Central Africa · Volume 07, The Hinge of the Continent
Kwacoco with banga soup
Bakweri, the coast
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours 30
- Researched
- Researched from 90 sources in the brief
Kwacoco is the large parcel ekwang refuses to be: raw grated white macabo, salted, beaten fluffy, wrapped in plantain leaf and boiled long. Banga is the sauce made from palm nut pulp.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. About 2 hours 30.
Ingredients
- 1.8 kg white macabo, about 4 lb, grated
- 60 ml water, about ¼ cup
- 800 g palm nut paste (or 2.5 kg fresh palm nuts)
- 2.4 L hot water, about 10 cups
- 4 large pieces smoked barracuda
- 60 g dried crayfish, about ½ cup
- as listed 1 alligator pepper, black pepper, 2 four corners, 2 pebe, 2 finger-length ginger pieces, 2 garlic cloves, ½ onion
- 1 leaf, or to taste manjuweli (scent leaf), salt
Method
- Kwacoco. Grate the macabo, salt it, beat it with the water until fluffy, wrap in treated plantain leaves and boil about 2 hours on medium.
- Banga, from fresh nuts. Boil the nuts until soft, pound them while hot to release the pulp from fibre and stone, mix the pulp with hot water and strain out the fibres and stones.
- Banga, from paste. 800 g of palm nut paste into 2.4 L of hot water, brought to the boil.
- Blend the spice set and add it with the smoked barracuda and crayfish. 15 minutes on medium-low.
- Add the scent leaf. 10 minutes.
- 5 minutes on low to finish, by which point the oil should be standing in red eyes on the surface.
Notes
After Keng's Kitchen.
Why bottled oil is not a substitute. Palm fruit mesocarp is an emulsion of carotenoid-rich oil held in fibrous, pectin-bearing flesh, and boiling and pounding release both. A sauce made from the fruit has body from the pulp; a sauce made from the bottle has only fat.
What a modern chef changes
The oil break treated as a signal to stop, and the aromatics staged
Rungs 1, 5 and 6
Method
- Read the red slick as a readiness signal, not a doneness signal. Rung 1. When the oil stands you are finished, and every further minute is carotene loss. Or break it on purpose: skim the oil off, hold base and oil warm but separate, and flood the surface at the pass.
- Split the spice blend. Rung 5. Pebe, four corners and black pepper are heat-stable enough for step 4. Country onion and the garlic tree go in at step 6, or into a finishing oil.
- Toast the crayfish first. Rung 6, three minutes, free.