Anansi at the table

Among the Akan and Ashanti, a meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert but is organized around a duo: a dense starch paste (fufu, pounded yam or plantain) shaped into balls with the fingers, and a soup or sauce for dipping. Around it revolve fried market snacks, fermented palm drinks, and sweet honey porridges for children and offerings. You eat with your hands from shared bowls, sitting together — the fufu is swallowed without chewing and slides down with the sauce.

Two pre-Columbian West African pillars: red palm oil, scarlet and fruity, which colors and perfumes sauces, and dawadawa (fermented locust bean seeds) which provides a powerful umami note, the Akan equivalent of miso or garum. Melegueta pepper (grains of paradise, African pepper) completes the aromatic signature, far from any chili from the Americas.