., palmnut soups, tigernut cream, garden egg and groundnut soups, okra stew). It's an important historical addition to my collection.

At the other end of the spectrum is another recently self-published Ghanaian cookbook, Akwaaba, A Taste of Ghana (Recipes from the African Gold Coast) by Sandra Amoako, a young  woman from Accra who attended Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and is part of a growing group of Ghanaians who are proud of their culinary heritage and want to introduce it to Western audiences. She has included a helpful index in the book. It covers the same general territory (about 50 recipes and variations) as other books, includes some time-saving adaptations, and is a welcome addition to the introductory cookbooks on Ghanaian cuisine.

From Kenway Publications in Nairobi/Kampala/Dar es Salaam (a subsidiary of East African Educational Publishers Ltd.) comes a classic cookbook based on her long-running  popular television cooking shows Mke Nyumbani: Alice Taabu's Cookery Book,  and first published in 2001. It is carefully illustrated with black and white drawings, and is clearly intended for a Kenyan audience.

They say it's impossible. Is it? I'd like to see.

Today's blog posting is more personal than usual. I need some advice.

I've spent almost 40 years preparing to write a certain book. Along the way I've written other books, and parts of books, but not the one of my dreams--the book to cause Americans to fall in love with one African cuisine: Ghana's. Over the years, every time I've approached editors and agents I've gotten similar responses: "Regrettably, after discussing this carefully and considering potential publishers, we feel that the topic is narrow
and will likely be met with reluctance by publishers." "I don't know where I could place this book." "There is, unfortunately, no market for single-country African cookbooks." "African cookbooks traditionally do not sell well."

With the recent decline of cookbook publishing, even an editor at Hippocrene, a press noted for its regional African cookbook series, had this to say "In this current economic climate, we have just not been able to take on all the projects that we would like. Since our cookbooks are the most expensive to produce and more of a risk in terms of marketability/sales, we have slowed down cookbook acquisitions considerably this year. . . if you are still looking in a year or so, please touch base . . . "

I've been thinking a lot recently, and decided that this negativity is unacceptable. My blog audience and presentations before culinary groups convince me that there are many people out there who ARE interested in more in-depth coverage of the cooking of a specific African country (e.g., Ghana). And the time is NOW to get the cookbook Barbara Baeta have collaborated on since 2002 in print. I'm thinking that I'll turn to you, my blog family, to help with the recipe testing. I'd like to post a recipe a day (gulp--what do you think? is that realistic? there are about 200 recipes) from the cookbook (there are lots of possible titles you can advise me on, too, from The Good Soup Comes From the Good Earth: Regional Cooking of Ghana
to Fran Cooks With Flair: Essentials from Barbara Baeta's West African Kitchen to
Cooking of Ghana: Akara to Tuo Zaafe.)

My children recently encouraged me to read some of Chris Guillebeau's writing (including his free pdf's for "279 Days to Overnight Success" and "A Brief Guide to World Domination," both available at the link above. As I stare age 60 in the face this month, in the back of my mind is the memory of Susan Boyle's brave "I'm going to make that audience rock." Ms. Boyle and Chris are my examples. What do you all think? Would you be ready to support me, test my recipes, give me feedback, and help me live my "impossible" dream? To finish this book, publisher or no, by the end of this year? And to get it into print.

Shrimp Curry, Cape Malay-Style

South Africa is famous, among other things, for its "Old Cape" or "Cape Malay" cooking. In preparation for the southern African cooking class this March, I met with Gabeba Baderoon, a South African poet teaching at Penn State, for advice on how to prepare a curry similar to the wonderful ones I remember from Cape Town. She sat down with me and 3 of her favorite cookbooks and shared some of her knowledge. (She also promised to get me copies of all 3 cookbooks this May when she visits home!) I settled on an adaptation of a crayfish curry (we substituted jumbo wild-caught shrimp) from Faldela Williams' The Cape Malay Cookbook for the class, and it was very popular.  The recipe calls for fish masala, so I purchased a couple of different kinds from our local international and Indian markets--the one we ended up using was "MDH fish curry masala,"  a mixture of coriander, chilli, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek leaves, salt, black pepper, bishop's weed, dry mango, dry ginger, mustard, pulse, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, caraway, cardamom seeds, mace, and asofoetida. This recipe is simple to prepare--the slowest part was cleaning and deveining the shrimp.

Cape Malay-style Shrimp (or crayfish) Curry

 

2 pounds  large, wild-caught shrimp (or 2 pounds of crayfish tails, in shells, or one large crayfish)

1/4 cup sunflower oil (or other vegetable oil)

2 large onions, thinly sliced (at least 2 cups)

2 ripe tomatoes, skinned and puréed (could probably substitute canned)

1 green bell pepper, seeded and puréed

2 teaspoons crushed garlic

1 tsp crushed dried chili pepper

1 tsp turmeric

      2 tsp fish masala

     1 tsp ground cumin

                              1 Tablespoon lemon juice

                              1 tsp sugar

                              1 tsp salt

If using shrimp, remove shells and devein. Rinse and set aside.  (If using whole crayfish, wash well, wemove legs and tail, and set aside. If using small crayfish, leave shells on). Slice the onions and prepare the tomatoes, green pepper and garlic. Fry the onions on medium heat until golden, about 5-10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, green pepper, garlic and dried crushed chili pepper and cook, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes. Make a paste from the cumin, fish masala, turmeric, lemon juice, sugar and salt (add a little water if necessary) and cook until the gravy thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the shrimp (or crayfish) and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes.

We served this wonderful curry with basmati rice.

The 2 other cookbooks Gabeba recommended are Cass Abrahams Cooks Cape Malay--Food From Africa and Zainab Lagardien's Everyday Cape Malay Cooking. The photos alone in these books will set your mouth watering

African Culinary Tourism, Cookbooks, etc.

March was a busy month and I've not really stopped to update folks on my recent and upcoming activities.

• It was a delightful surprise to be invited to be featured in a short documentary video about the work of BETUMI: The African Culinary Network for a joint project of the Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge (ICIK) and the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship initiative in the College of Engineering at Penn State. They interviewed me and came to one of my cooking classes to talk to some students, too. I understand the video will be available around June.

• I've always been a huge supporter of the glaring, if invisible, need to promote African Culinary Tourism, so was delighted when Kitty Pope,  the Director of the International Association of Black Travel Writers approached me about writing about African food and culture  for their new online magazine African Diaspora Tourism. You'll find my groundnut (peanut soup) recipe and a little food history there.

• Check out my interview for bizymoms.com (in March they picked me as a top food blogger for 2010!)

• Even before launching the Africa Cookbook Project at TEDGlobal in Tanzania in 2007, I've been interested in the role of culinary writing as social history, in shaping perceptions (see "Sub-Saharan Cuisine and Western Perceptions," and as a record of popular culture. On Wed., April 28 I'll be giving a talk at Penn State: "Asankas to Maggi Cubes: Ghanaian Cookbooks as Sources for African Food History."

• I plan to spend the month of June in Tema, Ghana finalizing the Ghanaian cookbook Barbara Baeta and I have been collaborating on for several years.

• In July I'll travel to Abuja, Nigeria to teach an intensive writing course and explore Nigerian cuisine.  

Africa Cookbook Projects, Original and New

In my previous post I promised to share about what's happening with BETUMI's "mountain moving" projects. 


BETUMI's Original Africa Cookbook project:
In 2007 at the TED Global conference held in Arusha,
Tanzania, BETUMI launched the

Africa Cookbook Project --we now have collected well over 120 books written by Africans and published (mostly) in Africa. They range from mimeographed (yes, before the 1960s, before  photocopying or scanning, there was mimeographing) informal collections of recipes to sophisticated full-color print books. They are in English, French, Portuguese, Amharic, Malagasy. . . We have also collected dozens more cookbooks published outside of Africa and/or written by non-Africans, along with dozens of  African-food-related reference books.

The earliest books in the collection were originally published in 1933 (The Gold Coast Cookery Book,  by the Government Printing Office in Accra, reprinted in 2007 as The Ghana Cookery Book by Jeppestown Press in the U.K. AND the 1934 The Kudeti Book of Yoruba Cookery by J. A Mars & E. M. Tooleyo--we have the 3rd (Revised) Edition (1979) and the reprinted and repackaged 2002 edition, all from Lagos.

The most recently published additions are: from South Africa,  Ukutya Kwasekhaya: Tastes from Nelson Mandela's Kitchen by Xoliswa Ndoyiya with Anna Trapido, published in 2011;  from Ghana, Florence Sai's Aunty Mama's Cook Book launched in Ghana in December 2011, and from (Côte d'Ivoire (via France), Marguerite Abouet's  Délices d'Afrique, published in 2012 by Editions Alternatives.

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to this project. One immediate mountain that needs moving is getting all of the books into the fledgling data base. We need help to do this. Maybe the next step after that is getting some of the earlier works digitized and available to everyone, while ensuring that there is fair compensation to authors and publishers.

The Newest Africa Cookbook project:

As many of you already know, for over a decade (when the photo on the left was taken), Barbara Baeta and Fran Osseo-Asare have been collaborating on compiling an ambitious Ghanaian cookbook designed as a basic cooking course. It will feature regional variations and step-by-step instructions for a wide range of Ghanaian recipes (roughly 150), along with Ghanaian artwork, scenic shots, and anecdotes from both of our lives. 

We're thrilled to report that in August 2013 we signed a contract with Hippocrene Books, respected for over 40 years as a publisher of ethnic cookbooks. The manuscript will be completed by the end of August 2014, and the book is expected out 9 months later, around May 2015. Thank you to all of you who have been supportive of this unfolding dream. We trust that, like all truly great things, it will prove worth the wait.

We're very excited! 

P.S. Those of you who have offered to help (or would like to)  with the final recipe testing, stay tuned. We welcome your involvement, and will soon give more details on how you can be a part of this project.






 

New edition of Tweedie's Ghanaian Cookbook

Almost exactly 5 years ago I posted about a Ghanaian cookbook by Asantewaa Tweedie called Ghanaian Cooking with a Twist. Since then, Asantewaa and I have corresponded virtually. She returned to Ghana over a year ago, and emailed me recently that she had expanded and updated her cookbook.

A couple of weeks ago during a visit she made to Pennsylvania we met up together. It was a treat to meet face-to-face for the first time and also to see and hear about the new version,  Melting Pot: Ghanaian Cooking with a Twist. Before returning to Ghana, Asantawaa asked me to continue as the sole North American distributor of her book, which retails at $30.00 plus mailing and handling. If you would like to order a copy, contact market@betumi.com for details.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation. I apologize in advance for the buzz on the video: I had to use a small digital camera and the quality was not perfect.

People sometimes ask me if I don't feel like I'm in competition with other Ghanaian cookbook authors. No way. I'm always excited to see the new wave of Ghanaians getting the word out about Ghanaian cuisine. I'd love to see as many Ghanaian cookbooks as there are Italian cookbooks on the shelves!

Question #6: What makes YOU the expert, white American lady?

When my book A Good Soup Attracts Chairs came out in 1993 I made a conscious decision not to put my photo on the book jacket. A few months after the cookbook's publication I was speaking to the African-American book buyer for our local university and she looked at me dismissively and said (more or less) "If I'd known you were white, I'd never have gotten the book." Not everyone feels that way, but some, especially African Americans, resent white people telling them how to cook the foods that are part of their heritage. They want to write (and read) their own cookbooks, such as those by Jessica Harris. I can accept that, and understand it. That's why when I do presentations before large groups, if possible I try to be with a (black) African co-presenter.

On the other hand, I don't believe people today think Julia Child, author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was somehow inadequate because she wasn't French. I would never presume to call myself the Julia Child of Ghanaian cuisine, but there are a couple of parallels, particularly in her ability to make French cooking accessible to ordinary people in the U.S.

Since the 1970s I've been eating and learning in the kitchens of family, friends, and colleagues how to prepare Ghanaian food. As a sociologist, a writer, and a "foodie," I've also looked for the stories behind the food. Since marrying my Ghanaian husband in the 1970s I've spent decades looking at his culture from the inside out, and/or the outside in, at a different level than most foreigners will ever have the opportunity to do. I've lived and studied and worked in Ghana. Finally, as a doctoral student in rural sociology during the late 1980s and early 1990s doing ethnographic and survey research, my field work took me around Ghana talking to women and men about the food they eat and grow and purchase.

Did I mention I truly love Ghanaian cuisine? We cook and eat it in our home every week, so in that sense I know what I'm talking about (of course, we also eat Mexican, Brazilian, Japanese, Thai, Italian, Korean, Mediterranean, Eritrean, Moroccan, French, Chinese, regional American, etc. food, too!) Learning to cook Ghanaian dishes, to adjust them for Western palates and substituting for or locating unusual ingredients has taken me years. My first attempts at fufu, for example, were disastrous, as were my early efforts at fermenting cornmeal to make kenkey or banku dough. I remember with pride, though, the stunned look years ago on one Ghanaian university student's face when a group was over at our house chowing down from a huge pot of palmnut soup (along with fufu and omo tuo, or rice balls. He kept looking around, disbelieving that I was the cook. He couldn't even look at me. "But, but, but," he stammered, "she's white. How could she?" I'll always treasure that memory.

Though Ghanaian cooking is basically an oral tradition, I possess an unsurpassed collection of West African and Ghanaian cookbooks as part of the African Cookbook project. I have spent months shadowing master cooks at Flair Catering in Ghana and received a travel grant to travel throughout the country to study cooking in all 10 regions, including the unfamiliar northern regions of Ghana. That makes me able to fill in the many blanks in other's books and experiences, frequently written or explained by Ghanaians who do not quite understand how much North Americans don't know about their country and culture or that Ghanaians modify (unnecessarily) to please the imagined foreign palate. Other culinary writing by short-term Western visitors to Ghana frequently suffers from "stranger's eyes" who miss a lot and make lots of amusing (and incorrect) assumptions. I have finally recognized my place at the intersection of two worlds is a strength.

As I've said before, I got fed up (pun intended) hearing the negative and distorted nonsense people said about West African cooking, so started writing about it from my perspective (see link under features to the article "We eat first with our eyes: on Ghanaian cuisine." ) I also ended up doing a lot of cooking demonstrations for schools, 4-H, scouting and other community, church, etc., groups, including the African and nonAfrican community (faculty, staff, and students) at Penn State where my husband teaches and where I earned my doctorate.

After the 1993 book I insisted I'd never write another cookbook. It was a very time-consuming and detail-oriented project (undertaken while I was completing my doctoral dissertation and raising 3 children), I had to learn to be a food photographer, and the multiple recipe testings part was a hassle, too. Nevertheless, that book catapulted into the world of culinary professionals, and I joined a group Julia Child helped found, the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals). My career has shifted dramatically since that time, and in 1997 I founded the African Culinary Network. In the mid-1990s I was approached several times about writing the sub-Saharan Africa volume for an upcoming Greenwood Press series on Food Culture Around the World, including several persuasive emails from series editor Ken Albala. The first few times I brushed the idea off because I was no expert on sub-Saharan African food: I only knew a bit about Ghanaian and Anglophone West African cooking.

Finally, I recognized that if I didn't write it, it might not get written at all, or else someone who didn't care as much as I did might do it and not get it right. I began immersing myself as much as possible into sub-Saharan African culture (travel, books, films, restaurants, internet research, interviewing people, etc.) Several years and trips to Africa later, by the time the book came out in 2005, I realized that I do in fact know more about African cuisines that most people in North America. Also that most people I know in Ghana and other parts of Africa do not have the luxury of studying and writing about their cuisines, and appreciate my efforts. I also realize that people outside of Africa (or in other parts of Africa) ARE interested, and curious, and that is another reason behind this blog.

Finally, I've been fortunate to live in different parts of the U.S., from Berkeley, CA to Cambridge, MA; from Golden, Colorado to central Pennsylvania; beyond the U.S., from Ghana to Japan to the U.K. to Brazil. Plus I've been able to travel extensively: Hawaii, Louisiana, Texas, Nigeria, China, South Africa, France, Tanzania. . . You get the idea. Mix all these experiences together and you understand that I have quite an international perspective. When that is blended with my specific set of personal experiences: my writing career, my community organizing and sociology backgrounds, raising my own 3 children and 2 adopted nephews from Ghana, my teaching and instructional design experiences, my love of good food, etc., they have created in me a passion (I use that overworked cliché warily, but it is at heart a wonderful word) to share what I know.

Africa Cookbook Project Update

The Africa Cookbook Project has 3 new cookbooks. First, thank you to Ghanaian Charles Cann for a copy of his 2007 Tropical Ghana Delights. This brief 39-page paperback with lovely colorful photos and a matching breezy style contains a couple dozen recipes heavily infused with tropical fruits, from snacks and main dishes to sweets. (Charles, I was surprised not to see any tropical fruit smoothies in the book! I hope that's in the pipeline--Ghanaians generally seem to bond with them from the first taste). Charles' is not a book of traditional Ghanaian recipes: even his light soup recipe includes cucumber, cauliflower, fresh basil and carrots. Rather, it's what I like to think of as "second-" or even "third-" generation Ghanaian cooking. Like Marcus Samuelson, he's taken some basic flavor combinations and ingredients, and creatively added and mixed them up to suit himself. I'll soon be trying them out and reporting back. I must caution that while I love fresh fruits, I generally don't care for adding sugar or honey or sweet fruits to savory dishes. Of course, that doesn't always hold: I do love mango salsa, and sweet ripe plantains with savory stews.

Secondly, after having a pleasant meal at a restaurant in Osu (my filing system is still disorganized, but think the name of the restaurant proprietoress, was Amelia Longdon, of Kalibre Catering Services), Amelia (?) showed me a book she'd recently picked up on the streets, called Recipe Book for All (Catering), an unpretentious but recipe-packed book by Vivian Ofori, apparently in its 2nd edition. I kept my eyes open and eventually found a copy for sale myself. It is a soft-cover 64-page book. The first part is devoted to recipes combining both traditional Ghanaian recipes (like jollof rice, ofam, and abolo), and "continental" recipes for things like pizza, spaghetti, and mayonnaise. These are bare-boned recipes with few explanations but designed for experienced cooks or caterers and using measurement mostly by weight. I counted just over 100 recipes. The book is divided into 2 sections, the first part the basic recipes and some general catering information; the second focused on the basics of nutrition, and including a number of recipes using soy beans and a lengthy section on moringa leaves and pods (Ms. Ofori explains moringa is called zogala or zogalagondi in Hausa, yevu-ti in Ewe, baganlua by Dagombas; ewe ile or idagbo monoye by the Yoruba and ikwe oyibo by the Ibos of Nigeria, and ben aile or boenzolive in French.)

Finally, shortly before I left I discovered the delightful Akwaaba Beach Guest House owned and operated by Swiss innkeeper Helene Jäger. Helene has a lovely collection of African cookbooks, but one that caught my eye, and that I'd not seen before was Our Favourite Recipes: From around the world. This is a wonderful collection of recipes put together creatively and deliciously by the Ghana International Women's Club in 1999. It is truly an international collection, with recipes from The Netherlands, the U.K., Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Belgium, India, Switzerland, Korea, Israel, Malta, Hungary, Trinidad, the U.S.A., France, as well as a good selection from Ghana, and other African countries, including Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Egypt. There was no time to photocopy the book, so I photographed all 95 pages and printed them out when I returned to Pennsylvania. Now I'm going working on completing the data base of the volumes of the project.

Please continue to keep informing me about other resources. Thank you Emeka, about telling me about the June 29 posting on Field to Feast about the Babula Cooking III booklet put together by missionaries in Zaire (as a survival guide using local ingredients). I'd love to get a copy for the collection. That kind of book is also important as social history.

Cooking the West African Way

At my March 3rd cooking class we prepared  a West African dinner in my home. We dined on ginger (and regular) beer, bissap, green plantain chips, chichinga (suya), chicken groundnut stew (and a fish-broth-based version for one non-meat/poultry eater), palaver sauce, omo tuo (rice balls), gari (cassava meal), ampesi (we used white sweet potatoes, green and ripe plantain, cocoyam (taro), and, unfortunately but not surprisingly, the Mexican yam we got was rotten). We had atwemo (like chin-chin) and a fresh coconut and  tropical fruit salad for dessert. 

The participants were great and from the feedback so far, a wonderful time was had by all.  Here are a few pictures taken near the end of class. Kudos to all of my students! I'll share some of the other recipes we prepared, but since we were too busy to take pictures, will probably have to re-cook the groundnut stew, omo tuo and palaver sauce to illustrate for you.

In 2 weeks, it'll be time for a trip to southern Africa. I'll let you know how that class goes (or, if you are in the State College area and want to sign up, I still have a few openings). Here's some information on that class:

March 18: Southern Africa--includes South African wines, shrimp peri peri, samp and beans with tomato bredie, chakalaka salad, curry and rice, melktert, and rooibos tea. Each class includes an illustrated introductory lecture (and snack), followed by preparation and enjoyment of classic beverages and dishes.

Sadly, I was at our local Barnes and Noble bookstore today. There were bookcases and bookcases of international cookbooks: France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Germany, etc., etc. etc., but the only "African" cookbooks were 3 on Moroccan cooking. This is most unfortunate. Africa has so very much to offer and teach us.

"The one who has not traveled widely thinks his/her mother is the only (best) cook"--African proverb among the Baganda, Akamba, Kikuyu, Memba, Haya, Igbo, Yoruba  

Giving Credit for African Cookbooks

I remember a conversation with Barbara Baeta one day when she was talking about how Laurens van der Post came to Ghana and met with her in the 1960s when he was writing his pioneering Foods of the World volume on African Cooking. She was young and flattered, and generously provided him with numerous recipes used in the book--even allowing herself to be photographed serving at a dinner party in Accra (p. 83). However, she has always regretted that she took the small lump sum the publishers offered her, while a more savvy colleague from Ethiopia negotiated a portion of the royalties and made many, many times over what Barbara earned. I wonder how often Africans provide hospitality and recipes and end up with someone else receiving the credit and money. . .

In a related vein, there's something I've been needing to get off my chest for a long time. In the early 1970s when I first came to Ghana, my future sister-in-law gave me a copy of Ghanaian Favourite Recipes (Recipes that are loved best in Many Ghanaian homes) by Alice Dede. It was first published, as near as I can tell, in June, 1969 by Anowuo Educational Publications in Accra. The cover bears Dede's name, and the inside title page declares that the book was compiled by Alice Dede. In the facing page it states "The Author acknowledges with thanks the help received from officials of various educational Institutions in Ghana."

Now it is possible that Alice Dede did this as a work for hire, all the recipes were contributed by others, and once it was compiled all the rights reverted to the publisher. I really don't know. But having written cookbooks myself, I know that even a "compiler" has to make many, many decisions to create such a book, and engage in recipe testing, etc., and deserves credit for that. I've often wondered who Alice Dede was, and what her background was, and what happened to her. I'd love it if any of you can tell me.

Dede's book became a classic and was reprinted numerous times during the difficult 70s and 80s. Gradually, the book was given cosmetic face lifts (new covers, slight reorganization of recipes, removal of 5 pages of a final chapter called "recipes from other countries" replaced by 4 new pages of introductory material). By 1985, the "Recipes that are loved best in many Ghanaian homes" was gone from the cover (though still on the reprinted front page of the book, where only Alice Dede's name was gone), and the book was said to include "203 selected Ghanaian recipes of high nutritional value and delight," and to be "A comprehensive guide and reference to cooking." Somehow Dede's name and authorship disappeared. In the latest edition I have, from 2006, the title has changed to Ghanaian Cook Book: Favourite Recipes from Ghana, and the book now has a new "editor," Sophia Manu. Apparently, along with editorial advisor S. Asare Konadu, she supervised the latest face lift: a new cover with photographs and more color, including 11 color photographs throughout the chapters and a san serif type face that is larger and easier to read, as well as a better layout design. But as far as the substantive content of the book, the recipes, there are few changes. Ms. Manu moved chapter 6 (baked goods) to chapter 1. It includes two recipes for garri biscuits (#3 and also #16). In copying the menu table from the early edition, there were several errors from the original (omitting words, placing words in the wrong column), and there were also several errors in copying pages and recipes from the original index into the new index, or omitting recipes.
While the latest edition is admittedly more attractive, what bothers me, apart from the fact that I believe Alice Dede should still receive recognition for her work, is that the book is basically a word-for-word duplication of the original recipes, including measurements in cigarette tins and beer bottles, and no indication of any changes in the diet or cooking equipment or techniques in the last 40 years. This is patently not true, and yet the book purports and appears to be a "new" book. Many things have changed, and Ghana deserves a genuinely updated, comprehensive cook book.

Kelewele: My favorite Ghanaian Snack

I'm in the midst of packing to spend a year in Brazil and Ghana but just caught sight of a bag of Nina International's "All Natural UDA Hwentia," sitting on my desk. It made me wish for some fresh kelewele, one of my all-time favorite snack foods from Ghana. Western cookbooks generally describe kelewele as something like "spicy fried plantain cubes," but that is like calling a sunset "beautiful." All the recipes I've seen in Western cookbooks are anemic versions of the best kelewele as it's prepared in Ghana. First of all, Western versions only call for salt, ginger, and dried red pepper, but in Ghana in addition to grinding fresh ginger and onion, they also commonly pound and add sekoni (aniseed), hwentia (a kind of long black stick I've yet to name botanically. Can anyone help me out?), and cloves. The plantain should be very ripe and sweet, and nicely coated with the mixture before it is deep-fried. The plantain is generally cut on a diagonal rather than into a straight cube. Kelewele tastes superb accompanied with dry roasted peanuts. The sweet, spicy, and chewy plantain is a perfect counter to the mild crunchy/creamy flavor and texture of the peanuts. Both go well with an ice cold beer or drink like ginger beer or bissap. Nina International distributes many West African foods through its office in Maryland (PO Box 6566, Hyatsville, MD 20789). More information on suppliers is available at African Food Stores
Rest assured, Barbara Baeta and I will include an authentic recipe for gourmet kelewele in our upcoming book.

Africa Cookbook Project Launched at TEDGLOBAL

Africa Cookbook Project
Originally uploaded by betumi

At TEDGLOBAL in Arusha, Tanzania in June, 2007, we launched the "Africa Cookbook Project," whose goal is to archive African culinary writing and make it widely available on the continent and beyond. A database is being developed and copies of hundreds of cookbooks are already being catalogued at BETUMI: The African Culinary Network. Google has offered assistance in eventually digitizing some of the information.

The enthusiasm and tangible support both at and after the conference is wonderful. Issa Diabate has already e-mailed that he's sending an Ivorian book, Dominique Bikaba that he's searching for one from DRC, and Jens Martin Skibsted has scanned the covers of several books in his collection. People have promised to send books from Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, etc. I'm thrilled that others recognize the urgent need to protect these books, whether for their value as a record of popular culture, social history, or, my specialty, culinary creativity.

In an all-too-typical experience, I visited the gift shop at Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge and asked if they had any Tanzanian cookbooks. The staff were sure no such books existed, and were excited and surprised when I showed them Sarakikya's book:
When I stopped in both gift shops at Kilimanjaro airport, they confidently showed me several glossy books published in Zanzibar like Safari Living, which showcased what I call "cuisine for Westerners," and were unable to produce a single "black Africa" cookbook. There's work to be done. Help spread the word, and also help us build up this data base and archive.

Class on Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa debuts Fall, 2012

I'm not sure how many undergraduate Pennsylvania State University students check out my blog, but here's the announcement for the new African Studies class I'm piloting this fall at University Park:

                                                                               ©BETUMI, 2012

AFR 297B: Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa
Fall 2012 (3 credits)

Place: 173 Willard

Time: MWF 9:05 – 9:55 a.m.

Instructor: Fran Osseo-Asare (fran@betumi.com)

·      Discover and define sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) place in food studies by:

o   using resources from history, economics, education, sociology, psychology, linguistics, political science, anthropology, literature, geography, agricultural sciences, gastronomy, public health, popular culture, and nutrition to create understandings of the roles procuring, selecting, preparing, consuming and celebrating food play throughout SSA.

o   recognizing the multiplicity of food cultures and culinary contributions that SSA brings to the global table, as well as the challenges facing its foodways.

·      Explore historical and geographical contexts, major foods, ingredients and flavor principles, tools and cooking equipment, meal formats, diet and health, special occasions, religious significance of foods, rituals and taboos, food production and preference changes over time, including pre-colonial, colonial, marketing, and globalizing influences.

·      Identify the roles foods play in traditional and contemporary cultures as well as similarities and differences and intraregional, interregional and international links. 

·      Create a final project on a personalized area of interest:

o   Possible topic areas: specific indigenous or adopted ingredients; the role of new media in images of African cuisine; “national dish” and national identity in Africa; effects of new technologies or food crops on food cultures; specific colonial or multinational experiences and impacts on diet or farming systems; culinary tourism in Africa; sub-Saharan African food and the African diaspora; cookbooks and the oral tradition; food in African art or literature; or . . .

The instructor, Fran Osseo-Asare, MSW (U.C., Berkeley), PhD (Penn State) is the author of Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa (Greenwood Press, 2005), a culinary professional, and an African food blogger (www.betumiblog.blogspot.com).

Ready, set. . . . preparing to leave for Ghana and Nigeria

You'll note that there were few posts in April. Things have been heating up here with preparations to travel to Ghana and Nigeria for the summer. Last week I also gave a presentation at Penn State on Ghanaian cookbooks, and served Ghanaian snacks (if you're interested in viewing the powerpoint, my slides are up at google doc http://bit.ly/cFZTUX )

A week earlier, I hosted a Ghanaian dinner for a visiting Korean distinguished professor and his Vietnamese student. Lots of cooking: this week I'll prepare a catered (African) luncheon for a symposium on May 6. Plus I've been hustling funds for an undergraduate assistant to travel with me to Ghana for 2 weeks, and generally dealing with a long list of things to do: ordering equipment, arranging immunizations, contacting people and setting up meetings in Ghana, etc.

It's likely that I'll be pretty quiet this summer as far as posting on betumiblog. My main goal is to meet with Barbara Baeta and work as hard as possible in getting the Ghanaian cookbook into shape for publication--while my writing and credentials are respected, we've yet to locate a publisher willing to publish a lavishly illustrated African cookbook on a single country ("no U.S. market" is the common explanation). If any of you have suggestions, please let me know. Self-publication is a last, last resort.

Incidentally, Katie Cochrane, who will accompany me for part of the time in Ghana, noted in the blog she's just begun for this project a recent positive New York Times restaurant review of a new Ghanaian restaurant,  Papaye, in New York City.

On my African Cookbook shelf

It's been some time since I've commented on the latest (cook)books I'm reading/collecting, and also since I've thanked contributors  to The Africa Cookbook Project, 
launched at TED Global in Tanzania in 2007. Yes, we're still collecting cookbooks published in Africa and written by Africans.

Rachel C. J. Massaquoi, the Sierra Leonean mother of one of my daughter Abena's  friends from Harvard,  published a book  in 2011 through AuthorHouse. Titled Foods of Sierra Leone and Other West African Contries: A Cookbook and Food-Related Stories, it has been a joy to read through its 159 pages. The book is filled with helpful information, including stories, cultural wisdom, photographs, and a glossary. It is truly a gift to those of us interested in preserving and sharing West African culinary history and recipes. What's more, it's currently on sale through AuthorHouse for $23.51 instead of the $46.28 price available at Amazon.com (use link above). It would make a great, unique, Christmas gift.

I'm especially interested to try her cassava leaf sauce (in Ghana, people favor cocoyam leaves, aka nkontomire or kontomire), plus her recipe for Sierra Leonean "check rice" (also popular in Liberia). She has done us all a great service.
 
In 1993, Ten Speed Press published a cookbook by Ghanaian author and television cooking show host Dorinda Hafner that became a bestseller, A Taste of Africa. The book was published in hardcover and paperback, reprinted, and followed by a revised version in 2002. I recently picked up a copy of the revised edition, only to discover that it has quite a different feel. For one thing, the language has been toned down: "fufu" has been renamed "dumplings," "momone" has gone from "smelly" salted fish to simply "salted fish." Also, there are some additions (such as the recipe for "ham soup with basil and vegetables)," and she has reversed the names, for example, from using Ghanaian names ("shitor din" or "kontomire ne momone," "kubecake," "Tom Brown" in favor of highlighting more understandable English names as headings, with the traditional names usually in small 

type  underneath. Understandable, perhaps, but also a kind of loss. Still, the revised edition stands proudly on my shelf next to the first edition, and Dorinda's delightful 1996 memoir (also published by Ten Speed Press) I Was Never Here and This Never Happened--Tasty Bits and Spicy Tales From My Life.

 











Several weeks ago, on his latest return from Ethiopia, Prof. Greg Ziegler carried along a donation he correctly guessed was not already in the collection. Published in 2011 by author Teshome Berhe, it is a bilingual introduction to Ethiopian cooking and culture, in both  French and English (en français et en anglais): A table avec la Reine de Saba / Dining with the Queen of Sheba. Several of its 139 pages contain color illustrations, there are numerous historical anecdotes and cultural references, and in place of a table of contents or index it has a 5-page summary at the end. Another contribution to cherish. Thank you again, Greg. There are today many cultural and culinary spokespeople recording their heritages. It warms my heart, and we are all enriched.

I'm sorry to report that due to the political problems in Mali, a much-anticipated photocopied version of a Malian cookbook was not procured, though Penn State doctoral student Kristal Jones is currently in Bamako and attempting again to obtain it for me.

I wish . . .
I wish . . .
I wish it were possible to digitize all these books so that they could have a wider circulation . . . Of course, as an author myself, I'd also like them to be available at a fair compensation to the writers.