Unexplainable

Food and drinks in Ghana has been interesting experience so far. One can find a lot of different cuisines from here – Indian, “European” (which usually means weird pizza), Lebanese, American (there’s even KFC here in Takoradi) and so on. And then there is the local food, of course. Which I haven’t had chance to try that much yet, but luckily, I do have plenty of time to try (almost) everything. Ghanaian food (at least the dishes I have tried) has interesting, very different and difficult to explain-taste. I won’t be able to explain them very well, but at least you’ll see some photos of the food and learn what’s in them. To understand what I mean by the “interesting taste”, you will just have to come here and try it by yourself!

Ghana-style restaurant. Liking the name here

Food here is usually mildly spicy, accompanied by rice and often does not look very nice, but tastes good. I haven’t experienced any super spicy dishes yet, not even sure if they have really spicy Ghanaian dishes. Would like to try them though, if there is any. The spicier the better!

Okay, here comes the dishes & drinks I have tried so far.

Let’s start with very simple food, such as yams chips – they look so plain and tasteless, but they actually are really good and way better than normal fries. Especially when they come with two super tasty chili sauces, red chili sauce and shito (black chili sauce). Yummy!

Yams chips

Then there’s bissap (also colled sobolo)– a weird “medical” drink. This one is sold every day at our school during snack time, and I guess it’s a thing Ghanaians drink a lot. Bissap is red, has interesting, sort of berryish taste to it, but still it’s not a berry drink. Bissap is made from dried Hibiscus flowers, water and I guess they add some spices on it too. The school principal told me that bissap has plenty of health benefits and referred to it as a “medicine drink”, so obviously I had to google it.  So, turns out that (google says so, so it must be true), bissap drink can reduce blood pressure, decrease cholesterol level, help in weight loss (much needed here) and treat cold, as it is packed with vitamin c and antioxidants and so on. 

It has a weird but good taste, and I love it on a hot day when it’s fully frozen and just slowly melting, perfect icy refreshment! I’m officially addicted to it now.

     

Bissap/Sobolo

Banku with okro stew. That is our lunch on every Wednesday or Thursday. Weird, very weird food. The okro stew is slimy, a bit spicy and nobody can really tell what’s in it. Seafood usually, like that one tiny crab I had in my okro stew the other day.  The texture is not the nicest, slimy food is a bit gross, but I like the taste. But, I eat it super wrong; with rice. Okro stew is supposed to be eaten with banku, something one just possibly cannot explain. Banku looks a bit like mashed potatoes, is usually served in a plastic bag, and it smells funny. Probably, because it is made of fermented corn – you can really taste and/or smell that there’s something fermented in that dish – and cassava dough. And I think you are supposed to eat it by hand – take some, dip it in the soup/sauce and off you go!

I’d say that banku is like Finnish salty liquorice. You need to be/get used to it in order to like it, since the taste is so incredibly bizarre. So, either you love it, or you can’t stand it. There are not many types of food I hate, so I don’t want to say I can’t stand banku, but I can’t say that I like it either... Maybe I will learn.

     

Banku in making

Okro stew

Then, everyone’s favourite food here. Fufu. I have tried fufu only once, and I think I did not do it right. It is supposed to be eaten by hand, just like banku, and it is supposed to be swallowed immediately, just like banku. I actually tried this with banku yesterday, and it really works – use your hands, take some banku, dip it in the slimy but delicious okro stew, put it in your mouth and swallow it. No chewing, nothing. So weird way to eat food, since we have been taught to chew food properly before swallowing it. But it really does make the taste of the whole banku-okro combination very pleasant actually. 

But, back to the food I was talking about. Fufu is made of cassava and green plantain flour, it’s white, thick and very sticky. It’s like wallpaper paste. Liisteri. So, I don’t know how one can eat it by hand. But I’ll find out! Fufu is usually accompanied by soup, either palm nut soup, ground nut soup or light soup. I have no idea what light soup is, but that is what I had with fufu. It was very tasty, tiny bit spicy and had some fish in it.  Next time(s) I want to try palm nut soup, and the ground nut soup. So, plenty of fufu tasting ahead!

You can't actually see fufu in this, it's under the soup!

Hausa koko, also known as “spicy millet porridge” (millet = hirssi). The school owner has nice habit of bringing us some food sometimes, usually fruits or snacks (like doughnuts), but one day he brought me breakfast; Hausa Koko porridge, some slightly spicy, deep-fried thing (bread? chicken? Mix of those two? I have no idea what it is) and then Bofrot, Ghanaian doughnut which is really yummy.

Edit: That slightly spicy deep-fried thing that tasted a bit like chicken was Koose. Koose is “spicy bean cake”, so it is vegetarian yay! And really good. Usually served with the “porridge”. Addicted to this one now too.

Porridge in a bag, and bofrot and koose!

Plantain (keittobanaani) in all kind of forms. I absolutely loooove plantain, it’s so delicious! Especially plantain chips.  Plantain is also such a good accompaniment with food, like the other day, when we tried fufu, we also ordered very delicious bean sauce with fried plantain. Plantain is slightly sweet, has really nice texture and works kinda in the same way as potato would. A bit like sweet potato, but still not quite. Very well explained, good job me. Shortly, it’s amazing. Try it if you haven’t yet.

Plantain & red bean sauce. Plantain really looks like banana!



Plantain chips, crispy and tastyyyy

Alcohol. Haven’t really drank much at all while I’ve been here, some odd beers on the beach or at dinner, but that’s about it. I have been craving for wine since I arrived here, but still haven’t had any. Maybe this Friday I will have some (I say this every week). 

I have tried local beer, Club Lager. Club is light and  “easy to drink” kind of beer, it’s watery in a good way and fresh, thus it’s perfect in hot and tropical country like Ghana. I like it a lot, but the issue is that it is always served in a huuuge bottle, and I have two problems with that: 1) I can’t drink it fast enough, so it gets warm and disgusting in no time 2) I can’t drink that much of beer.

Another local drink I tried is Kpoo Keke. It is made of atadwe and ginger. Somebody tried to explain me what atadwe is, and if I understood correctly, it is some sort of plant, or a nut. And that it is believed to boost fertility and good for one’s sex drive and so on. Go figure. 

Anyway, Kpoo Keke tastes just like the healthy ginger shots one can have in hipster cafes, you know? So delicious, and devious as you can’t really taste the alcohol (18%) in it. Could just have one shot every morning with breakfast and have no clue that there’s alco in it!

So that’s it. Things I have tried so far. Not many, so there is much more to come, and I CAN’T WAIT!