Sweet Potatoes with Chili-Lime Dressing

I’ve found Reader’s Digest to be a surprising source of recipes that feasible to do in village, with all local ingredients.  The first one I found was an easy and delicious way to prepare green beans.  I’ll post this recipe soon, I promise.  Today I decided to try another recipe I found in Reader’s Digest:  Sweet Potato Salad with Chili-Lime Dressing.  I made it, tried it, and thought it was weird.  Maybe the mix of olive oil and lime threw me.  But the more I ate it, the more I liked it.  Test it out yourself and let me know what you think.  Below is the recipe, slightly altered for use in village.

Ingredients:

4 sweet potatoes, peeled and quartered

½ onion, sliced

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

2 limes

Chopped piment or chili powder, to taste ( I used a ¼t)

Directions:

1.  Place potatoes and onion on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Stir or toss everything so the potatoes and onions are evenly coated.
2. Bake on high heat until potatoes are soft.
3. Remove potatoes and onions from oven, set aside to cool.
4. In a separate cup, squeeze the juice from two limes.  Add in the piment or chili powder and stir well.  I tried to mash the piment against the side of the cup a little so that the lime juice would be evenly spicy.  Optional:  add in a few teaspoons of olive oil.  Mix well.
5. Transfer the potatoes and onions to a small bowl.  Pour the chili-lime dressing over and mix well.  Let the salad marinate for a few minutes.

Enjoy!

Asian-Inspired Peanut Sauce

This is my current go-to meal.  Easy and filling, I love this sauce over noodles or rice.

Ingredients:

• 1T vegetable oil
• 1T minced garlic
• 1t minced ginger
• Water
• 1/3cup peanut paste (ground peanuts).  You can also use unsweetened peanut butter.
• Soy sauce
• Lime

Directions:

1. In a small saucepan, heat one oil.  Add garlic and ginger and sauté until garlic starts to turn brown.
2. Add about 1/3 cup of water.  Gently blend in the peanut butter.  You want a homogenous watery peanut sauce at this point.
3. Bring sauce to boil.  Add in soy sauce to taste.  You can also add in more ginger and/or garlic.
4. When the sauce is a thickness that suits you, remove the saucepan from heat.  Allow to cool slightly, then add in the juice of one lime.  Note – I like my sauce nice and lime-y.  If you don’t, reduce the amount of lime juice.
5. Serve as a dipping sauce or over rice, potatoes, or noodles.

Autumn Squash Like Mom Used to Make

Yesterday evening I was looking around my kitchen, mildly perturbed that I didn’t really have anything to eat, when I was reminded of a dish my mom made when I was a kid.  She would bake butternut squash until tender and then fill it with a delicious mixture of cottage cheese and apple slices.  Who knew you could make something similar in village, well, except for the apple.

Ingredients:

• Squash
• Milk powder
• Water
• Vinegar
• Lemon (optional)
• Salt
• 1 small apple, cut into chunks
• Spices (I used a premade blend of coriander, cumin seed,cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, cilantro, nutmeg and cloves)

Directions:

1.  Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds.  Place it in the oven to bake.
2. Make the ricotta cheese:
1.  If you have good vinegar, like Soleil, mix milk powder, a few tablespoons of vinegar and water together.  Heat.  When the mixture is really hot (but not boiling!) add another tablespoon of vinegar.  The milk should separate into curds and whey.  Use a slotted spoon or tea strainer to extract the curds.  Mix in a pinch of salt.
2.  If you can only find the little bottles of mediocre vinegar, mix enough vinegar with the milk powder to make a paste.  Add water to dissolve the paste.  Heat.  When the mixture is really hot add another tablespoon of vinegar or squeeze in half a lemon.  I think the lemon juice helps the milk separate and I like the flavor.  Use a slotted spoon or tea strainer to extract the curds.  Mix in a pinch of salt. 
3. Pour off any remaining liquid from the cheese.  Don’t squeeze it in cheesecloth as this will make it too dry.  Peel and cut the apple into chunks.  Mix the apple in with the cheese.  Adjust spices as necessary.
4. When the squash is cooked through (after about 40 minutes), spoon the cheese-apple mixture into the squash halves.  Bake until mixture is warm.

"But it has no taste!" How to make couscous

The first time I went back home for vacation I made couscous for my friends and family.  I made them all rinse their hands in a communal bowl and then eat the couscous with their hands.  Their reaction?  See the quote above.

A few days later I was describing to my grandmother how couscous is made.  She listened carefully, then told me, “that’s how we used to make paste [glue]!”

So love it, hate it, stick things together with it, couscous is a Cameroonian staple.  Here’s how to make it.

1. Sift corn flour.  Give the chickens the stuff that doesn’t go through the sifter.
2. Boil water in a large iron pot.
3. Ladle out some of the water into a medium bowl.  Slowly add in the corn flour so that it is well-mixed.  There should be enough water in the bowl that the mixture is like a broth, NOT like paste.
4. Pour the contents of the bowl into the pot.  Stir well.
5. Let the flour-water mixture return to boiling.
6. Vigorously stir the mixture as it thickens.  (Full disclosure:  I’m not strong enough to stir a whole pot of couscous.  The women here have SERIOUS upper body strength.)
7. When it’s the consistency of mashed potatoes it’s done!  Use a plate or a bowl to scoop out portions of couscous.
8. Best enjoyed with your fingers, not cutlery!

Remember these wise words from my Cameroonian friends, "You need to serve it with sauce!  No one eats couscous by itself!"

My favorite Cameroonian dish: Njama-njama

Ingredients:

• One large-ish bag of huckleberry or kombi leaves.  (Same thing, huckleberry is what Anglophones call the leaves, kombi is the name in Fulfulde.)  Folks back home can use spinach leaves.
• red palm oil
• ½ onion
• water
• 1 Maggi cube

 Directions:

1. Pick the leaves off the stems and wash the leaves well (Cameroonians normally rinse them in clean water three times).
2. In a medium sized iron pot, pour enough red palm oil to cover the bottom.
3. Slice onion into the oil and let sauté.
4. Pour in one cup of water.  Add in the leaves.  Stir well.
5. Continuing stirring leaves and crumble in Maggi cube.  Add more water if necessary.
6. It’s done when the leaves are nicely wilted.
7. Enjoy with couscous!

Bamilike Style Peanut Sauce (reduced oil version)

Ingredients:

• ¼ - ½ cup peanut butter
• 1 cup water
• 1T oil
• ¼ onion – thinly sliced
• Complement: boiled potatoes or yams, or rice

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a medium sized saucepan.  Add onion and sauté until translucent.
2. Pour in the water.  Watch out for flying oil!  Stir in the peanut butter until well combined.
3. The sauce will continue to thicken as it sits, so feel free to add more water to thin it out.
4. To this base, feel free to add in vegetables or already-cooked protein (dried fish is very authentic).  Add salt to taste.
5. Pour over rice, boiled potatoes or boiled yams.

What's available in village?

There’s not a lot of food available in my village, especially compared to what’s available in medium-sized markets in the West, for example.  Normally I can find:  eggs, sugar, bread, white flour, spaghetti, popcorn, milk powder, beans, garlic, onion, MSG cube (aka “Maggi” or “Cube”), palm oil (clarified and regular), tomatoes, limes, rice, edible leaves, okra, bananas, and beef.  Seasonally, pineapples, passion fruit, wild mushrooms, cashew fruit, lemons, avocados, mangoes, oranges, African eggplant, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lettuce, soy beans, fresh milk, and dankali nassara can be found.  Right now dankalis are going out of season, but there are plenty of potatoes and African eggplant.

Two hours north or south I can also get green peppers, green beans, carrots, cabbage, basil, celery, parsley (the combination of the three is known as “condiments verts”), vegetable oil, yogurt and French bread (North of me, only).  In the closest regional capitol, eight plus hours away, I can get UHT cream, cheese, butter, soy and sunflower oil, candy bars (sometimes), whole wheat flour (sometimes), cereal, powdered sugar, eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers, “condiment verts,” and potatoes.  Finally, four hours beyond that city, in another region’s capitol, I can get brown sugar.  Makes your trip to the grocery store seem easy, doesn’t it?

The tags on my posts refer to where the ingredient come from.  “Big city eating,” for instance means the main ingredients came from outside my village.