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Kenkey and stew, one of my favorites

I may have mentioned it before, but don’t expect to see much Ghanaian food on this blog. Not because I don’t eat or like it but precisely the opposite – it’s so common in my life that I don’t feel the need to blog about it. It’s also so common in my house that I almost never have to cook it.

This kenkey and meat stew combo used to be one of my go-to meals whenever I couldn’t think of anything to eat. I LOVE KENKEY. But I say “used to” because I went through a period – right about this time last year, come to think of it – where it gave me severe heartburn, so I’ve been cutting down on the kenkey ever since. But banku is such a poor substitute – it has its moments but good kenkey is hard to beat. I’ll be reintroducing kenkey cautiously so this old photo is in commemoration of that.

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Experiment: Stewed pears

What do you do with a box of green, underripe pears? Ablotsii pears oo, not avocado pears. Ei wait, where do you even get such a box in Accra? As for that one, you’ll have to thank a generous uncle for that. If you don’t have a generous uncle, sorry oo. Or you can just buy pears. A few of them were ripe or almost ripe, and it’s likely that the rest would have ripened with time. But what if you want to eat them now? Or you just want to try your hand at stewing some fruit?

And that’s how we got Exhibit #25 in the “Chief Foodian need a new camera and much better plating skills” series. I really should start taking photos expressly for the purpose of this blog so that I show the whole process from start to finish. Most stewed pear recipes call for a little wine or other alcohol, which I imagine improves the taste, but I didn’t have any wine on hand and most of the people in my house can’t have alcohol anyway (too young/on medication) so it’s just as well.

Here’s how I did it:

  1. Wash the pears, cut in quarters, remove the cores.
  2. Put them in a small saucepan with a little water (enough to come about 1/2 way up the pears), a spoonful or two of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a handful of cloves.
  3. Cover and bring to a boil.
  4. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for another 15 minutes until pears are soften. If a toothpick goes through easily, that’s enough.
  5. Remove from the heat. Serve hot or cold. You can also cover them and keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days. Stewed pears probably don’t freeze well unless you intend to blend them into smoothies or drinks.

That’s it, pretty simple. I kept mine in the fridge and had them with oats or yogurt every morning for the next couple of days. Pretty tasty and a good way to get a sweetish kick without adding sugar to the rest of the meal. You don’t even have to stew the pears with sugar if they’re sweet enough for your tastes. In that case just add spices and water and cook.

Enjoy!

 

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Easy breakfast – rice and egg drop soup

Still clearing up old photos I have on my hard drive for some reason. The disadvantage of that is that sometimes I can’t remember exactly how I cooked something. Or even why. I think in the case of the egg drop soup I had some leftover tofu I wanted to use up. I tossed in some other stuff as well. It’s a very simple breakfast to make when you don’t feel like the usual bread and tea or porridge. You just need:

Ingredients
Eggs – as many as you want
Stock/broth. Powdered is fine, and in a pinch you can dissolve a maggi cube in some water
Thinly sliced or precooked vegetables, meat or tofu as needed
A little light soy sauce for extra salt and flavour
A pinch of powdered pepper or curry powder

1. Bring the stock to a boil. No quantity given because it’s a very versatile recipe that’s hard to mess up.
2. Throw in your veggies and any meat if you’re using it. In this case I added some grated carrots, glass noodles and tofu. It would have been nice to get some green veggies in there for added colour.
3. Beat the eggs in a separate container until frothy.
4. Take the soup off the heat, stir the soup till you get a good circulating motion going then pour the beaten eggs in in a thin stream.
5. Wait a minute or two for the eggs to set then return the soup to the heat.
6. Bring it to a simmer again. Stir gently and add pepper, soy sauce and other spices to taste.
7. Serve immediately with rice or plain noodles.

There, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? It’s too late now, but I think it would have looked great if I could have stirred some chopped green onions in at the end. Or if I served it with a leafy salad on the side. I like a mix of colors in my dishes, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the stuff I’ve posted so far. We have a lot of dandelions growing in our backyard because of the rainy season, so they would be a good addition.

So that’s it! One day I’ll do a proper recipe with quantities and everything, but that day is not today. Enjoy!

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Experiment: Scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes

Another day, another experiment gone wrong. This is a photo I took last year, so I don’t remember exactly what I was trying to make or why, I just remember it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I think I was aiming to make a big omelette filled with tomatoes and onions? No… Or yes… Actually I seriously don’t remember. But looking at the photo triggers memories of too dry, too-finely scrambled eggs, all boring and grainy in my mouth.

It would have been better if I had just fried the eggs separately and the veggies separately and eaten them with my rice for a tasty breakfast or light lunch. The thing is, I make Chinese-style egg and tomatoes all the time so what went wrong here? The onions? It was the onions, wasn’t it? Anyway, I’m just clearing out old photos of stuff I’ve made in the past and came across this one. I have about a 7:3 ratio of success to failure when I cook stuff, so you can expect more stuff like this in the future. See ya!

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Shoprite boerewors sausages (product review)

One of the things I thought I would do when I started this blog is product and restaurant reviews. If I tried anything different or went somewhere new, I thought I would come back and write down a few thoughts on the place. It just so happens that shortly after starting Foodian for Life, I turned into a complete homebody who almost never goes anywhere non-essential.

Not only that, but I’ve become very stingy and picky at the same time. I only want to go to the nice places, but when I think of the better ways I could spend that money I end up staying home instead. That means you can forget about seeing many reviews on this site. On the plus side, I’m more motivated to cook stuff for myself. Instead of spending 25 cedis on miso soup at Santoku, I can just make my own. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Bread, tea, bacon and sausage, not a vegetable in sight!

Today I just happened to find some pictures I took of a pack of sausages I bought at Shoprite so I guess I’ll say something about that. TBH I haven’t had any good sausages in Ghana. Full stop. I’ve had some that were close to okay, but that’s as good as it gets. No juiciness, no satisfying chewiness, just bland, salty, grainy, long things. And don’t get me started on the chicken frankfurters. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up.

So on a whim, I decided to buy this boerewors from Shoprite. South Africans are known as great meat-eaters, right? I heard that somewhere. And the price was right at only a little over 18 cedis for a long sausage. You could cook a whole meal with this if you were so inclined.

It’s actually almost 40 cedis a kilo, which triggers my “cheap” sensors, but I closed my eyes to that part. After all, if I were that cheap, I wouldn’t be shopping at Shoprite, now would I? It looks okay enough raw in the package. The blood is a bit off-putting and there’s a distinct lack of fat, which might be a good thing for some people. To cook it I pricked it a few times (even though I recently read that I shouldn’t prick sausages) and threw it in the pan for a while. Once the outside was cooked, I added a little water and covered the pan to let it steam and make sure the insides were done. Here’s the result:

Totally overcooked!!! You can tell by the dry, crumbly edges and the meat crumbs on the plate. The thing is, I deliberately overcooked it because no one in my house would have eaten it otherwise. They would say “Ebeko!” i.e. “It’s not cooked!” You have to cook the hell out of meat and fish, dry them out to all oblivion before you can get the seal of approval from my folks.

That said, Shoprite’s boerewors is still not a good sausage. A good sausage should be able to stand up to a bit of pricking and cooking and remain moist, tender and juicy. This one is dry and mealy, totally grainy in the mouth. All you taste is salty and grainy meat. I haven’t been to South Africa to eat a “genuine” boerewors before so maybe this is what they’re supposed to taste like? I’m not impressed and it’s not to my liking. On the other hand, the other people I fed this overcooked monstrosity to loved it and clamored for more, so I’ve bought it a few times from Shoprite since.  I’ve also bought another brand there, Gold Medal Boerewors.

Looks and tastes exactly the same, same price too. Waste of good money, if you ask me, but whatever makes my loved ones happy.

Long story short: Shoprite boerewors is pricey and tasteless but popular with kids and old ladies. Avoid if you have any better options. To be totally fair to the sausages, next time I buy them I will cook them low and slow without pricking until they are *just* cooked and update this post if it makes any difference to the flavor. See ya!

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Rice and chicken… stew? Soup?

It’s been almost a year since I last posted. I was ill around the end of the year and completely lost my appetite. After that I’ve just been too lazy. Especially lazy to write full posts with recipes and explanations about the various things I’ve been cooking. But that ends today… uh, maybe.

Today’s post is just an old picture I found on my phone SD card. Rice I know and chicken I recognize, but what is the rest of that grey stuff? The reason I posted it is a cautionary tale about buying frozen vegetables in Ghana. Apart from peas and maybe broccoli, I’d say don’t bother. You’ll only get mushy, weird-tasting stuff because the supermarkets don’t take good care of their frozen stuff all the way along the supply chain. It will thaw out and refreeze at some point, as anyone who has ever bought grainy ice cream will testify.

So this awam chicken… stew? Not only looked unappetizing but it also tasted very average, thoroughly unimpressive. Better to buy fresh vegetables if you can afford them, or canned if you want to use preserved. Even Ghana supermarkets can’t mess those up. A word to the wise is enough.

I really need a better camera, but I’m not going to make that an excuse for not posting.

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Ampesi and abom – An unconventional breakfast

I call it unconventional, but maybe ampesi (boiled yam, cocoyam or unripe plantain) and abom (fresh cocoyam leaf stew) is a common breakfast in rural areas of Ghana, but in Accra we fancy ourselves modern so it’s all oats and rice water and bread and tea. But this is the real stuff, food that can take you from 6am to 6pm on a single plate. This is the good stuff.

My favorite part of abom is the sliced onions in there, the more onions the better. I used to hate raw onions as a child – and actually I only started eating abom recently – but now I don’t mind them in dishes. Or with red pepper. Or in a salad. It’s even better when they’re cooked though, but just a little bit so they still have the shape and the crunch

When it comes to ampesi, I’m not very picky. But if I had to rank the various options in terms of preference it would be new yam > unripe plantain > cocoyam >>> ripe plantain >> sweet potato >>>> old yam. I haven’t had cassava ampesi before but I imagine it must be good too.

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Ordering from Shoptomydoor: my experience

Shoptomydoor is one of those services that promises to let you buy goods from the US, UK or China and receive them in Ghana. They’re based in Nigera but claim to ship to Ghana via DHL. Hmm, is that really true? What easier way to find out than by testing them with a smallish order to start with? Hence this post, where I will track my experience with Shoptomydoor from placing an order to finally receiving it in Accra.

Strictly speaking this post has nothing to do with food right now, but there are a number of tools, cookbooks and utensils I want that I can’t find in Ghana. If this experiment goes well, I’ll be ordering a lot more stuff from abroad so a lot is riding on this venture. On the other hand if it doesn’t go well, Shoptomydoor has (or claims to have) a 100% refund guarantee. Looks like I don’t have much to lose so here goes.

23rd November 2017
Created a profile on Shoptomydoor and got a warehouse address for the US, UK and China. The sign up process is very simple, takes about 5 minutes. They’ll send a verification email to your email address and a text code to your phone number, so make sure you use the correct details.

24th November 2017
Placed an order on Amazon US for 4 items with a total weight of 3 pounds or less, dimensions of around 8 x 8 x 8 inches (before repacking) and a total cost of a little over $150. The weight and dimensions will be important later on when it’s time to ship.

I ran into a bit of trouble when entering the address because Amazon kept telling me “The street name or number is invalid” when I put in 12011 Westbrae Parkway #B. If you run into this problem, the solution is to go to the USPS website (here), enter the full address Shoptomydoor gave you, copy the corrected address the USPS site gives you and put that into Amazon.com as the delivery address. In this case, it gave me:

12011 WESTBRAE PKWY # BSTMD
UNIT GH******
HOUSTON TX 77031–3814

as the correct address and Amazon accepted it. Phew!

I used a regular Visa debit card from a local bank to pay. I ordered from Amazon UK a few months ago and they accepted the payment all right but the items never arrived. Someone at Ghana Post must have nabbed it. Luckily Amazon was nice enough to refund my money. This is why I’m bothering to go through a proxy service like Shoptomydoor even though in theory Amazon ships a lot of items to Africa.

Amazon added a tax of about $11 on the order, probably a Texas thing. Just something to take into account when ordering if your budget is tight.

The next update will be around the 30th-1st or whenever my stuff starts arriving at the Shoptomydoor warehouse. Stay tuned!

26th November 2017

Got word from my bank that Amazon has charged my bank account for the price of the goods. That’s a good sign, means everything is okay on that end. I checked up on the order but it hasn’t been shipped yet. No problem, no hurry in life. Incidentally I saved 9 cedis by choosing to pay Amazon in USD (even though my account is a cedi one) and letting the bank do the conversion instead of Amazon. Amazon’s exchange rates are predatory so never pay them in local currency

27th November 2017

I got word from Amazon that they’ve shipped my stuff and it should arrive in Texas by tonight. So far this is all par for the course for Amazon and their excellent service. The true test will come once Amazon hands over the package and Shoptomydoor takes over.

Update in the evening: As expected of Amazon, they delivered it as they said they would. Their part is done. I entered the Amazon tracking ID in the Shoptomydoor website and they confirmed that they had received it.

It will take another day or two for them to put the stuff in my warehouse, they say. If they delay too long, I won’t be able to take advantage of the $20 off shipping promotion! It ends on the 30th of November so there’s still time.

29th November

Received word from Shoptomydoor yesterday that my shipment was ready, so I went ahead and paid. They got all the prices of the stuff I ordered wrong, but the weight seems about right.

The dimensions seem way larger than they should be for 5 very small items, but I will measure the box when it gets here and see. There’s an option to upload the invoice and make them correct the prices, but it takes another 1-2 days and might make me miss the Nov 30th deadline. I went ahead and paid, applying the 20Loaded4Me discount.

Yeowch! Man, that’s expensive. When I did a rough estimate before ordering my stuff, shipping via DHL came to $74.99, which I thought was plenty expensive already. Unfortunately DHL is the only option Shoptomydoor offers for Ghanaian customers. Honestly if the items weren’t already sitting in their warehouse I would be tempted to give up on the whole thing. But it’s too late now, so I paid via Visa card.

That was yesterday evening. This evening I got a message that my order had been processed successfully. They say they’ll send my order this weekend. They also gave me a tracking number to track my package. Let’s see how things go.

4th December 2017

At long last, the struggle has ended. My stuff has arrived! I followed it all the way from Shoptomydoor’s warehouse in Houston till it arrived and I signed for it:

 

It arrived a day ahead of schedule, which is great. This means the whole process from start to finish took only 11 days, which is not bad at all. If you want your stuff in a mega-rush you can have Amazon send it to you via express shipping – assuming they will even ship your stuff to Ghana. But that’s a discussion for a different day. Here’s package itself:

Although Shoptomydoor said it weighed 2.6lb, it actually weighs 3.5lb as DHL wrote on the package and as my own weighing confirmed. On the other hand, Shoptomydoor said the package was 9 x 9 x 9 inches large but it was actually 14.5 x 8 x 5 inches. I suspect it was too much work for them to measure it so they just wrote something. I entered the new figures into their shipping calculator and got $91.47 but I don’t know whether it includes Shoptomydoor’s own charges or not. Besides it’s only a $9 difference. I’m not so stingy as to begrudge a company their little profit, especially if it means I get the stuff I wanted.

All 5 items I ordered were intact and in good condition, despite the fact that the package had obviously been opened by Customs. Speaking of which, they didn’t charge me anything extra for clearing customs so I assume it’s all included in the shipping fee. I like that.

It looks like Shoptomydoor chopped up the original Amazon box, added some cardboard and refitted it into a smaller, snugger box that fit all my items exactly. They didn’t use any padding or packing peanuts, which is fine for my items but might not be so fine if your stuff is fragile or breakable. You might want to check with them first.

Overall opinions on Shoptomydoor

It’s a great service for when you desperately need something and no one is coming down from America soon. The whole process from start to finish only took 11 days and was largely automatic. I didn’t have to speak to anyone until DHL Ghana was ready to deliver. Speaking of which DHL was the most disappointing part of the experience, since in this day and age they still don’t use Google Maps. You have to do the usual “Look for the blue kiosk near the plantain seller and then turn right…” stuff I thought we had moved past. The day the kiosk owner paints it red…

Apart from that, Shoptomydoor works perfectly… if you can stomach the crazy shipping price, that is. That one it’s for you and your pocket to decide. $100 might be chump change to one person and more than a monthly salary to another. I know they have a $29 ocean freight option for Nigerian customers. If they introduced that for Ghanaian customers I would probably order from them every single month, I’m that satisfied.

As it is, this was a successful experiment that will probably not be repeated in a while. At least I know Shoptomydoor are not scammers. They provide the promised service in good time for a steep fee. And that concludes my Shoptomydoor review. From tomorrow onwards, more posts about food!

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What’s a Korean breakfast like?

accrafoodie korean breakfast

I watched a Korean drama where the heroine made breakfast twice for her totally-not-love-interest. You know, the guy she’s going to be head over heels over by episode 10. These scenes were obviously shoehorned in so they could advertise their sponsor’s dinner (looks like Ikea?) but they meals still looked pretty delicious so I took screenshots.

I can’t figure most of the stuff out, though. The internet tells me all the little dishes are known as banchan, i.e. side dishes, but there are hundreds of side dishes in Korea. Anyway, I’m uploading them here for now and will update with the proper names of the food as and when I figure them out.

Here’s the first breakfast:

  1. Some kind of vegetable salad in involving korean cucumbers (muchim)
  2. Gamja jorim (potatoes cooked with soy sauce)
  3. ?
  4. Green tea
  5. Miyeok guk (seaweed soup)
  6. Sookju namul (stir fried bean sprouts)
  7. Steamed white rice
  8. Gaeran mari (Rolled omelette)
  9. Mashed sweet potatoes
  10. Pickled lotus root and vegetables

And there’s the second.

 

  1. ?
  2. Musaengchae (shredded daikon salad)?
  3. ? Possibly seasoned seaweed
  4. Some kind of soup, possibly bukeoguk (dried pollock soup)
  5. Fried eggs sunny side up
  6. ?
  7. Steamed white rice
  8. Some kind of salad?
  9. Tofu? or Eomuk (fish cake)
  10. Gaji namul? (stir-fried eggplant)
  11. Braised/stewed fish in a spicy-looking sauce

Some of this stuff looks pretty good (especially the soups) so I might try a few here and there as I get the recipes. Look forward to it!