Cameroon food: part 4 - everyday food

On any given day, a “regular” stew is prepared. There is no individual portion in Cameroonian food, because you never know who may pop over for a meal; you have to be prepared to share whatever is in the kitchen. You don’t prepare 3 steaks (not that steaks exist traditionally, anyway) for your spouse, child and yourself; you may have not seen a guest for a month, but on the day you make individual portions, that’s when someone comes over unexpectedly, and try sharing 3 steaks between 4 people. (I have tried; it isn’t pretty.)
The usual everyday stew might be:
- Groundnut (peanut) sauce with either meat, chicken, or fried fish cut in pieces;
- Ground pumpkin seed sauce, same as above;
- A dense tomato and onion sauce, same as above;
- Okra stew with smoked fish or beef…
The stew is served along with a starch, such as boiled rice, boiled plantains (green or yellow), miondo, yam…
A less common stew is made with kiling-kiling – a slightly slimy leaf, chopped, and cooked with crab, served along banana leaf-wrapped dumplings made of ground makabo. Another less-everyday dish is Mandja Moto - tiny whole fish (about the size of a little finger) - stewed in a tomato sauce.

Comments

Post a Comment

Please let me know your thoughts and questions. Also, if you feel that anything is incorrect, please let me know.
I need to moderate the comments, as in recent years there has been a spike in spam.

Popular posts from this blog

Bibi Seck, Industrial Designer in New York City

Image
Ayse,  Bibi, and daughters  Bibi Seck is an industrial and product designer of Senegalese and Martiniquais descent,  introduced from afar by Fatimata Ly, a Senegalese ceramics designer I wrote about last year. As a matter of fact, I had been hearing about him and his spouse, Ayse Birsel, for a while already: the New York African design community is not that large, and especially an African married to a fellow Middle Easterner (Turks are Middle Easterners as well as Europeans, with literally a foot in both worlds; and of course we had the Ottoman Empire for six centuries!). Moroso-M'Afrique collection Bibi’s stools, made in Senegal, of recycled plastic, are currently exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design’s Global Africa show. I interviewed him last week to find out what his path had been to this point. Bibi was raised between Europe and Senegal.He had planned on studying architecture at first, but then found his true vocation in Industrial Design at the Ec
Read more

El Anatsui: 2013 Brooklyn Museum Retrospective

Image
"Gli" (Wall), 2010, at the beginning of the exhibition area, Brooklyn Museum What a life trajectory. El Anatsui's work is now featured in a retrospective at one of the United States' premier museums, the Brooklyn Museum :  Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui , curated by Kevin Dumouchelle. El Anatsui has been shown at New York City's contemporary African art galleries since over 20 years, such as Skoto Gallery and the  Contemporary African Art  gallery. The first pieces I had seen, in the 1990s, and admired, were made of wood, and I still have a Newark Museum postcard I held on to since 2007. Several years ago, both Skoto Gallery and the Contemporary African Art Gallery staged a double exhibit of El Anatsui's new metal work, which is the art that finally made him famous worldwide, at the age of sixty! "Amewo" (People) - 1998, modified 2010 The art  was so wonderful to behold that we all wanted a piece, even though none of
Read more

Cameroon food - part 1

Image
Ndolé with fried plantains Food in tropical Africa, as everywhere in the world, is mainly made with local products. Notable exceptions: tomatoes have become a staple, after being imported by the Europeans who had themselves imported them from South America. Tomatoes are not quite as ubiquitous as in southern Italy, but are the go-to item for sauces when a cook is in a crunch. Another import is salt cod, also known in the Americas as Bacalao . Cooked with what else... tomato sauce! Onions are also very popular, and I don’t think they are originally from the African continent. Ndolé plant Food, traditionally, is cooked. Well cooked. Salads used to be an unknown entity, and older people still call it “goat’s food.” Raw, or insufficiently cooked, would have been—and may still be—dangerous, in the hot and humid equatorial climate, where bacteria thrive, as it is never cold. Snow is a completely unknown entity. Even after a third of his life spent in temperate climates, my hus
Read more