Emerson College Library: Global Pathways: Imagining Ghanaian Culture Through Visual and Multimedia Storytelling: Food

From New York Times Cooking

Your Emerson login not only gets you free access to NYTimes.com; it also gets you access to NYT Cooking. Check out some of these Ghana-inspired recipes. (You'll need to be logged into NYTimes.com to view these recipes. If you haven't set up your free New York Times account yet, here's how!):

Ghanaian Spinach Stew With Sweet Plantains
This recipe is an adaptation of the smoky spinach stew served at Papaye, Samuel Obeng's restaurant in the Bronx. Built on a base of onions and ginger sauteed in palm oil, made fiery with habanero, and thickened with ground pumpkin seeds and tomatoes, the stew calls for African smoked, dried shrimp powder; its flavor is amazing.
Vegetable Maafé
A great maafé effortlessly balances sweet, savory, earthy and spicy. Maafé is often called West African peanut stew, but that’s an oversimplification. Across the region, there are many versions that feature peanuts as a base, and all are greatly nuanced: For example, there’s akitiwa in Togo, nkatenkwan in Ghana and miyan taushe across northern Nigeria. This highly adaptable stew can be made with any assortment of meat, poultry, seafood and seasonal vegetables you have on hand, but this one goes all in on produce.
Calas
The cala (pronounced cah-LAH) has roots in Ghana. In 18th century New Orleans, Creole women of color who had the day off from their domestic jobs sold them out of baskets, shouting, “Calas, belles, calas tout chauds!“ (Beautiful calas, very hot!)
Chicken Yassa
Popular across West Africa, chicken yassa coaxes deep flavor from a handful of simple ingredients: smoky grilled chicken, sweet caramelized onions, tangy lime, bright ginger and spicy Scotch bonnet chile. This version comes from chef Pierre Thiam, who was born and raised in Dakar, and is the chef and owner of Teranga, a West African restaurant in Harlem.

Signature Dish: West African Cuisine [Season 1, Episode 5]

Summary: In this episode of PBS' Signature Dish series, Seth meets with the chefs who are putting their own twists on the bold flavors and colors of West African cuisine. The signature dishes are goat egusi, a Ghanaian stew served at Appioo in DC’s U Street neighborhood, yassa chicken, a Senegalese smothered chicken dish at Chez Dior in Hyattsville, MD; ebbeh, a Gambian seafood stew at Mansa Kunda in Takoma Park, MD.

Food

Item 13 Podcast
A podcast on all things African food! Every other week, Host Yorm Ackuaku delves into the world of African food chefs, curators and bloggers. Interviews with African food entrepreneurs cover new African cuisine, customer experiences, the role of social media in promoting African food and much, much more. ‘Item 13‘ in Ghanaian slang, refers to food/snacks usually following a meeting or program of events. Back in the day, food refreshments were typically the 13th item on a meeting agenda.

Unity: Dress-Scapes of Accra (2017): This is a film about African fashion in the capital of Ghana. African printed fabrics seem to making a comeback in the fashion system of Accra. While following Allan, a fashion designer and his wife Cynthia, this mosaic film shows the great diversity and hybridity of tailor-made fashion in the city, the variety of ways in which African clothing may be used and the cultural expression that is implicit in the wearing of African printed fabrics.

A Chef's Journey: For Chef Zoe Adjonyoh food has played a vital role in helping her to connect to a country and a culture with which she was, initially, unfamiliar.

The Scarcity Slot by Amanda L. Logan
ISBN: 9780520975149
Publication Date: 2020-12-08
The Scarcity Slot argues that African foodways have been viewed through the lens of 'the scarcity slot,' a kind of Othering based on presumed differences in resources. Focusing on a case study in Banda, Ghana that spans the past six centuries, The Scarcity Slot reveals that people thrived during a severe, centuries-long drought just as Europeans arrived on the coast, with a major decline in food security emerging only recently. This narrative radically challenges how we think about African foodways in the past with major implications for the future.