A bite into a crunchy fried yam dipped into ground pepper, paired with sardines and pear nku (creamy avocado) if they were in season. Omo tuo with chicken groundnut soup — the kind where the chicken soaked up the different flavours and juices into an enviable tenderness, with promises of fairy eggs. Tuo zaafi whose thickened ayoyo was delicious on its own. A morsel of tuo dipped into ayoyo and topped up with stew and a generous helping of offal was a celebration in one’s mouth. Corned beef jollof, back when Exeter and Ester made the good old chunky stuff. Angwamo made with parboiled rice. Bomso waakye where the rice and beans melded into each other like the perfect union, with spaghetti, gari, tiny pieces of fried beef, wele, and fish. Pancakes flavoured with nutmeg. Meat buns at Amakom. Disco sandwich. Dimlite pie with its surprisingly malleable crust and actual minced meat that packed a punch; none of that air pie nonsense.
This is a snippet of my childhood food memories in Kumasi, where I grew up.
Most of the foods I ate and remember were tied to memories with my family and friends. On a regular school day, we were spoilt for choice. You had different meal options at break time, from Auntie Serwaa’s rice and stew to Sister Abena’s yam and tsofi. If you were feeling indulgent, you would try Pool Rice or Pool Pie, named after the eatery that featured a pool. It was a savoury pie filled with egg and tomato sauce. I have still not had anything quite like that. The last day of school, “Our Day”, was something we counted down to. The thrill was in watching your mother put together all your favourite meal(s) and snacks in a basket so you could show your schoolmates that you had also arrived.
Once, I remember begging my sister to let me help her grind pepper (she declined), and when she got up, I dumped the rest of the salt into the ayewamu. In my defence, I thought I was helping! Some food memories make me burst out into laughter, some make me reflect, others are a mélange of different emotions. Food is a tie that binds; a conversation starter, a memory stirrer.
My grandmother and mother who mostly cooked, did a lot with sometimes very few options. Even now, my grandmother can make a mean shito without the usual dried crayfish, and you will marvel at the wild palate dance. My mother talks about making vegetarian shito with red beans, and the distinctive taste of tuna shito back when she was in school. My mother’s tender jollof studded with red beans makes me wonder why we stopped making it for years. One of my undergrad roommate’s mother was a caterer, so we lived lavishly on her coconut rice, chicken coconut sauce, fried spring rolls, and samosas. It might be part of why I’m hooked on all things coconut.
Most of the foods you will eat, are tied to memories and the time in which you had them. Think about it. Whether it’s a birthday celebration where you sat with people you loved and fed your face (or ate daintily, you liar), a meal you grudgingly made for someone when you were at your sleepiest or even a final meal you had with someone, you tend to remember the course of events. You might even remember the taste, and most importantly you would remember how you felt. When people reminisce about the 1990s in Ghana and the plethora of snacks they enjoyed — from biscuits such as Parlays, Nice, Tea Time, Bourbon, Malt n’ Milk, Piccadilly Gem, and Oxford Cabin Biscuits, to drinks: Bluna, Muscatella, Refresh and Juvita, each is tied to a memory. It is also a reminder about the relative simplicity of the times, memories of school and its adventures, television shows, advertisements, and everything else in between.
One of the questions I like to ask people is their favourite food memory. One of my favourite answers came from two colleagues who mentioned Mman Gausu (of blessed memory) who had one of the most popular plantain and beans joints in Nima many years ago. It was the animated way they spoke about this that made me smile. When people talk about their favourite food memories, they are transported back to those times, and in recounting this, you get to capture a glimpse of the excitement they felt.
Condensed milk toffee always brings to mind one of my primary school teachers. She used to sell them in class and would remind us to get some of her “fan toffee”. That one scenario is enough to unlock the different things I remember about primary school.
We also remember food in scarcity. I enjoyed food in its abundance in the secondary school I started at and faced some scarcity where I ended up. From taste to portion sizes, everything was different. My school in Cape Coast baked huge billowy loaves of bread, and every student got a thick slice. In Kumasi, bread was baked in rolls. I always looked forward to “Visiting”, when my family would bring all the foods I craved and missed.
When I eventually befriended the school matron in my final year and thus enjoyed extras, I felt like I had cracked an unbelievable code.
When I spoke to two of my grandmothers about the 1983 famine, they had painful tales to tell. My grandmother spoke of the rush to buy kenkey even before it was cooked; if you waited for it to be cooked, you would not get any. My grandaunt was lucky enough to have a garden where she grew a few foods such as cassava, and thus made her own gari. It became her lifesaver. She remembered the donations that came through: yellow corn and food-like substances that had expired for years. People had no choice but to eat them. I watched in wonder as they recounted one of the most difficult moments in Ghanaian history. It made me think of their similar attitudes to food — they ate simple fare, they stuck to the basics, and they never wasted food. Old meals would be repurposed to create something new — palm nut soup that was about to be finished could be revived by adding cooked red beans and paired with ampesi.
Think of the current turmoils that have swept through many nations, and how staples such as bread have become a luxury. People have been priced out of what they used to buy and have had to make significant changes in their purchases. This is where food fraud also rears its ugly head. Where there is demand, there will always be opportunities for others to create alternatives that are harmful in the long run. There are many layers to food, and it cannot be dismissed as mere nourishment when there is so much more to it.
I used to think there were only a limited number of foods from Ghana, but I realised with time that we have an impressive array of foods across the sixteen regions. There are countless meals that many have no idea exist and others whose ingredients are going extinct because people have stopped growing them. Migration, the evolution of work, and climate change are some of the contributing factors.
There is now a proliferation of processed and ultra-processed foods including instant spice mixes. Interestingly enough, there has also been a rise in the number of people returning to natural flavour enhancers consumed extensively years ago. I discovered kapok seeds, a stew and soup enhancer which has an interesting flavour profile. They are nutty, subtle in sweetness and taste, and earthy. These seeds are milled and subsequently fermented into a condiment known as kantɔŋ. There are more familiar options like dawadawa (fermented locust bean), koobi (dried salted tilapia), mɔmɔne (salted fermented fish), and tolo beef (salted beef). Spices such as hwentea (grains of selim), ɛfɔm wisa (grains of paradise), and ɛsoro wisa (West African black pepper) are also more easily accessible. People, especially on social media, are sharing more about the qualities of our enhancers and condiments, and others are experimenting with them. This reminds me of a beautiful quote by Nigerian food explorer, culinary anthropologist and food historian Ozoz Sokoh “An ingredient is an ingredient is an ingredient. It shouldn’t be confined to the classic use because that’s how we expand the bounds of agriculture. Producing it more by being able to incorporate it thoughtfully into other uses and experimentation is a big part of that journey”.
The fluidity and evolution of ingredients are a testament to the fact that there isn’t one set recipe for any meal. Even in one household, you will find that people may have different recipes for the same dish. In a conversation with a friend, he explained that one shouldn’t tie food to a people, but a place. This is because food by its nature evolves because of the evolution of ingredients, and so tastes change. I loved this perspective, as it also made me understand and appreciate the art of experimentation. People will always adapt and adjust for a plethora of reasons. Time and geographical location are influencing factors. People tend to substitute ingredients for what is available. The best part is when people experiment and allow ingredients to dance to different tunes and make interesting crossovers.
This conversation also made me think of the significance of documentation. If you do not document what you have, you do not have control when others do it and change the narrative. The many incredible foods we are blessed to have as Ghanaians should be constantly researched and documented. This means going back to our grandparents and great-grandparents and tapping into their wealth of knowledge. This means finding out more about forgotten foods and working out which of them can be revived.
We should also save the accurate names and pronunciations of these foods. That way, when we are teaching others about our foods, there is no need to couch it in a fancy English word. Loanwords such as sushi, pizza, taco, croissant, and matcha still thrive, why should this be any different for our bofrot, kosua ne mako, and shito?
When discussing Ghanaian food, resist the urge to let people run with the wrong pronunciations, especially if you know better.
When I think about Ghanaian food, I mostly think of the children we are raising. The meals they have now will influence them in varied ways. It is not just what we cook, but how we make these meals, present and eat them. If cooking is a hurried thing that must be rushed through, they will not see the essence of pausing to enjoy the meal someone has made out of love for them. The art of food and cooking influences us all — some end up cooking as a career, and others end up creating art with it. What meals do you make and how do you present them? How do you see food? As a quick thing you must gobble up or as a gift that must be savoured and enjoyed?
When I watched Alice Waters’ MasterClass I marvelled at the food memories she created for her daughter Fanny. Once she returned from school, there was a healthy snack for her to munch on. Each person’s version of creating a food memory is different.
I am not oblivious to these times. Work and commuting have shrivelled up so much time that could be spent with family, but cooking methods have also changed. People keep thinking of ingenious ways to shorten time while maintaining flavour.
I like to talk about food for children because I realise many gravitate towards fast food. For some, it is their favourite type of food. Eating fast food on occasion is not a bad thing. Where it becomes a problem is if it becomes the staple. This, coupled with the ‘mini sedentary’ lifestyle of children sitting for hours on end watching videos on their tablets is a recipe for disaster (pun intended). I stress on flavour and taste because if we do not learn to help children define their palates, and we leave them all to fast foods there will be a time when they cannot appreciate the flavours of where they come from, or even have the words to describe it. They will just eat for the sake of eating when food does more than replenish our bodies.
One way we can get around this? By tapping into the incredible array of options and flavours of Ghanaian foods. We have so much more than we think. I was lucky to meet Ghanaian plant-forward chef, activist, and chocolatier Selassie Atadika recently, and as you would imagine I engaged her in a conversation about food. One of the things I vividly remember was her talking about the tendency of Ghanaians to be late adopters of their own food. Sometimes people accept what we have only because someone else has validated it. Why wait for someone’s stamp of approval on what you own? Take the time to actually pay attention to the different options we have, and then introduce your little one to the discoveries you make.
I keep making beautiful food discoveries daily. From couscous brukina, korklui, gari piñon with tsofi, akotonshi (stuffed crab), tubaani, gabli, wagashi, wasawasa, yombeika, fetri detsi, bobitadi, ɔgɔɔ (ɛtɔ prepared with cocoyam) to plakali (made from fermented cassava dough), there is still so much to unearth. There are also superfoods like fonio (from the millet family), an ancient grain with great promise in battling food security and climate change.
While I haven’t tried all these discoveries, I love to document them and find out how they have evolved, and then use them in my writing. In my stories, I reimagine them as foods characters love, crave, or cook. My aim is also to increase the awareness of these (sometimes forgotten) foods through my art. Look beyond those clichéd takes that Ghanaian foods are monotonous. Do not place all our carbohydrate meals into one box. They may look similar, but they definitely do not taste the same.
I made a startling discovery recently about bananas. I thought bananas were you know, foreign and local. I found out about this incredible history of bananas starting with the Gros Michel to the Cavendish. I found out that beyond the Cavendish, there are types such as the Red banana, Blue Java banana, Manzano, Pisang Raja, and Lady Finger. Each of these has a distinct taste. Then you come to the cooking banana: our forever versatile plantain. There is no one type of anything. Fusion has made this fun; people can borrow and let two very different things from very different sources collide. It is a mindblowing and yet beautiful thing to understand, that some of the most complex discoveries about food and flavour have not even been unravelled yet.
I recently had a sleepover with my sisters, nieces and nephews, and we created a pretend restaurant right in our kitchen. We sang and welcomed each child as one of my sisters took their orders. As I was dancing and flailing my hands and singing to the imaginary “Welcome to the Abiscololo Kitchen”, I thought about how this might be stored as a memory. It also reminded me that you can find creative ways of involving children in the cooking process. Some can help with meal prep, and others can help fold napkins, etc. Even when the youngest ones tend to make a mess, find a way around it. Food is an act of love, and they must witness this from its preparation to when it is served. It directly and indirectly influences your little one. When Christina Tosi, chef, cookbook author and owner of Milk Bar talks about her childhood, she reminisces about her mother’s baking and the memories of “licking the raw cookie dough from her mom’s spatulas after hours of baking”. Tosi has made bold inventions since then, and these are attributed to her mother.
Let us make a conscious effort to raise food explorers. Through food, your little one gets to learn about different cultures, share their tasting experiences, and talk about things they like and do not like, and why. When asking children about food, try to go a bit deeper to get them to express themselves. What exactly do they not like about a particular meal? What makes them want to eat something over and over again? How does the inclusion of a different spice change the meal for them?
To raise a food explorer, you must be open to exploration yourself. In exploring you get to consciously create food memories for yourself too. In exploring, you learn to savour the different aspects of food and eating. You do not pair eating with mindless scrolling on the phone. You eat intentionally and enjoy it too.
The memory of taste has the power to transport us to significant times in our lives. What new food memories and traditions will you create today?
Our heritage has a lot to teach us, our heritage has a lot to say
"Tete wo bi kyerɛ, tete wo bi ka"