Food lovers lets go on a love ride. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Prepare your taste buds for this cross-cultural cuisine adventure
Well am not a foodie, but I love good and healthy food, and with the fact that I have plans to marry and raise my children, cooking will be part of my daily activities, so I have started practicing, and interestingly I loooove travelling, I have been to a few west African countries and tasted their foods, and, and, enough about me! 🙂
The main fact about African food is that, our major foods are all the same, just that it’s done differently, and that’s what gives an identity to our culture. The main African staple is rice, maize, yam, plantain and beans.
It’s amazing that you don’t have to travel to discover a particular food, with the internet, you can just hit Google and right in the comfort of your kitchen you can make any good food.
All the food I’m about to mention, I have tasted them all (just keep in mind am not a foodie:), so trust me on this journey, you’ll love it. We will go through Ghana, Benin, Nigeria and Senegal.
Are you ready?? Let’s go.
In Ghana the main food you would easily get acquainted with is Kenkey (made of fermented corn dough)Â and shito (pepper).
Waakye (a composition of beans and rice seasoned with salad, pasta, gari (african delight), tomato stew)
Banku (A mixture of corn dough and cassava dough ) with tilapia fish
Red Red is mainly; cooked beans eaten with friend plantain
Six hours later we step in Benin, you would get Wo ( corn flour prepared into a solid white ball) accompanied with Amanvive(vernonia vegetables leaves),
Wo and Nousonou (tomato sauce)
Amiwo (corn flour made in tomato sauce).
Two hours ride into Nigeria, the cuisine is not different, just a different way of doing the same thing. You might be interested in Ewa Agonyin (mashed beans with tomato stew),
or ogbono soup (African wild mango seed powder),
Our last stop is Dakar, Senegal,when you get there ask for Tchieboudienne, you don’t have to mention it, just say Chep! You will be understood! it’s a heavy mixture of (broken rice, carrot, potatoes, eggplant, cabbage, sweet cassava and others)
Or Chicken Yassa (composed of French mustard, onion, lemon juice,).
But rice wins it all, rice always finds its way into our daily eating habits, in fact rice is an international hero.
We will get the Jollof in Ghana and Nigeria or the Riz-au-Gras in Benin and Senegal,
Interestingly there is a competition in town called the Ghanaian rice versus the Nigerian rice, anyway I have made my choice.
If you want heavy food you will get pounded yam or (cassava) named Fufu in Ghana and Nigeria or Agoun in Benin
Better still Kokonte (Ghana) Telubo(Benin) or amala (Nigeria) which is dried cassava chips that turns brownish.
You just wanna chew,chew then you certainly will get khebab or suya anywhere                ( i affectionately call suya sellers Mr. Chang)
But don’t forget FRUITS are very essential and beneficIial to your health so do consume it atleast once a day.
Some benefits of eating fruits:
-it reduces the risk of chronic diseases
-it reduces the risk of strokes and heart diseases
-helps to decrease bone loss as you age
and many more other benefits
When you feel like nibbling on something,better go for the healthy choice. Junk food!! well once in a while 🙂
Do remember to look out for roasted plantain accompanied with groundnuts (in Ghana)
Whew!!! That’s quite a journey right??
Useful information you might need on your next holiday trip? Â what do you think?
When you drop by in Ghana you might like to check Champion dishes, Asanka local, Aunty muni waakye or you might spot a “chop bar” on your way out 🙂
When you drop by Benin you might like to check out SAVEURS DU BENIN, Mille et une bouillies , Shalom Foods , check out more.
When you drop by Nigeria the options are unlimited,so feel free to make your choices.
And Senegal, Les Gourmandises De Karelle,could be a good guide for starting point.
Thank you for staying with me till the end, I hope there will be a next time.
Useful references.
– See more at:
Nigerian Food, Nigerian Recipes
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100 things that make me happy
March 4, 2016 at 5:59 pm[…] 3-waakye (cooked rice and beans) […]