Tropical Juice Fest

In most parts of Africa, we are so blessed with fruits and vegetables that juicing seems to be the most natural thing for us to do. Natural fruit juices are good healthwise because of the high concentration of nutrients, vitamins and enzymes you receive. Making my own juice allows me to avoid the colorants, added sugar, preservatives that seem to populate the supermarket shelves.

This entry will be less of a recipe and more of a general guideline. The reason is that fresh fruits are natural products with taste and sugar levels that vary depending on the time of year or even where they are cultivated. Therefore you have to follow your own taste buds in order to make your own mixtures. I often start my day with a carrot-orange cocktail with a dash of ginger. I also often make a natural hibiscus flower drink called bissap or zobo. I wrote about it a while back.

Note: I used both a juicer and a blender.

Clockwise, the juices above are:

Pineapple Juice
Color: Creamy yellow
Ingredient: Large pineapple about 1.85 kg
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 800 ml


Papaya Juice
Color: Deep Orange
Ingredient: A medium papaya about 1.1 kg
Water added: 300 ml
Method: Peel, remove seeds in the middle, cut into medium size pieces and put in blender until smooth
Yield: 1.25 l


Orange juice
Color: Frothy yellow
Ingredient: 10 small oranges
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 550 ml


Carrot Juice
Color: Light orange
Ingredient: 12 medium carrots, about 1 kg.
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 400 ml


Ginger Juice (not pictured)
Color: Light yellow
Ingredient: 100 g fresh ginger roots
Water added: 1.5 l
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and blend.
Pour in a bowl and let it sit for 30 mns then sieve carefully with a muslin cloth (best) or regular sieve.
Yield: 1.5 l
Note: Peeling ginger is tedious but be patient and peel it cleanly. Otherwise the skin will make your juice bitter.


Mixing fruit cocktails
After all that hard work peeling, cutting, juicing, blending, now comes the fun part where I encourage you to come up with your own concoctions.
I recommend using 2 parts of the sweeter juice to 1 part of the less sweet one. I found that the following mixtures tasted good from the juices I made today:

• Ginger Pineapple
• Carrot Pineapple
• Carrot Orange Ginger
• Pineapple Orange Papaya

The iterations are many so juice away and do share any good mixtures you happen upon in your explorations. I can't wait for mango season!

Banga Soup (Palm Kernel Soup)

Warning to the brave: Banga Soup is labor intensive. It takes time as well.
But as Nigella says: "So much is written about the need to reduce the time we must spend cooking, it's as if the kitchen were a hateful place, almost an unsafe place, and that it must be only reasonable for us to avoid it. I love food, I adore being in the kitchen and I am happy to cook"

There is no avoiding the kitchen if you wish to make banga soup from scratch. The many steps required to wash, boil and pound the palm kernels are just the beginning. One must then separate the flesh of the kernel from the oil, make stock before arriving at the final destination: the amalgamation into a delicious soup.

Palm Kernels

Banga Soup
For 4 to 6 people
Ingredients

• 400 g fresh palm kernels
• 300 g beef cubes
• 1 large onion, chopped
  
• 1 large piece of dry fish
• 2 peppers, chopped finely
  
• Salt to taste
  

Preparation

Stock

1. Bring 1 l of water to boil
2. Add meat, dry fish, pepper and salt
3. Lower the fire and simmer for about 30 mns (more if the meat you are using is tough)
   

Banga

1. Bring 1.5 l of water to boil
2. Add the palm kernels and boil until soft. This will take 1 hr or more.
3. Sieve the kernels, throw the water away
   
4. Put kernels in a mortar and mash with a pestle in a circular motion to remove skin and flesh from the kernels. A large black seed will emerge as the flesh and fibers give way. This can be a bit of a workout.
   
5. Remove the kernel mush from the mortar and add boiling water ( about 1 l). Use a wooden spoon to stir vigorously to make sure all flesh and oil have mixed with the water. Once it cools down a bit, you can use your hand. It is more effective.
6. Sieve the mixture into a pot and put the liquid back on the stove. Bring to boil, lower heat to simmer for 20 mns.
7. At this point, you can take this sauce and pour directly into the pot holding the stock. Simmer for 10 mns until the soup thickens a bit OR
8. Alternate ending: You can reduce the fat content by removing the oil that has gathered atop your sauce. You have just made some palm oil, by the way. The remaining sauce can now be poured into the stock pot. Simmer for 10 mns until the soup thickens a bit.
9. Ready to serve with the swallow of your choice.
   

Note: Palm Kernel photo from istockphoto.

The Joy of Cooking

My husband gave me an article to read recently. It came from Fast Company and was about finding one’s passion. The author actually coined her own word “thrillprint” to describe the activity that completely engages and thrills you. The one that grabs you, takes you in, immerses you in a flow and makes time seize to exist.

For me, I immediately thought “reading and writing”. Reading has always been my favorite activity from the time I can remember anything. Writing became a life saver in my early twenties when expressing myself on paper seemed the only way to make sense of the chaos in my mind. So I was not surprised by those two whispered choices.

But then The Voice added “cooking”. I did not grow up cooking. Which is very surprising given that my mother is very old school and insisted that my two older sisters be fully trained in the domestic arts. But when I came along, she just let me be and being for me was being ensconced somewhere in the house with my nose in a book. But maybe as a young widow with 5 children to raise, she just did not have the energy to make and enforce the rules and blueprints of her early forays into parenthood.

I only started cooking in earnest when I left my home in Dakar at age 15 to study in the United States. Besides fried eggs, I had 2 recipes in my repertoire: chicken yassa with onions, lemon and olives and lamb curry. These 2 dishes I learned probably by osmosis from the few times I may have made my way into the chicken while class was in session. However, mastery only came through years of trial and error. Throughout college, I stuck to my 2 go-to dishes, continuously experimenting on my willing friends. When I landed in New York as an investment banking analyst, I worked such long hours that oatmeal was all I “cooked” and even then, the microwave did all the heavy lifting.

It was not until I moved to Washington D.C to a more “normal” job and a larger apartment that I started experimenting with food again. With time, I started to realize that I really could not feel time pass when I was absorbed in creating or following a recipe. The joy of cooking was finally revealing itself to me. My love for the kitchen grew with year after year of botched recipes and small culinary triumphs.

Today I like to think of myself as an enthusiastic home cook with a long list of dishes, tricks and techniques to learn on the road to mastery. What I have learned along the way is that passion need not be loud, either in its revelation or in its expression. I find that over the years mine just slowly lay one on top of the other, like sediments gradually building a mountain. So if your passion does not reveal itself with thunderous confidence, keep tinkering, keep trying new things and keep listening for the whisper.