Tried and Tested N°8 | Voodoo Food

The appetizer was a sweet potato soup (Babazapo) from the Ivory Coast. The main course was a Senegalese marinated poulard (Yessa) and for dessert, we dished up peanut caramel (Calamel), also from the Ivory Coast. Even if it hasn't yet gained mass phenomenon status - African cuisine is becoming more and more popular, especially with those epicureans interested in a glance beyond their Western culinary horizons - like our tried and tested dinner guests this week. After waiting in eager anticipation, our group was rewarded with an unusual interplay of flavors that unleashed pleasant hot flashes around the table.

Annika Zieske

Annika Zieske

Appetizer: Babazapo - Sweet potato soup from the Ivory Coast

Ingredients (8 people):

5 shallots, 4 large yams, 25 g butter, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp Voodoo Food "Lustgewürz" (Cayenne pepper, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, rose leaves, celery, onions, salt) 1 tbsp crème fraîche and chopped chives

Zubereitung:

Peel and dice shallots. Peel yams and cut into dices around 2 cm thick. This might require a bit of a physical effort. Place olive oil and butter in a pot, let it heat up, then add shallot dice and braise until translucent. Then add yams, mix with shallots and pour in 750 ml water. Let boil for 15 to 20 minutes and only turn down heat once yams are nice and soft. Finely grind cayenne pepper, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves and rose leaves. Chop celery leaves and onions, mix with other spices and form into a paste. Now you've created the essential Voodo "Lustgewürz", which you then mix into the soup with a pinch of salt and a hint of crème fraîche. Then blend soup with a hand-held blender. Sprinkle on rolls of chives and serve lukewarm.

Main course: Yessa - marinated poulard from Senegal

Ingredients (8 Personen): 1 poulard, 6 onions, 200 ml freshly squeezed lime juice, ½ tsp Cayenne pepper, salt, 3 tbsp hot mustard, freshly ground pepper, 3 tbsp peanut oil.

Instructions:

Wash poulard, pat dry, divide into eight pieces and place in a bowl. Then peel and dice onions and mix into a marinade with lime juice, salt and Cayenne pepper. Then pour marinade over poulard pieces in bowl, cover bowl with a fresh kitchen towel and leave it alone for about 30 minutes. After half an hour, place individual pieces of poulard in a flat bowl, spread with mustard and let the mustard soak in for another 15 minutes. Then heat the peanut oil in a pan and sauté the meat to a golden brown. Fill the remaining marinade into a pot and heat it up. Then add the meat - if you don't have enough marinade to cover all of the meat, pour in some water. Then let simmer at low heat for about 10 minutes. It is recommended to test the meat occasionaly to see if it is already cooked. Serve the marinated poulard with rice.

Dessert: Calamel – peanut caramel from the Ivory Coast

Ingredients: 400 g sugar, 600 g minced and roasted peanuts, 2 tbsp peanut or vegetable oil

Instructions:

Bring sugar to a melt in a pan at a very low temperature. Add peanuts and stir the mass with a wooden spoon until it reaches a golden brown color. Then roll it out on a baking sheet, let cool and cut into pieces of whichever size you desire.

Résumé:

The Voodoo Food cookbook unites over 90 recipes from all over Afrika, including much more exotic ones than this one. But the required ingredients and preparation tools are all easily available here, making them easy to cook. The Voodo seasoning mixtures are a highlight in the book. Dr. Dodo Liadé elaborates on them in the preface, saying that Voodoo is positive magic that assumes that the spices have special powers. The only problem we faced while mixing together our "Lustgewürz" was finding the rose leaves. But it tasted great either way. The sweet potato soup was the most interesting component of the entire menu. And the unusual combination of poularde and sour lime juice proved equally as enticing. Unfortunately, dessert was a little on the dry side, so we opted for serving the peanut caramel with pineapple and banana purée. While the dessert issue can be explained away by pointing to differing cultural expectations, some aspects of the book remained simply irritating. One of its issues was the layout. It looked ambitious, with large and colorful illustrations, but had no pictures of the finished recipes, which would have been helpful for someone trying to cook a cuisine with which they are unfamiliar. It also remained unclear why the recipes were printed in tiny print on the first third of otherwise empty pages. Some of the recipes were missing quantity information. But the book remains recommendable because it is one of the few of its kind and introduces a broad bandwidth of African cuisine. (nas)