Ghanaian cuisine has diverse traditional dishes from
each ethnic group, tribe and clan from the north to the south and from the
east to west. Generally, most Ghanaian recipe dishes are made up of a
starchy portion (rice, fufu, banku, tuo, gigi, akplidzii, yekeyeke, etew,
ato etc) and a sauce or soup saturated with fish, snails, meat or
mushrooms.
Some of the main starchy Ghanaian recipe dishes are:
* Cooked rice
* Waakye - rice and beans
* Fufu - pounded cassava and plantain or pounded yam and plantain, or
pounded cocoyam
* Banku/Akple - cooked fermented corn dough and cassava dough
* Kenkey/Dokonu - fermented corn and cassava dough, wrapped in corn
or banana leaves and cooked into a consistent solid paste
* Kokonte - from dried cassava chips
* Gari - made from cassava
Most Ghanaian dishes are usually served with a stew
(often based on tomato with other protein cooked in it) or soup. The most
popular soups are groundnut soup, light soup, and palmnut soup. Okra soup
and stew are also popular. Usually rice and kenkey are served with soup or
stew, while banku, fufu, akple and konkonte are served with soup.
A popular side dish in Ghana is kelewele. It is
sometimes served with rice and stew, and sometimes eaten alone as a
dessert. Another popular dish is kontomire which is mashed up taro
(cocoyam) leaves. It is often mixed with bits of tuna and egusi (pumpkin
seeds) and dressed with palm oil.
An alternative to the starch and stew combination is
“Red Red”, a very popular and easy to find dish. It is made up of a mashed
bean stew served with fried plantain. It earns its name from the red spices
that tint both the stew and plantain.
Other popular dishes are ampesi (boiled yam and unripe
plantain)which is usually accompanied with kontomire, groundnut soup,
usually made with chicken, gari foto, nyadowa (garden egg stew) Tilapia,
fried whitebait (chinam), smoked fish and crayfish are a common component
of Ghanaian dishes. The cornmeal based starch dishes, banku and kenkey are
usually accompanied by some form of fried fish (chinam) or grilled tilapia
and a very spicy salsa like condiment made from raw red and green chillies,
onions, tomatoes.
Banku and tilapia is a very popular combo served in
most Ghanaian restaurants. Ghanaian cuisine is quite sophisticated with
liberal and adventurous use of exotic ingredients and a wide variety of
tastes, spices, textures.
Herbs such as thyme, bay, vegetables such as wild
mushrooms, garden eggs (similar to egg plant) various types of pulses,
ginger, garlic, smoked meat and fish, crab, trotters, duck all feature in
Ghanaian cuisine.
The stew is, together with the soup, the most
traditional meal. Stews are made of chicken, beef or fish as the main meats
and some of the most famous are: the kontomire stew, the chicken and the
fish stew.
There is a famous dressing in Ghana: the peanut
dressing, sweetened with cinnamon, spiced with chili powder and salt and
fresh chives for garnish and added mostly on ripe and firm chopped
avocados, but also on other kinds of salads. The groundnut soup, which is
very exotic, the mushrooms and snail soup or the greens soups are specific
to different the Ghanan regions. The plantain, fried or boiled is served as
a main course and as a vegetarian dish. The tatale, or the Ghanan plantain
cakes are made of ripe plantains, chopped or grated onion, flour, palm oil
and salt is served hot as the main vegetarian course.
The gari foto is another vegetarian dish, which is also
a side dish for stew. The Ghanaian desserts are almost all based on the
local fruit, the banana. |
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