Fried Chicken with Jollof Rice (pictured) - chicken is usually tender and spicy; jollof rice is fried in red palm oil and mixed with vegetables, varying from bland to very spicy. Served with Shito sauce (pronounced sheeto!) which is also spicy. All very tasty except perhaps for the accompanying lettuce with mayo and cold baked beans on top.
Kele Wele - pronounced Kelly Welly - chunks of deep fried plantain ( MAM usually hates bananas but these taste like sweet potato) liberally seasoned with ginger, pepper and salt. Not the healthiest maybe, but definitely one to polish off ....
Red Red - yummy, spicy bean stew served with fried plantain and "gari", which is powdered yam or cassava. Presumably gari is eaten for its nutritional value as it looks and tastes like sand. The stew is like chilli con carne but the tiny meat and fish bones are a bit disconcerting.
Grilled telapia and banku - the whole fish, with a delicious garlic, lime, chilli and ginger coating. Banku is great mounds of fermented maize and cassava stodge. MAM found that eating this the traditional way (with the right hand, no cutlery), was a great way to deal with all the fish bones.
Groundnut soup - oily and very spicy, this was not a favourite. Compounded by lots of old bony bits of chicken and an overpowering peanut flavour.
The most well-known Ghanaian dish is fufu. This is a very gelatinous substance made of pounded cassava, yam which is then sunk to the bottom of some soup. Eaten by rolling a small piece into a ball with the right hand, it is not chewed, but swallowed straight down, while the soup is drunk from the bowl. So heavy is this dish that most men wouldn't consider eating it after 2pm. MAM would add that eating Red Red or Kele Wele for an evening meal is not particularly conducive to a good night's sleep either!
The gourmet adventure continues.......
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