Les Recettes Pour les Plats Béninois:
Dear
Benin RPCV's
I'm sure when we were all in Benin we never dreamed we'd crave Beninese
food back in the US... well, maybe “crave” is exaggerating a little, but
I've found it fun to make some Beninese food for a change, for nostalgic
reasons, to save money and to show friends and family African food.
I've discovered that you can find just about everything you need to cook
most of the things we commonly ate in Benin.
Here are some of the recipes from the PC cook book in case you forgot to
bring a copy home with you, ideas where to find the ingredients in the US and
"appropriate American technology" for preparing it.
Stop and Shop and Hispanic food stores sell many of the uncommon
necessary ingredients to make Beninese food, however if there isn't a
considerable Latino population in your area, you may have problems finding them
because they are usually used to make Hispanic food.
1)
Rice and Beans-
they're in every supermarket. Goya
makes a good variety of dried beans. Look for them in the “Spanish” section of Stop and Shop.
I don't know how to make a good sauce like Maman used to so if anyone
knows how please let me know.
2)
Peanut Sauce- to go
with rice like we used to get at Senegalese:
3 tbs oil
2 tbs tomato paste
1/2 -1tsp of your favorite piment (hot pepper)-(amount depends how bien
intégréd you were or still are)
1/2 tsp salt
1 beef bullion cube- (they sell Maggi in Stop and Shop!)
1 cup water-or more depending
on the density of the peanut butter you’re using
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup diced onion
Saute tomato
paste, hot pepper, salt, onion and bullion cube in oil for a few minutes.
Add peanut butter and water. All
natural peanut butter is better than the processed type because it doesn’t
have any sugar that clashes with the salt.
Mix and bring to a boil. Simmer
for 15 minutes. Makes enough sauce
for 3 servings (1 1/2 cups dry rice). Can
also be used for Ingame pilé. Stop
and Shop sells white sweet potatoes like they used to serve with rice and peanut
sauce at “Senegalese.” They
call this "Boniato" and sells for .99/lb.
3)
-Ingame Pilé-
The closest thing to an Ingame at Stop and Shop is called "Malanga"
and there's another similar one called "Name" pronounced "ñamie"
that looks similar but I haven’t tried it yet.
Peel it, cut it up into medium sized chunks and boil it for 10-15 minutes
until soft. Get a small metal bowl
and a hand sized wooden pounder and pound away adding small amounts of water
until it’s moist enough. I had
trouble getting it as gooey as in Benin. It’s
probably because you can’t exert enough force as with a huge wood mortar and
pestle. It was also hard to get all
the lumps out, but if you pound it long enough you’ll probably get close.
I
you have a good pilé sauce recipe
please share!
You can also fry the uncooked ingame chunks and serve with piment or eat
the boiled ingame without pounding it (with hot pepper of course).
Be sure to serve on pieces of cement bag for effect.
Stop and Shop also sells corn flour for making Pâte made by Goya.
It is called "Fine Corn Meal," and is in the "Spanish
Food" isle. If you try
to use plain corn meal, it will be too grainy because it isn't ground as fine as
corn flour. If your Stop and Shop
doesn't carry "Fine Corn Meal" you can call your local Mexican
restaurant who probably buys it in large quantities from a distributor and would
probably sell you a few pounds if you ask nicely.
Corn Flour called "Masaca for Tortillas, Tamales, Enchiladas,
Pupusas, Atoles etc." is sold in Hispanic grocery stores.
It comes in a 2 Kg bag and is made by Azteca Milling Co. 5021 Zambrano
City of Commerce, CA 90040
Pate
blanche
(white – [plain]
Pate)
Bring 2 1/2 cups water to a rolling boil.
Add 1 1/2 cups corn flour slowly while stirring it vigorously with a wire
whisk until all the lumps are out and it starts to become thick.
Pour the pâte into a greased bowl and let cool before sticking your
fingers in it.
Pâte
Rouge:
Saute diced onions, 1 bullion cube, hot pepper and 2 tbs tomato paste in
oil. Add the 2
1/2 cups of water then follow the same directions as above.
Moyo goes will with pâte rouge: sauté
sliced onion in oil with salt, then add chopped tomatoes and saute briefly.
5)
-Sauce Legume
2 tbs Oil
Garlic
1/2 Onion
1 Small Tomato (or 2 tbs
tomato paste)
1 tsp Piment
1 1/2 cups Collard Greens
Fish or fish sauce
1 Bullion cube
2 cups water
Saute
the onions, piment, garlic and tomato paste in oil for a few minutes.
Add water, and bullion cube and fish sauce.
Simmer for 15 minutes. Add
collard greens and cook for 5 more minutes.
Stop
and Shop sells manioc but they call it "Yucca."
It looks just like it did in Benin.
Peel it and grate it using the fine part of the grater.
Put the mush in a plastic rice bag and squeeze the heck out of it to
press the water out. Collect the
juice because when cooked it turns into tapioca.
If you don’t squeeze all the liquid out the gari will turn into a
tapioca like goo. After pressing
out the liquid, sift it through a colander then heat the pulp over low heat
slowly on a frying pan while stirring it to dry it out.
Lazy
man’s tapioca au naturel-
peel and grate the manioc. Add
water and cook over low heat. The
mush will turn into a mixture of gari and tapioca which is good when you add
honey.
7)
- Klui-Klui-
Put roasted unsalted peanuts in the blender until you get peanut butter.
Let sit at room temperature for a day or until the solids settle to the
bottom and the oil rises to the top. Drain
off the oil to use for frying or cooking. Take
the peanut solids and roll into stick shapes and fry in oil.
8)
-Fried Plantains-
Accueil Les Salutations Qui Constatent ce qui est Évident Les Phrases Simples Questions Grammaire et Prononciation Mots de Vocabulaire Utiles Fon Pour les Volontaires Corps de la Paix Le Vodou L' Examen Final A Propos le Fon Mes Photos du Bénin Les Liens à Propos le Bénin Signer et Regardez le Livret de Visiteurs Cartes Histoires de Mon Journal de Bord Les Recettes Pour les Plats Béninois Achetez Livres et Musique du Bénin Récemment Ajouté