Boney Fish

Food in Liberia has been one heck of an experience. There is some good, some bad and some mysterious…

When I first got off the plane and arrived at St. Theresa’s there was a bounty of fruit (plums = mangos and green oranges) and cucumbers. It was late, I was tired and after hours of oscillating altitudes fresh produce was the perfect thing to eat. That was the simple beginning of food in Liberia. After that it got complicated.
Most meals consist of a thick leafy soup and rice. Because of this a lot of food here is green…but not in a salad green kind of way. The leaves are cassava (bassajama), potato greens (jojama), collard greens or pallowa sauce. These leaves are cooked in inches of oil (most commonly red oil – high in cholesterol and hard on the unconditioned stomach) and mixed with an assortment of meat, vita (msg cube), burning hot peppers and various other vegetables (onion, bitterball, kittaly,okra, canned tomato). Sometimes greens are mixed with the rice which is called chopped rice (the most interesting green that I have seen mixed with rice has been hibiscus leaves). For the most part the food is delicious; however, there were a few experiences that almost broke me.

At training there seemed to be a gradual integration to real Liberian food. They started with the sweet stuff like jollaf rice (African fried rice), eggs, even POTATO SALAD!! My first memorable meal was this gargantuan pile of jollaf rice with an entire grilled fish garnished with tomatoes. It was delicious. After a few meals like this and being spoiled with hot dogs and fried plantains the real food was brought out. It was green, fishy, and every bite was thorny :P
Let me tell you a little background about me and fish… I went years without eating fish because when I was around 5 or 6 I choked on a fish bone. I was terrified about reliving the experience and so I stubbornly refused to eat fish of any kind for years. I got over this irrational fear and behavior well before coming to Liberia but in that meal where I experienced the ‘boney fish’ I was flung right back to my past self.

Bony fish are fish that have been dried until all that is left are bones (thorns) and scales. These fish are used for flavoring soups. Along with a ripe fishy flavor boney fish add copious amounts of bones and scales. This makes eating difficult. With each bite of food I would be stopped by cartilage! I would spend hours eating my plate of food and it was exhausting…I would eat 5 bites and be ‘full’… Every day I believed that bony fish was the karmic retribution I deserved for being such a butt head about eating fish when I was younger. After time my meals had less bony and more fresh fish. The bones were still there but in more manageable portions. Tank Goh!

Other than the occasional thorn in my soup I had a few other stumbling experiences that involved food. I ate Topagee! Oh man topagee…this meal is made with red palm oil that has been left out in a bag to “age”. As it ages it develops a flavor that has been described to me as being, “bitter but so sweet” meaning that it’s an acquired taste. My host Ma told me that I had to be in Africa for one year before my stomach would be able to handle topagee because “the soda is too strong, it will run the belly.” I have no problem following that rule after my first taste…

My host family made me stew a couple of times. This dish is made with tomato paste, onion, pepper and other things that make it awesome. My Ma brought back cows meat, crawfish and cow skin from Monrovia to add into the stew. The cow meat was grizzly but good, the crawfish was amazing (and the star of the stew!) but the cow skin was pushed to the side of my plate until my brother Leo stood behind me shaking his head and prodding me by saying, “Lela, you need to eat plenty-oh…da food is sweet!” So I was guilted into trying cow’s skin and I have decided that it’s not for me… :P

Food in Robertsport

When I moved to Robertsport I was excited to be able to cook for myself. My site mate and I had grand plans of steaming crab, eating fresh fish (not covered in oil) and not having rice with every meal. Unfortunately the first few weeks at site we had no means to cook our food until a man was able to make us a coal pot. Those first few weeks we ate peanut butter, tuna, eggs, bread and donuts with a side of DONUTS. When we got the coal pot everything changed…I got to drink real COFFEE (French press is my favorite thing I brought) and learn how to light a coal pot.

To light a coal pot…to light a coal pot took many hours of me singing, cursing, crying and begging the thing to light so I could cook dinner. In Kakata my sisters used plastic or kerosene to light the coal…we couldn’t find kerosene (or we would forget to get it when we were in town) and I was not too keen to burn carcinogenic plastic :P The constant rain complicated matters…humidity and fire do not mix well. One day I spent somewhere around 3 hours trying to catch the coal (I made mac n’ cheese that day). Finally, I set my pride aside and asked for help from a local shop owner’s wife, Winnie…she gave me a carton (cardboard box) and told me to light it in the compartment below the coal to heat and light the coal. I went home determined! I was going to light this coal pot! No surprise, the carton worked, the coal was lit, food was made and it was awesome.
Once we had fire our options were limitless…we could make coffee, tea, spaghetti, crab, potatoes, pumpkin pie, no bakes and even, on occasion, rice! My site mate and I would take pictures of our culinary creations and pat ourselves on the back for our newly acquired cooking skills. Everything we make is in some ways is an experiment… but I really must say I have become quite the cook living here in Africa :) Below are a few pumpkin “recipes”…right in time for Thanksgiving!

Hawa and Lela’s Pumpkin Pie (favorite until we had an encounter with fermented pumpkin pieces…what did I learn…don’t make pumpkin pie, no matter how much you are craving it, with fermented pumpkin unless you want to be sick for 3 days :P)
1 pumpkin (typically good for 3 pies)
Sugar
Butter
Salt
Brown Sugar
Milk (powdered)
Pumpkin Pie spice, nutmeg, cinnamon
Vanilla
“Diggy” Biscuts (Digestives – plain whole wheat)
Filling
Peal the pumpkin and cut it into little square pieces. Then put the pieces in a pot with water and let boil for approximately 30 minutes (or until the pieces are soft and squishy). Drain any excess water. Add the sugars, butter, milk, vanilla, a dash of salt and mash the pumpkin pieces together until it has a smooth consistency. **If you have ginger, cut it up and boil it with the pumpkin pieces…makes the pie out of this world!
Crust
Take the diggy biscuits and crush them into small pieces (crumbs) and mix them with butter (it is easier if the butter is melted but it is not necessary). Put the crust at the bottom of the pie plate and pour the filling on top…dish delish!
**This is not a typical pumpkin pie, it is a lot of work cutting and pealing the pumpkin, but it is worth the work…YUM!

Liberian Dish! Pumpkin Soup (Winnie, the shop owner’s wife, gave us a slice of pumpkin and we had a ten year old teach us how to make this… AMAZING!!)
Piece of pumpkin
Onion
Hot peppers
vita cube
salt
black pepper
seasoning (all we had was curry seasoning…but typically you would use season all)
Some sort of meat (fish, chicken, etc.)
Oil
Rice
Peal the pumpkin and cut it into little square pieces. Cut the onion and crush the pepper (best done with a pestle and mortar…but a grater and spoon work well). Fry the fish/chicken to cook it remove it from the oil and set aside. In the same oil fry the pumpkin and then add onion, pepper, vita cube, salt, seasoning and small water to the pot and let simmer for some time (until the pumpkin is soft). Add the meat back to the soup and put over rice…too sweet-oh!