Reflections on Ghana - Two

I was determined to try out the local food in Ghana, and my guide helped me by interpreting menus and making recommendations. She also took me to restaurants which the locals patronised rather than the places designed for tourists.

One key feature of Ghanaian eating is that cutlery is not used. Fingers were made before forks after all, and eating food this way adds a further dimension to the pleasure of eating.

In one restaurant I went to the standard table setting included a bottle of liquid soap, as the adjacent picture demonstrates. The waitress delivered a plastic bowl of warm water so I could wash my hands at the beginning and end of the meal.

My guide was an expert in eating this way of course and could strip the flesh off a Tilapia fish (a local staple) using only one hand. I had to use two hands to strip the flesh away from my chunky portions of goat's meat. The sauce managed to spread up to my elbows, so I really needed a stand up wash after finishing lunch.

The standard dish was a portion of a starchy food, which looked like mashed potato, with a spicy soup and added meat or fish. The starchy foods came in different combinations. Banku was a blend of cornmeal with crushed cassava, and FuFu a mix of cassava with plantain. Both were excellent when dipped into the soup usually spiced with chilli.

Another delicacy was palava sauce which is a thick dark green potage made up of cocoyam leaves with palm nut oil, onions and tomatoes. It reminded me of Sag - the equivalent Indian dish made from spinach.

Although not a great lager drinker Star beer was the most palatable of the local brews, while wine was relatively expensive, being imported from South Africa.

Service in restaurants was friendly although the concept of eating courses in a particular order was obviously a foreign notion at my hotel because food arrived to the table when it was ready. So a portion of bacon and eggs would arrive before a portion of cornmeal porridge. (The latter incidentally was called Koko - so now you know what the famous club in Camden Town is named after!)

With locally sourced fruits making up part of my breakfast I ate well every day and very healthily too. The standard Ghanaian diet is low in fats, high in natural fibre and includes plenty of fish, so I think I lost a few pounds during my week.

Which I am sure won't do me any harm...