Chowder is a thick soup prepared with milk or cream, a roux, and seafood or vegetables. Oyster crackers or saltines may accompany chowders as a side item, and cracker pieces may be dropped atop the dish. New England clam chowder is typically made with chopped clams and diced potatoes, in a mixed cream and milk base, often with a small amount of butter. Other common chowders include seafood chowder, which often consists of fish, clams, and other types of shellfish; lamb or veal chowder made with barley; corn chowder, which uses corn instead of clams; various fish chowders; and potato chowder, which is often made with cheese. Fish, corn, and clam chowders are popular in North America, especially New England and Atlantic Canada.
Fufu is a pounded meal found in West African cuisine. It is a Twi word that originates from the Akans in Ghana. The word, however, has been expanded to include several variations of the pounded meal found in other African countries including Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Angola and Gabon.
Jewish cuisine refers to the worldwide cooking traditions of the Jewish people. During its evolution over the course of many centuries, it has been shaped by Jewish dietary laws (kashrut), Jewish festivals and holidays, and traditions centred around Shabbat. Jewish cuisine is influenced by the economics, agriculture, and culinary traditions of the many countries where Jewish communities have settled and varies widely throughout the entire world.
African cuisine is a staple of the continent's culture, and its history is entwined with the story of the native people of Africa. The foods that native Africans eat have been influenced by their religions, as well as by their climates and lifestyles. The first Africans to inhabit the continent were hunter-gatherers who ate what they could find in nature. As agriculture became more common in Africa, so did agriculture-based diets.
Ugali, also known as posho, nsima, and other names, is a type of corn meal made from maize or corn flour in several countries in Africa. It is cooked in boiling water or milk until it reaches a stiff or firm dough-like consistency. In 2017, the dish was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, one of a few foods in the list.
In West Africa, garri is the flour of the fresh starchy cassava root.
Ghanaian cuisines refer to the meals of the Ghanaian people. The main dishes of Ghana are organized around starchy staple foods, which goes with either sauce or soup accompanied with a source of protein. The main ingredients for the vast majority of soups and stews are; tomatoes, hot peppers and onions. Most Ghanaian soups and stews are red or orange in appearance as a result of the main ingredients used.
Corn chowder is a chowder soup prepared using corn as a primary ingredient. Basic corn chowder is commonly made of corn, onion, celery, milk or cream, and butter. Additional ingredients sometimes used include potatoes or squash, salt pork, fish, seafood and chicken. In the United States, recipes for corn chowder date to at least as early as 1884. Corn chowder is mass-produced as a canned food in the U.S.
Peanut stew or groundnut stew, also known as maafe, sauce d'arachide (French) or tigadèguèna is a stew that is a staple food in Western Africa. It originates from the Mandinka and Bambara people of Mali.
Homowo is a festival celebrated by the Ga people of Ghana in the Greater Accra Region. The festival starts at the end of April into May with the planting of crops before the rainy season starts. The Ga people celebrate Homowo in the remembrance of famine that once happened in their history in precolonial Ghana. The Ga Homowo or Harvest Custom is an annual tradition among the Accra people, with its origin tied to the Native Calendar and the Damte Dsanwe people of the Asere Quarter. Asere is a sub-division of the Ga Division in the Accra District of the Gold Coast Colony.
Kenkey is a staple swallow food similar to sourdough dumplings from the Ga and Fante-inhabited regions of West Africa, usually served with pepper crudaiola and fried fish, soup or stew.
West African cuisine encompasses a diverse range of foods that are split between its 16 countries. In West Africa, many families grow and raise their own food, and within each there is a division of labor. Indigenous foods consist of a number of plant species and animals, and are important to those whose lifestyle depends on farming and hunting.
Nigerian cuisine consists of dishes or food items from the hundreds of Native African ethnic groups that comprise Nigeria. Like other West African cuisines, it uses spices and herbs with palm or groundnut oil to create deeply flavored sauces and soups.
Beninese cuisine involves many fresh meals served with a variety of sauces. Meat is usually quite expensive, and meals are generally light on meat and generous on vegetable fat.
Ivorian cuisine is the traditional cuisine of Côte d'Ivoire, or the Ivory Coast, and is based on tubers, grains, pig, chicken, seafood, fish, fresh fruits, vegetables and spices. It is very similar to that of neighboring countries in West Africa. Common staple foods include grains and tubers. Côte d'Ivoire is one of the largest cocoa producers in the world and also produces palm oil and coffee.
Palm nut soup or banga is a soup made from palm fruit common in the Ghanaian, Nigerian, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivorian communities. The soup is made from a palm cream or palm nut base with stewed marinated meats, smoked dried fish, and aromatics. It is often eaten with starch, fufu, omotuo, banku, fonio, or rice. The use of the palm fruit in cooking is significant in Nigerian, Ghanaian and other West and Central African cuisine.
Peppersoup is a soup from parts of West Africa, notably Nigeria, made using various meats, chili peppers and calabash nutmeg as primary ingredients. It is a spicy soup that has a light, watery texture. Despite its name, the soup is not necessarily defined by a pepper-forward flavor profile, that is, the flavors are much more complex, with nutty, bitter, woodsy, and floral notes, as well as warmth. It is considered to be a delicacy by some people in Western Africa, and some West Africans believe that the soup has some basic medicinal qualities.
Aprapransa, originally called 'Akplijii ' is a Ghanaian GaDangme dish prepared by heat mixing roasted corn flour with a sacred GaDangme soup called 'Palm Nut Soup'. As a point of emphasis, 'Palm Nut Soup', an important base ingredient in the preparation of 'Akplijii', is an ancient sacred soup of the GaDangme people, and is always prepared as a complement to another sacred corn flour meal called 'Kpokpoi(or Kpekpele)' during an 'Ancient Religious Hebraic Harvest Festival' called 'Homowo'. The GaDangme people brought these practices along with them to 'Ancient-Ghana' and taught all the tribes how to prepare this delicious 'Palm Nut Soup', just like the 'Akans' taught all the tribes how to prepare their delicious soup called 'Abunebunu(or Ebunuebunu)'. It is worth mentioning that outside Ghana, other tribes such as the Yorubas, Igbos, etc. in Nigeria process 'Palm Nut' in a similar yet different fashion into soup called 'Banga Soup'. Over the course of time, the knowledge of the preparation of 'Palm Nut Soup' in Ghana became common and it lost it sacred status. It may interest Ghanaians to know that the GaDangme people have from 'ancient time' to 'present day', used the palm tree in a number of sacred ways; namely, (1) To prepare a sacred soup called 'Palm Nut Soup',, (2) The burning of the dry figs as incense for spiritual cleansing and to ward-off evil spirits, (3) To build new houses every year made up of new palm tree branches which in our present day has been seriously reduced in practice because of embraced modernity in socio-cultural attitudes, (4) etc. The sacred uses of palm tree is not unique to the GaDangme(or Ga)-Tribe, for it is a common practice among several other tribes in the 'Congo-Niger Family'(or Bantu-Zone) of Africa. Akplijii(or Akplidzi) also known as Aprapransa is a food that is served on special occasions and it is feared to go extinct.
