Ei, this “clearing my phone of random photos” thing that I started long ago, I’m still at it. Sorry for occasional visitors of this blog. It’s not that I don’t eat oo, it’s not that I don’t cook oo, it’s just that I’m often too lazy to post the results here. You have to put the recipe steps and photos in the proper order, write everything in an understandable way, post it, then come back again and post some more, etc. My hat is off to consistent food bloggers. It is NOT easy.
In contrast, just posting random photos of food is something anyone can do. Even me, haha. So here are some more photos of food I ate/people sent to me. Let me clear them all and make space for proper things. And I will post some actual recipes one of these days. I made some very good spicy cucumber pickles the other day, for example.
Enough about that. On with the random photos.
Fufu. It’s those two round balls over there, a sticky mess of pounded yam/plantain/cassava/cocoyam. A Ghanaian staple dish I’ve never really liked, but my house people loooove the stuff. Based on the plate, this picture came from my brother, I think? On the left side is some light soup to dip the fufu in. Floating on top is some pepper, fish, okro, garden eggs… all things I don’t like. Hard pass on this one.
Kenkey and sardine and pepper. Now you’re talking my language. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that this used to be one of my favorite “Go to” dishes when I didn’t feel like cooking/eating what was cooked. Even now I still eat it once or twice a week, despite the inevitable heartburn.
You know as kids, we were given only a single sardine from the tin and we had to make it last for the whole ball of kenkey, it was crazy. Now I’d prefer to eat two/three sardines and save the rest for a sandwich, but whenever I do that someone always steals my sardine from the fridge. So I just eat the whole tin like the bourgeois pig that I am.
Definitely not my picture! Someone’s dressed-up, fancy frou-frou version of kenkey, pepper sauce and sausages. Not gonna lie, it looks great. Like something you’d serve to your in-laws to let them know that you’ve been to school some. 😀 Or something a fancy Ghanaian restaurant would serve. The photo looks a bit touched up in Photoshop, but still a very appealing meal. Please leave a comment if you know the source.
Fante kenkey with pig trotter stew, a.k.a nane fÉ”lÉ”. One of my mother’s favorite stew. The pig trotters tend to be heavily salted, while some variants of fante kenkey contain no salt at all (Ga kenkey is pretty salty as well). Put the two together and you get the faint sweet-and-sourness of the fante kenkey matching well with the spicy, salty trotter stew. Truly a match made in heaven.
Could have sworn I’d posted this before, but this is otor (otÉ”), a festive food Ga people eat on their birthdays. Not strictly on the calendar birthday but on the weekday closest to their calendar birthday. E.g. if you were born on Wednesday March 10th, you would eat your otor on the first Wednesday after March 10th. People don’t adhere to it that strictly though.
The dish is just a simple blend of boiled yam, red palm oil, salt and onions. Boiled egg is definitely not optional! As far as I know, nobody just eats otor for fun, even though it’s tasty and filling. Somehow the “birthday food” idea is too deeply ingrained in our heads.
Now for a change of pace, something sweet. This must have come from my brother as well, because I haven’t eaten these in a while. If I’m not mistaken, they’re called “monkey’s tails” a.k.a. adun le in Ga. They’re a sweet crunchy snack, but I have zero idea what goes into them. I used to eat them as a kid in La, but I haven’t had any in decades. These look very pale though, maybe underfried?
Another favorite snack of Ghanaian kids: yoryi! (yɔɔyi in Ga). Apparently its English name is “velvet tamarind” or something crazy like that, I dunno. Wiki says it’s called Dialium cochinchinense and is currently endangered, which is sad to hear. We used to love them as kids, and they’re in season right now so I expect to see them in the marketplaces. Especially now that there’s a fad going around claiming it has all kinds of health benefits. Ghanaians and their health fads. Yoryi is just yoryi, eat it quietly and be happy!