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recipes |
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Garden Egg Stew |
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Volle and Lola (Kwame's mother and grandmother respectively) would make this recipe when they lived together in Accra, the capital of Ghana in West Africa. Gathering the ingredients required a trip to the market before the 6 p.m. curfew, and getting a recalcitrant stove to light on a ration of two matches per night required patience and perseverance. Lola recounts the full story for you after the recipe below. In 1983/4, Volle (my daughter and Kwame's mother) and I were living in Accra, the capital of Ghana in West Africa. We shared a mosquito-netted double bed in a small concrete room with one barred, glassless window. The country was just into it second year of the People's Revolution and Jerry Rawlings, the Chairman of the People's National Democratic Committee, had a four year plan which included a ban on importations. so there was no sugar, no tea, no coffee, no flour, no lollies or any type of processed food. There were no supermarkets or corner shops, the water supply failed frequently, and electricity was supplied 27 hours on and 21 hours off. Libya was the only oil-producing country to supply on credit and these supplies arrived spasmodically, so the queues for petrol and kerosene could take up to a week. Each evening Volle and I would scurry to the night market before curfew at 6 p.m. to buy charcoal, tomatoes, chillies, onions, 2 small pieces of dried fish, 4 balls of kenkey (steamed maize dough-there are 56 ways of serving maize in Ghana!), 2 bananas, a paper twist of ground nuts, and a small tablet of Ghanaian chocolate, which was made without cocoa butter so it didn't melt in the heat. Volle and I had worked out the division of labour. I suffered if I chopped up chillies, so she chopped and cooked, and I got to light THE STOVE. This iron monster stood about ½ metre high, and burnt charcoal, which was extremely difficult to light. Matches were very hard to come by and I rationed myself to 2 matches a night. This involved taking the stove to a protected part of the compound and fanning madly all the while with a woven palm leaf fan. I would swear and sob and occasionally scream, "Right-we will not be eating tonight!" The very worst times were when I had to beg a spoon of kerosene from the landlord. We always did eat, and these meals were well earnt, just bliss, and extremely healthy. |
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Ingredients |
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10 garden eggs (very small eggplant) 1 ¼ cups water 8 onions (or shallots 4 small tomatoes (Roma perhaps) 6 okra (optional) small piece salted fish (optional) ¼ cup oil 1 teaspoon ground pepper 6 small fish salt to taste |
Wash the garden eggs, boil until tender in water, and remove skins if desired. Reserve water. Mash garden eggs. Prepare and slice the onions, tomatoes and okra. Heat oil and fry onions, tomatoes and salted fish (if using). Stir all the time. Add ground pepper and the mashed garden eggs. Prepare fish and add with the liquid left over from the boiled garden eggs. Serve with rice. This dish is traditionally eaten with kenkey, a maize product which is steamed in corn leaves and eaten with the fingers. |
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