This New Year, I’m making room for sunlight to lay across the floor. No more discarded shoes to trip over. No more stacks of books or useless tchotchkes. Senegal inspired me. I saw photo after photo of her beautiful waters… vast expanses where sunlight runs free, unhampered by clutter. Less stuff in general, with more of the right stuff – friendship, laughter, love. This is how I want my home and my life to be. I want to eat fresh and right. I want sunlight in my body. There’s nothing like starting the New Year with Black-eyed Peas in a crisp, cheerful salad, loaded up with all of her favorite friends: tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, and hard-boiled eggs. Coincidentally, the mild, tender bean (it’s not really a pea) is a Senegalese staple. You can find salads like this in restaurants along the coastal cities, either dressed simply with fresh lime juice, or coated thickly with a French dressing inspired mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise. Some will serve the beans spicy with minced habenero, while others keep it mild. …
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Those of you who have read this blog before know my refrain “We create peace when we learn about each other, when we understand one another.” To be clear, learning is not the same as understanding, but to understand we must learn. And we can do this through food. And so here we are. Well, today I found a very similar saying from Senegal: “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; we will understand only what we are taught.” The beauty of these words is in their simplicity. To conserve is to protect. Yes, our environment. But also each other. We must find our way to love through learning, friends. This week, by learning about Senegal, we’re coming closer to love. To peace. To conserving each other and our beautiful cultures. Let’s do it. All recipes and the meal review will be posted throughout the week. Senegalese Salad [Recipe] It’s not too late to bring in the New Year right. Try this lime squeezed black-eyed peas salad tossed with …
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Today’s daydream takes us to Senegal… a land of alluring contrast. One, long finger of Senegal fades into the Atlantic ocean, the westernmost point of Africa. As you wander inland, past the subtropical streets paved with the catch of the day, still fresh from the ocean, you will see as many collard shirts and slacks as you do bright tunics and robes. Three quarters of the population lives in cities on the coast. Once past the bustle (where buses noisily bump past rickety carts), the roads slowly turn to dust and the Savannah takes over. Here, the people’s bright clothing stands out against the golden grasses, thatched roofs, and earthen walls. The flicker of fires in outdoor kitchens makes for a spark of natural color. This former French colony still has traces of French culture in the food. Baguettes can be found under arm, but more popular than that is rice and millet. Rice is increasingly popular thanks to the ease of preparation although there’s old love for couscous made from millet. With lakes …
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Our children grow up frittata fast. They start out little bitty eggs, get whipped up into a froth (by our mad parenting skills, no doubt), and then poured into a pan… ready for the oven (a.k.a. the world). We turn around for ten minutes, and when our gaze next falls upon them, they are a … frittata… nothing like the little round egg we started out with. Our hearts break a little (partly because we’re proud of how far they’ve come, and partly because we’ll always miss the baby they once were). This week I turned around for ten minutes and my daughter was no longer a toddler. She was a full-fledged little girl. For the last year Ava’s been sleeping in a crib with several slats hacked out. We called it her toddler bed (considering the drop-side crib is no longer safe nor salable) , but we all know it’s just her old crib, hacked up. Well, this creative solution is no more: this week we finally moved Ava to a big girl bed, complete …
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One of our readers, Annabelle, suggested we try today’s Cod Fish Feijoada. This filling, yet healthy Portuguese stew made it’s way to the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe during colonization. Things have evolved quite a bit since then. While most Feijoada’s involve black beans (even as far away as the one we made for Brazil), the islanders favor this white bean version and make it with readily available fish (and sometimes pork). The entire principal is a slow-cooked, tender meal full of flavor from raw beans. In the old country, a variety of herbs and spices might be added, but things are simplified on the islands. Some recipes don’t even include the carrots as I have (and they might as often be substituted with cabbage). The really distinct part of São Tomé and Príncipe’s recipe is the red palm oil – a signature ingredient in West African cooking. I found mine at Whole Foods, but you can get it a lot cheaper at local African markets (such as Ebute Tropical Market in Tulsa). Since the fish …
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When I first read that bananas are popular in West Africa’s island country São Tomé and Príncipe, I envisioned them eaten raw on the surf-swept beaches… or perhaps sold battered and fried with a cloud of powdered sugar. While all this certainly does happen, I never imagined I’d see them folded inside of a fluffy mousse, decked out with indulgent curls of dark chocolate. But I’m sure glad I did. In my reading I learned that this mousse could be made any number of ways – with or without eggs (I even read one account of some part of a leaf being used to thicken the cream, perhaps they meant agar agar?) – but however you make this, the simpler the better. The method I chose is a ready-in-15-minutes kind of mousse and there are so few ingredients it’s silly. The key to the mousse are 1. really, really ripe bananas and 2. really, really ripe bananas. In fact, they are perfect when they fall into a smooth puree with the slightest of pressure from the …
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Ava grabbed the small, purple step stool and placed it squarely in front of the kitchen counter. She’s gone through a growth spurt lately and yet my little girl still stands on her tippy toes to see into the mixing bowl. On days like today, when I see her eyes peep over the top of the bowl and grow wide with delight, I hope she never grows up. With quick jabs of her whisk, she pops the yolks and helps stir together the frittata mixture. In the background we hear the delicous sizzle of onion and sweet potatoes in oil. Eggs are a West African staple, often making their way into toasted baguette sandwiches from our Nigerien Global Table and omelets, as with our Gabonese Global Table. Today, we’re taking inspiration from São Tomé and Príncipe and building a Sweet Potato Frittata complete with sweet bits of browned onion. This could just as well be a shredded sweet potato omelette, but I chose to call upon the islands’ Portuguese influence with today’s Frittata. And let it be heard: there’s …
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Ava’s never been a big fan of bananas, but when I told her we were eating mousse for dessert this week, she giggled. Loud. Like a startled bird. The holidays are in full swing; her three year-old brain clearly imagined something like this… Thankfully, moose is not an option in São Tomé and Príncipe, but mousse is. And so, without further ado, I’d like to share our menu. Each item has been selected with the holiday crazies in mind: they require few ingredients and come together in a flash. The inspiration remains firmly Santomean, as locals prefer to eat simply. The sweet potato frittata is my new go-to, the Feijoada will warm your bones, and the mousse? Well… it’s mousse. That’s all anyone really needs, besides love. Unless you also need a moose. With antlers. All recipes and meal review will be posted throughout the week. Sweet Potato Frittata [Recipe] Need a great brunch idea for the holidays? This healthy & hearty frittata (yes, that’s possible) only has four ingredients and comes together in a snap. The best part? You …
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Are you slightly offbeat? Do you prefer to stand out from the crowd, preferably while eating chocolate? São Tomé and Príncipe is just the place for you. These two tropical islands, just over 372 square miles combined, are home to an amazing amount of plants and animals that have developed into their own, exotic form. These spectacular critters are literally found nowhere else in the world. The cocoa covered islands have guaranteed that they evolve in isolation – think of it as a tropical petri dish with azure beaches. Yes, there are spiders, but they have their own… shall we say… crabby sort of look. Definitely a tad bit offbeat, eh? As for the food, it’s an amazing blend of traditional, sub-Saharan African foods with a strong blast of Portuguese influence. You’re as likely to find a simple sweet potato/pumpkin and egg dish [Recipe], goat or cassava… as you are a hearty plate of Feijoada (bean stew with pork or fish) [Recipe] with rice (or better yet, riz creole – seasoned rice). That being said, there’s nothing like …
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We officially have less than a year remaining in this Adventure. Unbelievable. In the very beginning (February 2010), our Global Table Adventure was about eating a better, more varied diet, especially for our then seven-month old baby, Ava. Cooking the world was also about making life in Tulsa a little more tolerable, while daydreaming about other places. I was escaping. Hard. Now? Well the name is the same, but the Adventure has evolved in ways I could have never anticipated. Izína sí lyó muntu. This Rwandan saying means that “the name doesn’t make the man.” Or in this case, the “Adventure.” Case in point, Global Table Adventure is a nice name, but it doesn’t reveal much about the long years we’ve lived with this challenge. It doesn’t say anything, for example, about how appreciating the rest of the world has really made us appreciate our home more. Sometimes you have to look far to find the treasure on your own doorstep. Nor does the name hint at the community we enjoy around us. We learned an especially …
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We may be in the heart of autumn here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but no celebration of Rwanda is complete without a sliver of tropical fruit. This is the most popular way to end in a meal in Rwanda. Varieties include mango, pineapple, papaya, passion fruit, banana, and even buttery avocado: Although Mukamana says she and her husband cannot afford to purchase all the fruits needed to make a salad every day, they buy enough produce to make sure everyone at home eats a banana, an orange, or a piece of pineapple after every meal. (USAID) From what I hear, one piece is enough in Rwanda. The fruit, fresh and thick from growing in the humming, humid tropical air, is lusciously sweet. Each bite hangs heavy in the mouth. Ingredients: banana pineapple avocado mango papaya passion fruit Method: NOTE: There’s no right or wrong way to make a fruit salad, but if the weather is chilly where you live, you might be best off sticking to bananas. Unlike more temperamental mangoes and papayas, bananas seem to …
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Sweet potatoes are up there with a good hair cut, purring cats, and sunlight through fiery autumn leaves. The simple sweetness is all I need on a chilly evening. But it’s not all about the coppery hued variety, which litter my counter tops like fallen leaves. There’s such a thing as white sweet potatoes, too. Rwandans love sweet potatoes, especially white sweet potatoes which they boil, mash, and even fry. I first saw this in action on the a Peace Corps blog En Route Rwanda: With help from some of our house mates and dinner guests, we peeled and sliced several kilos of knobby white sweet potatoes, which Zilpa then spent hours double-frying on the second charcoal stove. According to the Rwanda Agricultural Research Institute: Sweet potato is a major staple food in Rwanda and one of the second largest produces in terms of tons after bananas. The ability of sweet potato to adapt to a wide range of growing conditions, in both fertile and marginal areas, as well as its rapid growth rate as a ground cover to …
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