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.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

I’m kind of on a pumpkin kick at the moment.  I bought two today for 50frs ($0.10) each.  Hard to pass up that bargain!  Unfortunately when I cut into them, they were both green on the inside.  But my heart was set of making this chocolate-chip pumpkin bread (which I altered slightly), so I baked one of the melons anyway.  Fortunately, it tasted like a normal pumpkin.  And with the spices and chocolate, it turned out delicious!  Except for the pumpkin pie spice, which was given to me by a COS-ing volunteer and vanilla extract from the US, all the ingredients can be found in Bafoussam or my village.

Ingredients:

1. 3 ½ c flour
2. 1t ground cinnamon
3. 1t pumpkin pie spice
4. 1T ground nutmeg
5. 2t baking soda
6. 1 ½ t salt
7. 2 ½ c sugar
8. 2 c mashed cooked pumpkin
9. 2/3c water
10. 4 eggs
11. ¾ c oil
12. 1t vanilla
13. 200g dark chocolate, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350°.  This recipe makes three loaves, or one loaf and one bunt cake.  Grease whichever molds you have.
2. Sift together flour, spices, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.
3. Combine sugar, pumpkin, water, eggs, oil and vanilla.
4. Slowly blend flour mixture into wet ingredients.  Fold in chocolate chunks.
5. Pour into pans and bake 60 minutes (!) or until toothpick comes out clean. 

Enjoy with friends and neighbors!

Dankali Som Tum

When we lived in Thailand, one of my favorite dishes was som tum.  I loved the combination of sweet and spicy in salad form.  And I wasn't alone - my high school even had an annual som tum competition.  I think chili cook-offs have a similar format:  each team makes the designated dish (som tum/chili) but uses their own secret ingredients and way of preparing it.  Then attendees and judges go around and taste them and pick the winner.  At least that's how the high school competition went.

Since arriving in Cameroon I've been eager to re-create this yummy dish.  I was especially encouraged by the abundance of papaya trees because green papaya forms the foundation of the salad.  Unfortunately, no one sells unripe papayas and I certainly wasn't going to scale someone else's tree to get some.  It seemed som tum would never happen.

And then a few days ago another volunteer visited me.  I was trying to explain what a dankali nassara is and describe its taste to my friend.  After sampling it she said, "I think this is a jicama."  So that led to a wikipedia search (yes, dankali nassara is fulfulde for jicama), which led to looking for jicama recipe ideas, which led me to this salad, which looks a lot like som tum.

This som tum has the same sweet, tangy spiciness that I remember.  If you could find dried shrimp or fish oil or palm sugar, the taste would be more authentic. Or if I could get one of those green papayas!  Anyway, enjoy this village version of som tum!

Ingredients:
1. Jicama, peeled and grated (use the biggest holes)
2. 1 carrot, grated
3. 1 pinch of salt
4. 1 pinch of sugar
5. chopped piment
6. juice of 2 small limes
7. small handful of freshly roasted peanuts, chopped

Directions:
1. Mix grated jicama and carrot(s) in a salad bowl.
2. Add in other ingredients, mixing well to coat the jicama and carrot.  Add as much piment and lime as you like.  I used a tiny amount of piment and 2 limes.
3. Top with peanuts.

Makes enough for one kind-of hungry person.

Pumpkin Curry Soup

With all the rain recently it’s been super cold.  So in addition to enjoying nightly hot chocolates (a pinch of salt makes all the difference!  Don’t believe me?  Watch Modern Family.), I’ve been making “Winter” foods.  The other day I made yellow curry soup.  The coconut milk powder was found in Yaounde but I’ve seen it in other regional capitols, too.  I received the yellow curry paste in a care package you can find curry powder in most supermarkets.

Ingredients:

1. 1 sachet of coconut milk powder or 200ml can of coconut milk
2. 2c milk
3. 1T brown sugar (or white)
4. 2T yellow curry paste
5. Several potatoes
6. 1 medium squash

Directions:

1. Cut the squash into 4-6 big chunks, remove the seeds.  Place on a cooking sheet with a small amount of water.  Put in oven and bake until soft.
2. Peel the potatoes (or wash them really well) and place in large pot of water along with a pinch of salt.  Boil until tender.
3. Bring a medium pot of milk to boil.  Add coconut powder and stir well.  Or, dilute 200ml of coconut milk with maybe a cup of water and bring to boil.
4. Stir 2T of curry powder and 1T of sugar into the milk. Hint:  the curry paste keeps for months if it’s well sealed and “refrigerated.”
5. Once cooked, remove squash from its skin. Mash it up a bit with a fork and then mix into curry milk. Remove the potatoes from the boiling water and mash slightly.  Add those to the curry, too.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A yummy cold weather soup!

Welcome to my blog

Why this blog?  It’s true that I’ve already been in Cameroon for two years and only have a few months remaining.  And I definitely don’t consider myself a “foodie.”  However, I just got internet at post and I can only Facebook stalk people for so long.  And people back home always want to know what I eat, so my boredom + your requests = this blog!  On a more serious note, I hope fellow PCVs can get easy meal ideas from this and people back home can learn a bit more about Cameroonian food!  Bon appétit!

Let’s start this off with a quick tutorial on how to make my go-to meal: popcorn!

1. Put a medium size heavy iron pot on the stove.  Let it heat up until the lid is warm to the touch.
2. Pour in enough oil to thinly cover the bottom of the pot.  Replace the lid and let the pot continue warming until the lid is hot.  Some people like to sprinkle in the salt at the stage.
3. Pour in the popcorn kernels.  Very important:  do not buy Mix Pop!  It’s a knock-off of Miss Pop and is terrible!  Quickly replace lid.
4. The kernels should start popping immediately.  Listen carefully to the popping – when it slows down slightly, give the pot a good shake to shake up the kernels.  Do this every time the popping slows.
5. When the popping slows to about three seconds between pops (or stops completely), immediately remove the pot from the stove.  Shake the pot a few times, then carefully pour it into a bowl.  Watch out for flying popcorn!
6. Season it with salt alone, parmesan cheese, or salt and sugar (Cameroonian style!).

Heating the pot beforehand helps keep the kernels from burning, but you have to be attentive!