West Africa · Volume 04, The Attiéké Coast
Foutou banane
Akan and Kru
Illustration
- Time
- 50 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 104 sources in the brief
A vocabulary distinction most English sources get wrong. In Côte d'Ivoire, foutou is boiled starch pounded in a mortar. Foufou is banana or yam cooked in the sauce itself and then mashed, a ceremonial dish tied to the yam festivals. They are different dishes with adjacent names, and using them interchangeably is a tell.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 50 minutes.
Ingredients
- 1 kg cassava, peeled and cut into chunks
- 4 well-ripened plantains, peeled
- 1 tbsp red palm oil
- to taste salt
Method
- Boil the cassava and plantain separately to full tenderness, 20 to 30 minutes, tested with a fork. Separately matters: they do not finish at the same time.
- Pound the cassava first, on its own, until it is smooth. It needs more work than the plantain and it will not get it once the two are mixed.
- Add the plantain and keep pounding to a homogeneous, elastic mass.
- Add water only in small splashes, to the pestle and to your hands. Excess water is the standard failure. Keep your hands wet throughout.
- Finish by pounding in the red palm oil and salt.
Notes
The target is very elastic, almost like modelling dough.
What a modern chef changes
Ratio by weight, a stand mixer used correctly, and a rested rest
Rung 6
Method
- Weigh, do not count. Plantains vary by a factor of two. Work to 700 g cooked plantain to 1 kg cooked cassava and it is repeatable.
- If you are not pounding, use the right machine action. A blender is the wrong tool and will give you a sticky, short paste, because a blade shears the gelatinised starch network you are trying to build. A stand mixer with a dough hook on low is the right tool: high torque, low shear, the same folding and stretching action as a pestle. Ten minutes, scraping down twice.
- Rest it 10 minutes, covered, before serving. The starch network relaxes and the ball becomes noticeably smoother to shape. This is the one step nobody does.
- Serve with a thumb hollow pressed into the top. Not decoration: it is where the sauce goes, and it is how the dish is eaten.