East, West, Then Backward

January 23, 2018 9:45 AM

Sara'o Maozac writes about Ghanaian groundnut soup for Serious Eats.

I approached each interaction harboring a desire for a warm Black embrace, a homecoming, and instead was met with cold shoulders and the moniker oburoni. "Oburoni" is a term that literally translates to "alien," but signifies whiteness in Ghana. "Oburoni" was delivered with a celebratory lilt when it addressed my white travel companions, but when it addressed me, oburoni truly meant "other." "Oburoni" punctuated each new introduction in Ghana, a profound and incessant othering that annulled my root-seeking mission. I made a number of friends in my travels, but each exchange was undercut when my white-boy travel partner accompanied me: He was super oburoni; I was sadly just oburoni.

Two weeks later, I had eaten all of my meals with Maame Serwa. Each day, I'd sit at the island in front of the open kitchen, and we'd talk while she cooked. Her son began to visit me at the hotel. I went with Kwaku to the beach. I checked to see if they needed things when I passed the storefront. I went on family shopping trips with them. On one such trip, we went to visit Yaa, who was starting at a rural boarding school that week. I rode in a cab with Maame Serwa and Kwaku, and she suggested I learn how to cook some Ghanaian staples: groundnut soup and fufu. I agreed, of course. My trip was coming to a close, and I was a bit crestfallen at the thought of leaving my new—and only—Ghanaian friends.

posted by uncleozzy (22 comments total)

That's a lovely, moving essay.
posted by suelac at 9:57 AM on January 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

That is a beautiful essay. It takes a bit of time to get going but well worth reading to the end. Here's a random hiplife mix to listen to while reading. There is a lot of hiplife on Youtube, that'd be a whole FPP itself.

We've made some West African groundnut / peanut butter dishes at home from time to time. Love the flavors and richness of it. Reminds me some of both Indian food and Indonesian food although of course it's its own thing.

The addition of smoked fish as a flavor in that recipe is really interesting. "Hot-smoked fish is a traditional ingredient in groundnut soup and adds a savory, fishy, smoked undercurrent of flavor to the dish."
posted by Nelson at 10:12 AM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

I last cooked a groundnut soup in 1992, and I remember how delicious it was to this day. I seem to remember the recipe featuring chillies. Sadly, peanuts make me itch like crazy, so no delicious soup for me.
posted by pipeski at 10:27 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lovely essay. I wish SE would bring more of that type of writing.
Does anyone have a recipe?
posted by mumimor at 10:42 AM on January 23, 2018

This peanut stew is the recipe linked at the bottom of the article.

I've made this Budget Bytes "African peanut stew" many times and enjoyed it each time.
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 10:45 AM on January 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Serious Eats links the following recipes to the article: Ghanian Chicken and Peanut Stew and Ghanaian Goat and Tripe Peanut Stew.
posted by sleeping bear at 10:45 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

This peanut stew is the recipe linked at the bottom of the article.

I've made this Budget Bytes "African peanut stew" many times and enjoyed it each time.
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 10:45 AM on January 23 [2 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


Serious Eats links the following recipes to the article: Ghanian Chicken and Peanut Stew and Ghanaian Goat and Tripe Peanut Stew.
posted by sleeping bear at 10:45 AM on January 23 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]

I must be blind or dumb or something.
posted by mumimor at 10:59 AM on January 23, 2018

Hnnnngh wanting to eat this very badly, now.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:43 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this, definitely very interesting.

If anyone needs more reading on the connections between African Americans, the US South and ancestral foodways, I cannot recommend The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty highly enough.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:06 PM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

mumimor, you probably just have low blood sugar. Eat some groundnut stew!
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 12:40 PM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've had an Americanized version of groundnut stew, it was pretty good. I didn't know about the dried fish aspect of it -- it explains the 19th century South Carolina oyster and peanut soup. Almost certainly a direct descendant.
posted by tavella at 1:09 PM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Peanuts and roasted peanuts have a certain flavor, but for those of you who can't eat them, myself included, pecans blend into a fine, fine cream for the making of many things. I think that if you toasted them before blending, they would do a job creating the mouth feel of this soup, and pretty close to the original, and the smoked fish could certainly fill in the gaps.
posted by Oyéah at 1:09 PM on January 23, 2018

Here is the oyster peanut pepper soup, out from behind a paywall.
posted by Oyéah at 1:12 PM on January 23, 2018

My preferred version of this is a sweet potato and peanut stew from recent copies of the Joy of Cooking. The flavor profile seems very similar, and I like that it can be vegetarian or made with turkey meat.

Mmmmmm, now I want groundnut soup...
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 1:30 PM on January 23, 2018

Hermeowne Grangepurr

Crookshanks got a MF account!

also, yes, totes googling instant pot recipes for this right now!!
posted by supermedusa at 2:36 PM on January 23, 2018

That was a beautiful essay. God, what an alienating trip that must have been: to go looking for an ancestral home through the mists of a family that had its history stolen, and then find it's... well, of course it's not there anymore; it's moved on the same as the land your ancestors died in has. And to be the only Black student on the study abroad semester, to be isolated in your response while the White people, who aren't here to commune with their roots at all, view the whole trip as a totally different and consumptive experience. Ouch. Of course he was completely miserable.

(Not that White people don't do this--I've listened to many stories of trips to Ireland, for example, that resonate with similar themes. But at least those ancestors chose the hard passage, you feel?)

And to be forced into the closet, too, and to be watching as all the girls pick up boyfriends--just for the trip, you understand--and to be painfully othered by literally everyone around you? That's a hell of a sting on top of a weeping sore. I'm so glad that someone chose to adopt him, even temporarily, and pass him some of the desire for family, for connection he sought. To have a feeling for where he came from. I know why it's irritating for people who stayed and moved on to be dealing with the constant swarms of hungry and homeless North Americans searching for a dead heritage, but.... for some people, that's an ache that matters, and I am grateful for those people who choose to be kind.

I wonder if he ever made that soup for his family when he went home. If he did, I wonder what his father said and thought about.

I wonder if I could be as kind as Maame Serwa, if someone came to my workplace looking to fill that kind of spiritual emptiness.
posted by sciatrix at 2:55 PM on January 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

Yolele is the West African cookbook we have. Senegal, not Ghana, so a long way away. Couldn't tell you how big the food difference is. But for an American with no experience with West African cooking it's a pretty approachable and interesting cookbook.
posted by Nelson at 3:11 PM on January 23, 2018

What a lovely piece; thanks for posting. And I love your question about Maame Serwa, sciatrix. It really gave me pause, because I don't think I would.
posted by moogs at 5:20 PM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Well I had no dinner plan for tonight so I made a heavily adapted vegetarian version of the chicken and peanut recipe, and it was awfully tasty.
posted by little cow make small moo at 6:03 PM on January 23, 2018

I had never heard of this general category of soup until I got an Instant Pot, and now we routinely make variations on the multiple recipes out there, from very chickeny to vegan.

I had assumed it was a made-up thing until I saw a youtuber I used to watch go to visit family in Ghana and have it there. I appreciate the opportunity to hear some related stories.

The thought exercise about Maame Serwa was a good one, sciatrix.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:29 PM on January 23, 2018

Oh Mefi...how quickly you forget! I already gave you Peanut soup. Really I did! More than a decade ago! My heart is broken!!
posted by ramix at 9:48 PM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Senegalese mafe tends to be thicker than it’s Ghanaian cousin, groundnut soup, but they’re very similar.
posted by raccoon409 at 9:36 AM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]