Meal 72: Haiti

Have you ever pondered what would have happened if something went differently at a given point in history? Compared with the rest of the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is sort of a real-life example of contrarian history. The crux is a slave revolt against French colonial masters that, incredibly, led to independence in 1804. The slave system was ruthless and required a constant influx of slaves, which had the silver-lining consequence of a strong syncretic culture quickly developing that combined French and West African influences — ranging from language (Kreyol is mostly French vocabulary but has strong West African grammatical influence) to cuisine to religion.

Our meal fell directly on fet gede, a Vodou celebration blending the Catholic traditions of All Souls' Day with West African-derived spirits and beliefs. To get into the mood, we made an altar with some of the traditional elements, including an offering of our own ancestors' favorite foods. The meal, while not unique to this holiday, is one that would be appropriate to the festivities, particularly because the spirits related to death love spicy food. To bring a little bit more of Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn, we turned out the lights and ate by candle, since most folks only get electricity a few hours a day, if any.

Joining us for this adventure were Lisa, Alex, Samantha, Johan, CJ, and Rachel. Alex spent a month in Haiti, whereas CJ recently lived there for a year.

Kremas | Rum cream | Recipe

The drink par excellence for fet gede is pikan, hard liquor steeped with scotch bonnets. CJ brought some that she'd made for last year's, so you can imagine how pungent it was — all you need is the tiniest sip of this truly firey water.

For the rest of our Haitian-style drinking, we drank this cordial that's pretty much the opposite — an unctuous, sweet, spiced blend — with the only part in common is the alcoholic strength, thanks to being made with overproof rum. Between the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg) and the thickness of the liquids (condensed milk, evaporated milk, cream of coconut), this drink was quite reminiscent of eggnog, just a whole lot stronger. While all enjoyed the flavor, some found the thickness too heavy to indulge in more than a glass, but I quite happily managed to have several.

If you choose to follow this recipe, just note two things: you should use more than a quarter-cup of water to make the simple syrup, and this made two liters in total (and I only used a 750 ml bottle of rum, rather than 1L), so be prepared to give plenty of it away. Oh, and it's extremely important to look people in the eye when toasting. Goodness knows you don't want to get on the wrong side of the spirits.

Pikliz | Spicy pickled slaw | Recipe

Growing up in California, taquerias were a core part of my childhood, and at some point my dad taught me the awesome trick of picking out the carrots from amongst the pickled japaleños at the salsa bar, to get the spice infused from the surrounding peppers while also getting more of the vinegar flavor. I feel like pikliz takes this concept to a marvelous extreme, with just a few extremely hot scotch bonnet peppers seasoning a whole jar of shredded cabbage, carrots, and whatever other veggies you throw in, by bathing together in spiced vinegar. And then there's whole cloves thrown in there to add a little more exotic flavor. I threw all the vegetables through the Cuisinart's shredding disc, but next time I would probably use the thin slicer for the cabbage to keep it in larger pieces.

Pikliz is such an essential part of the cuisine that everyone who'd been to Haiti whom I told about this meal asked if I'd be making it, and there's even an expat website called Pikliz.com. So, if you're doing a Haitian meal, don't leave this out, and be sure to start this a few days in advance to let that spice from the peppers migrate over to the vegetables! And then throw it on just about everything, as there's little on the Haitian table that won't go well with some vinegary crunch-n-spice.

Tasso cabrit | Fried goat | Recipe

This was, hands down, the tastiest goat I've eaten in my life. What it's lacking in visual appeal, it way more than makes up in flavor and texture.

It started with a trip to the Fertile Crescent, where the butcher cut stew pieces of meat to order, including the super-tasty rib bits. Then to Bed-Stuy where I had to pop into a few markets to find the elusive sour orange, a green fruit with thick skin, a ton of square-ish seeds, and appropriately named flavor that's just excellent as a marinade. The night before the meal, I squeezed up the oranges, mixed with a bunch of other ingredients including lime, ground clove (there's that spice again!), hot peppers, etc.

Some recipes call for a simple vinegar marinade and then boiling with all the flavors; other call for a rich marinade and then a simple boil. I find it hard to let go of good flavors once you've got 'em, so the next afternoon I dumped the whole bowl, meat and marinade alike, into a pot, added water to cover, and then let that simmer for a good two hours or so. The recipes say to boil, but tough meat always enjoys slow heat, and my tweaks were vindicated by a really tasty and tender meat.

But wait, there's more! Once I finished frying up the plantains, I turned up the heat and threw the goat in the same oil, adding a lovely crisp to all the edges. Once served, these tasty chunks lasted approximately five minutes on the table. The only challenge was successfully navigating all the bones by candlelight!

Sauce Ti-Malice | Tomato and onion sauce | Recipe

This sauce is pretty much soupy sautéed onions with hints of other ingredients. I saw it mentioned on pretty much every site I visited, but I'm not sure I get it. The rest of the cuisine has such vibrant flavors and textures, while this came across as kinda bland and watery. Did I do something wrong?4

Diri ak pwa | Rice and beans | Recipe

Doesn't that look like an exotic, perhaps African, name for this dish? Actually, it's the Kreyol transformation du riz au pois. Highlighting one face of the large American presence in Haiti, this recipe comes by way of a missionary.

I'm fascinated by how many ways there are to cook rice and beans. This one has you boil the beans (which I'd pre-soaked), adding some coconut milk and parsley toward the end, then re-introducing the bean broth and the beans and then finally the rice, with a heavy unlidded boil and then finally a slow simmer with the lid on. It was a lot of work and required a lot of attention, which proved quite worthwhile, with a great semi-moist texture on both the rice and the beans, and a nice richness thanks to the coconut milk. (I actually made coconut milk from scratch, by cracking, prying, and shredding coconuts, adding water to the shreds, and squeezing to extract the milk. Maybe that made a difference, but it was probably hardly worth it.)

I made a whole ton of it, using a pound of little red beans and five cups of rice; three nights of leftovers later and we've still got plenty left! Fortunately, it tastes great when crisped up in the frying pan with the addition of extra veggies and some pikliz!

Banan peze | Twice-fried green plantains | Recipe

For all the fried ripe plantains I've made, this was actually the first time I've fried the unripe version. Known as tostones or patacones in Spanish, these bananes pesées — weighted-down plantains — are fried once, smashed, and fried again. I can't find confirmation online, but my suspicion is that if the edges would burn before you managed to cook it all the way through, so smashing after the heat softens it makes all part of the slice close to the surface. Or maybe it's just that more surface area means more crispiness. Anyway, yum. Even though I have a deep-fryer, I made these in a frying pan so I could get more of these flat things going at a time.

Bonbon siwo | Molasses cake | Recipe

This cake-like dessert can be pretty honestly described as a fluffy brownie, but with molasses and spices instead of chocolate. I thought it was OK, but on the dry side. (The first recipe I found called for a ridiculous four sticks of butter, whereas this one has one stick, perhaps the truth and beauty lies somewhere in between.) However, it was an excellent supporting actor for a scoop of the nutmeg ice cream left over from the Grenada meal!

Post-dinner lingering, by candlelight

Meal 71: Grenada

Until Hurricane Ivan wiped out most of the nutmeg trees, this little speck of a 133-square-mile Caribbean island country was the world's number two producer of the spice. It's become so important to the culture and economy of Grenada that there's a nutmeg on the flag. Beyond the focus on this spice, Grenadian food is closely related to that of its neighbors, with a strong focus on root vegetables and the greens that they produce. Our guests were Rachna, Lisa, Patrick, Linda, Sarah, and Megan. Thanks to the inevitable fall weather, it was our first indoor Nosh at this apartment. I'm glad I got all the cooking done before guests showed up, because the dining table is in the kitchen!

Drinks

Like the rest of the Caribbean, rum is the main drink of Grenada. They make nutmeg syrup and even a nutmeg liqueur, but I couldn't find those, so I made some nutmeg-infused rum by smashing a few whole nutmegs and letting them sit in white rum for a few days. I threw together some ginger juice (blend ginger with lemon or lime and a bit of water, strain, add simple syrup and more water); the sorrel (aka hibiscus) juice was a bit more complex. That's all we'd had planned for mixers, but while taking our dog on a walk we ran into a sweet potato punch stand run by a Jamaican woman, who agreed that her drink would go well with what she termed "adult beverages." My favorite was half-ginger and half-sorrel, with dark rum plus a splash of the nutmeg rum.

Callaloo soup | Recipe

Various spinach-like greens are used for this soup, the Grenadian version of which involves okra and some coconut cream. When I'd shopped for the DR Congo meal exactly a year prior, I'd found a green called "callaloo" at a market in Harlem. I looked for the same thing this time in Crown Heights, and couldn't. On further research, what I'd found before was probably amaranth, and that I could have used the dasheen leaves I saw everywhere and ended up using in the next recipe.

Not having seen anything called "callaloo" fresh, I bought two cans with that label -- which on further reflection were probably just canned dasheen! Be that as it may, this soup was actually, surprisingly, really tasty. The coconut cream and okra, though in small enough quantities to not overpower with flavor, made it so thick that, even after the addition of extra water, that it held a shape after being ladled out. But it was soft and had a lovely flavor of thyme and these intriguing canned greens. Though let's admit it, the salt in the cans probably helped a lot too.

Oil down | Recipe

This is so indisputably the national dish that the official government website unhesitatingly declares it such. There's a logic to the weird name: throw starchy vegetables, salted meats, and dasheen leaves in a pot with coconut milk until all the oil from the milk goes down into the vegetables, i.e., there's no liquid left. It's traditionally made with breadfruit, which I've seen before in the markets but simply wasn't to be found in Crown Heights this time around, so I substituted eddoes, a root vegetable closely related to taro. That said, I was able to find the preserved pig tails, which actually added a lot of flavor (and salt!) to the pot.

I will note that this is a pretty poorly written recipe: some items in the ingredient list don't show up in the instructions, and vice versa. But it doesn't much matter, because from what I can gather this is really a "throw in what you want" sort of dish. In this case, I left out the dumplings and added half a pumpkin instead, and also put in more greens than called for.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting this dish to taste like, maybe sorta coconut-y with the nuttiness of root vegetables and squash, but this was different. Maybe it's the long cooking, and quite likely some of it is due to the generous dose of turmeric, but the flavor felt more like a subdued richness, almost in the direction of caramel.

Black bean and corn salad 

Lisa brought this refreshing salad of black beans, corn, onions, and tomatoes. The crunch of the vegetables and the tang of the citrus-y dressing were a nice foil for the soft, rich oil down.

Sweet potato pudding | Recipe

I really enjoyed this dish during the meal, but didn't much like the leftovers, and I just figured out why: it's a lot better warm. The aroma of the spices (including nutmeg, of course!) is released, the texture is softer, and the whole experience just more satisfying. It's a really simple recipe, just prepare all the ingredients, mix them together, and bake at medium heat (around 350) for about an hour and a half. I grated the sweet potatoes with a food processor, but maybe I should have done it by hand to get those thinner, wider shreds that a box grater provides, for an overall softer texture. And one final note: the sweet potato most commonly used in Grenada's neck of the world has a purple skin and a white interior, but I bet this would be as good if not better with the sweeter and more readily available yellow variety.

Nutmeg ice cream | Recipe

I love making frozen desserts that play on the flavors of the country we're cooking, so I was delighted to see nutmeg ice cream suggested as a Grenadian treat on several sites. The base custard of this recipe differs a bit from what I'm used to: rather than cream and milk in a 2:1 proportion, and use of yolks only, this goes for 1:1 and whole eggs. The result, made with milk and cream from the farmer's market, and nutmeg freshly grated on a Microplane, was a bit denser than my preferred texture, but held up very well when scooped directly on top of the warm pudding. Oh, and the flavor was great, a wonderful way to accent the mystery and complexity of a spice we normally don't give a second thought!

Our next meal is Haiti, which will coincide with fet gede, the Day of the Dead!

Meal 70: Guatemala

Corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, peppers, turkey...if it's a classic New World food, chances are you'll see it in Guatemalan cuisine. While it's incorporated smatterings of good stuff from Europe (note the olives in the tamales), by and large this meal could have been cooked six hundred years ago, before a conquistador set foot on Mayan lands. However so ancient the ingredients may be, the techniques  aren't: I made liberal use of the blender, and really wish I'd had a food mill, since there was a lot of tedious straining of blended sauces. We were fortunate to have some experts on hand: Mica on the left grew up in Guatemala, and Christen on the right met Laura on a human rights delegation in Guatemala. Between them are Alex, Laurel, Diana, Jennifer, Grant, Sophie, and Suzanne.

Tamales colorados | Red tamales | Recipe: Crisco; Lard: Spanish, English

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I find Mexican tamales too dry, and too sparse on filling relative to the mass of corn. Happily, Guatemalan tamales suffer neither of  those challenges. Rice and fat moisten up the masa quite well, and the filling is intended to be generous.

OK, this was a lot of work. Even making the pumpkin-seed-based tomato sauce was the effort of an average dish, what with individually toasting the different seeds in addition to simmering the sauce. Add to that cooking up the pork, roasting the peppers, and especially the forearm-building effort of mixing the masa...and now it's time to trim the banana leaves, and finally to assemble and wrap the tamales before a good 90 minutes of steaming.

The results were well worth it, a tasty bundle of flavor with so many different textures and directions. But I can understand why most Guatemalan families don't make this more than once a year!

Kaq'ik | Turkey and smoked chili soup | Recipe

This soup pre-dates the arrival of the conquistadores, and some consider it the national dish of Guatemala. As with so many ancient recipes, there are as many variations as there are abuelitas, but the important part is to have turkey, chilies (including a smoked variety), and a tomato-rich broth. There are two aspects I particularly liked about this recipe. The first is that you broil all the vegetables, including even the dried chilies, lending a depth you just don't get from sauteeing. The other is that it has you use just turkey legs, rather than the whole bird, and I'm much more a fan of dark meat, especially to go along with those roasted veggies. While not so labor-intensive as the tamales, this certainly isn't the simplest soup to whip together, but I didn't at all mind the work after enjoying the depth of flavor from the roasting combined with the slow simmering of the turkey.

Frijoles negros | Black beans | Recipe

While the tamales and kaq'ik are special-occasion dishes unique to Guatemala in their preparation, it's the black beans that led the folks who'd lived in the country to reminisce. I cooked them in the crock pot, a technique I'm growing to love because it really allows the flavors to meld while also preserving the structural integrity of the bean. This recipe has plenty of vegetables, including a whole head of garlic, plus onion and bell pepper. I didn't add salt at all, because the topping took care of it: the appropriately named queso duro frijolero, or "hard cheese for beans." Saltier even than parmesan, it suits its title so very well. I'm glad I made a double-batch, because we enjoyed the leftovers throughout of the following week.

Ayote en dulce | Squash stewed in sweet sauce | Recipe: Spanish, English

Though we were a month out from the Day of the Dead, Guatemala has such a particular cuisine for that holiday that I felt compelled to make something from it. I chose to make this winter squash simmered in a sugary, gently spiced sauce, which is then boiled until syrupy. I'd say the dish was okay, but didn't quite bring the flavor punch I'd been expecting. I'm pretty sure I got the right kind of green-skinned, fairly smooth squash (thank you, farmers' market!), so either I started with too much water and hence had to boil it too long to thicken it, or maybe this dish is just supposed to be subtle.

Atole de elote | Corn and milk drink | Recipe

This drink, on the other hand, was more of an intense experience than I'd bargained for. You go through a lot of corn -- one ear per cup of drink -- and blend the kernels with milk, then strain it out and sweeten and cinnamon it up. With the nuttiness of the fresh corn plus the richness of milk, this warm beverage is a thick one. Would probably go even better on a chilly day, perhaps even as a breakfast drink.

I'm posting this on World Food Day. That marks one year since we did that epic Democratic Republic of the Congo meal for 75 at the youth hostel. We've now raised just about $16,000, enough for 64,000 meals. Please take a moment to think about the joy of food and the comfort of food security -- it's something we really oughtn't take for granted.

Meal 69: Guinea-Bissau

If you know anything about Guinea-Bissau, chances are it's the dubious media-granted title of "the world's first narco-state" and the ensuing coup. Conveniently located just a few days' boating from South America, the small former Portuguese colony has become a waystation for drugs en route to Europe. The army not only consents but participates, increasingly so since last year's coup. Not surprisingly, the money hasn't reached the people; Guinea-Bissau is among the least-developed countries in the world. While the country is poor, it does offer some rich culinary opportunities. Not surprisingly, given its coastal location, much of the dishes are fish and seafood based. Due to scheduling confusion and illness, half our guests couldn't make it, so we had an intimate crowd of Karen, Ryan, and Sarah-Doe.

Cashew rum

Did you know that the cashew is actually the seed of a fruit? It's known as the cashew apple, and looks like this:

The Portuguese found cashews in Brazil, and as far as I can tell, wherever the Portuguese colonized, they brought cashews with them. In fact, the economy of Guinea-Bissau has become so dependent on cashew farming that a recent price dip has been wreaking havoc on an already fragile economy.

While cashews are a cash crop traded around the world, the fruit -- which is tasty and tangy and packed with vitamins -- bruises easily and doesn't transport well. But one thing that could transport, but for some reason we don't see in temperate climes, is cashew rum, the brandy made from fermenting and distilling the fruit. We found some in Goa on our trip to India in January, they call it feni there, and it has a distinctive and almost cloying tropical-fruit aroma. We brought some back, and had no clue what we'd do with it, until I read in a travel guide that cashew rum is popular in Guinea-Bissau. So I whipped up some hibiscus drink, poured in some rum, and it was a great combo, the tartness really cut through the strength of the rum to just be all around satisfying.

Bolinhos de mancarra com peixe | Fish and peanut balls | Recipe at end of post

A large portion of the recipes I found were for fried fish balls, so for the first time in months I pulled out the deep fryer. Oh boy, was it worth it. The unlikely combination of fishiness and nuttiness works so well. And the texture was an extra bonus: a dense and moist inside with a crisp outside, and just enough grease to make you want to take a sip of your drink and eat another! As you'll see from the recipe below, it's a fair amount of work, but I don't regret it a bit.

Pitche-patche de ostras | Oyster stew | Recipe

Oysters in Africa? Apparently so! If you happen to have a bunch of oysters laying around, and you don't feel like eating them raw, it's hard to think of a simpler way to prepare them in a tasty way. This is, naturally, a pretty soft and filling food: pale, mushy oyster and plump, white rice in a clear broth. But the chili and smattering of veggies give it just enough color and bite to make for a surprisingly satisfying soup.

Frango com bagique | Chicken with spinach | Recipe

A pretty simple dish, essentially chicken gently simmered in red palm oil with greens. (I did quite a bunch of sleuthing which led me to come to the not-firm conclusion that bagique is sorrel leaves, but since I couldn't find any sorrel, I just followed the recipe and went with spinach.) I marinated the chicken in the oil and onion mixture for a while, maybe it helped a bit. If you don't want to do all that pounding you could save yourself some effort and grind it in a food processor. The cooking time is an underestimate, I probably needed an extra 20 minutes, which you could probably cut out if you put a lid on the pot. A decent dish, and a fine introduction to African cooking that requires only one specialty ingredient.

Mandioca assada com xarope de cana | Grilled cassava with cane syrup | Recipe

When life gives you sugar cane and a bland, mealy root vegetable, I guess you should heat up the former and roast the latter and mix them. I dunno, this didn't do it for me, baked is so flavorless that even with the syrup on top I kinda felt like I was eating a whole lot of nothing.

~~~

As promised, here's the recipe for the deep-fried goodness!

Bolinhos de mancarra com peixe

Fish and peanut balls

Recipe adapted from Cuisines of Portuguese Encounters by Cherie Hamilton

1 cup shelled roasted peanuts (or a few cups in the shell) 2.5 pounds mackerel fillets (for me, that was three medium-small fish) Juice of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/2 onion, sliced thin 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 2 medium onions, grated A few sprigs parsley, chopped 1 teaspoon salt 1 egg Vegetable oil for frying

Grind peanuts in a food processor and set aside. Stop a bit short of making peanut butter.

Mix lemon juice, salt, pepper, and onion in a wide dish, add the fillets, flip the fillets to coat them, and let marinate for at least 30 minutes. Heat the tablespoon of oil in a skillet or frying pan (a non-stick one would be convenient), and fry the fillets until brown on both sides; discard the marinade. Don't despair if the fillets break up. Remove the fillets to a paper-towel-lined plate; once they're cool enough to handle, flake the fish into a bowl. Start heating up your frying oil; I went for about 350 degrees in a deep fryer. (Note: this is a great article about deep frying, it focuses on how many times you can re-use oil but contains many great tips.)

Add onions, parsley, salt, and the egg to the bowl, along with the peanuts you've ground. Mix everything together with your hands. Form into ping-pong size balls, paying a bit of care to pack the mass and smooth the edges. You should get about 30. In my small home fryer I cooked four or five at a time, jostling halfway through to ensure even browning. (If the balls break up partway through, do something to help the balls stay together more: maybe another egg, or cornstarch. All is not lost, you can take the broken fried bits and re-combine them in with the rest of the mixture to start afresh and extra-crispy.) Remove to a paper towel. It's your choice whether to serve hot or cold; it's obligatory to serve with a drink!

Meal 68: Guinea

Teeny dried shrimp. Pre-cooked fonio grain. Okra powder. Unlike shopping for Ghana, this time Diaby had everything I needed. As I got to talking with the man behind the counter -- finally, for the first time in a half-dozen trips, we broke the ice! -- it turns out he's from Guinea. (I was startled to hear the name of his city, Mamou. That's pronounced the same as the family name for my grandmother who passed away last month. I suspect she had no idea she had something in common with a West African trading town!)

This meal owes a big debt of gratitude to the really wonderful Guinée Gourmande, which helpfully divides recipes regionally and also has some handy commentary and articles giving color about ingredients that bare recipes normally don't. If only every country had at least one site with such thoughtfully organized and lovingly produced content!

So, between the Guinean shopkeeper and the blog, here's hoping this meal turned out authentically! (And apologies for the sparse photos, the camera wasn't working so these are from a phone.)

Djindjan | Ginger drink | Recipe

Another source I've been increasingly cross-referencing for local recipes is the Peace Corps. Many (most? all?) volunteers get a cookbook as part of their training, which tend to be adapted for each country. While many of the recipes tend to be creative adaptations of local ingredients and cooking methods to create comfort foods, there's usually some for cooking what most people tend to eat around there. And hence, this recipe for a ginger drink. This recipe had me at "this tastes just like the stuff you get in little bags" -- I know that it's common in Africa to sell drinks in plastic bags, so I was sold. I'm no judge of whether it really did taste like a bagged beverage, but it was sure tasty! The spices and the citrus round out the sharpness of the ginger very well. Oh, and this stuff mixes up great with rum.

Kansiyé 'Mafe' | Smoked chicken and beef stewed in peanut sauce | Recipe

I couldn't find a smoked chicken, nor a recipe for how they smoke chicken in West Africa, so I winged it (haha) a few days before with a bundle of hickory chips. Turns out it's not too hard to do on a gas grill, though it took four hours and ended up a bit less smoky than I'd hoped. I'll keep working on my technique. Though the title of the recipe doesn't mention it, it's as much beef as chicken, and the shank meat I picked up at the farmers market was so flavorful. For the vegetables, I threw in cassava and a big eggplant, and it was a substantial and tasty stew, one of my favorites of all the African cooking thus far. You could easily make this with a plain, unsmoked chicken (just increase the cooking time for the stew), and if you don't have the ground dried shrimp it's not a huge deal (maybe use some Thai fish sauce to substitute?).

Gouiki | Mashed plantains

The same recipe explains how to make this side, which is pretty easy. Just make sure to buy green plantains and not the ripe ones. The texture and technique is a lot like mashed potatoes, but the taste is entirely different.

Mangoé rafalari | Susu-style mango stew | Recipe

I've never seen a mango stew before, so I had to try this one. It's got many of the familiar elements of West African cooking, like the dry-smoked carp (so many bones to pick out when flaking it!) and red palm oil (which I now buy by the half-gallon), but throwing the mangoes, whole, into the pot was a new one for me. I probably overcooked the mangoes, because I followed the French version of the recipe, which doesn't have the note on the bottom of the English one saying that the types of mangoes that are exported tend to be the softer ones that don't need as much cooking. Hm. Anyway, it packs a pretty pungent flavor-punch, between the tang of the fruit, the salt of the fish, and the richness of the oil.

Fonio | Info (in French)

It tolerates poor soil and erratic rain, has high nutritional value, and tastes pretty good. So why hasn't fonio become the next quinoa? Turns out that this member of the millet family has tiny grains with husks that are really hard to remove -- the traditional method involves mixing with sand for grit, beating in a mortar and pestle repeatedly, and then washing with a lot of water (which kinda eliminates the whole "good where there's little water" thing). But fortunately, a Senegalese engineer developed a machine that successfully hulls the little seeds. It's still cost-prohibitive for farmers to buy directly, but inexpensive enough that a relatively small amount of outside funding could make a big difference in people's lives and nutrition.

At least in Guinea, fonio is eaten like couscous. It's a bit labor-intensive to cook; even the "pre-cooked" version first is plumped up with boiling water, steamed twice in cheesecloth, blended with a bit of okra powder to make it malleable (when you're eating with your hands it sure helps if it sticks together), and steamed once more. The texture was like couscous with a little more tooth, and it had a nice and mild nuttiness. If you happen to see fonio somewhere, give it a shot, before everyone discovers it in like ten years.

Tarte caramélisée aux mangues et bananes | Caramel tarte with mangos and bananas | Recipe (in French)

I know that dessert really isn't a thing throughout much of Africa, but sometimes I just gotta make something. This inventive recipe exhibits the legacy of the French by making what's essentially a tarte tatin, but instead of apples, it's tropical fruits. I used demerara sugar for a rich and tasty caramel, and the crust recipe is easy and forgiving. Note that if you feel weird about putting your pan (I even used a springform) directly on the stovetop for the caramel-making, you could just as easily do that in a pot and pour it into the pan before baking.

The next meal takes us to the adjacent, and very similarly named, Guinea-Bissau.