Cooking the West African Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks) [Hardcover]

Bertha Vining Montgomery (Author), Constance Nabwire (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8-These revisions feature low-fat and vegetarian recipes along with a new format and colorful close-up photos. Holiday includes fascinating information on celebrations and a wide range of dishes from more than a dozen countries. West African, which incorporates some of the material found in Cooking the African Way (Lerner, 1988), begins with a discussion of the land and people of Africa, an illustrated map of the region, and mention of several holidays. In both titles, "Before You Begin" sections cover safety, utensils, special ingredients, healthy-cooking tips, and metric conversions while chapters focus on such topics as soups and main dishes. Sample dinner menus along with shopping lists are provided. Most ingredients are readily available with just one or two that may need to be purchased at a specialty store. Recipe titles are both in English and the language of the culture in most cases. Glossy covers, pictures throughout, and well-designed layouts add to the overall appeal of these volumes. Although these are not essential purchases for libraries owning the original editions, they are handsome, useful updates, along with Fran Osseo-Asare's A Good Soup Attracts Chairs: A First African Cookbook for American Kids (Pelican, 1993; o.p.), and Diane Vezza's Passport on a Plate (S & S, 1997; o.p.).
Augusta R. Malvagno, Queens Borough Public Library, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: Lerner Publications; 2 Rev Exp edition (November 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822541637
• ISBN-13: 978-0822541639
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #814,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #96 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > African

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Priceless Recipes, November 1, 2008

By 

heathermaybe "Heather" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cooking the West African Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks) (Hardcover)

I checked this out from the local library, and have prepared many of the recipes in this book that are just fantastic! The Egusi Soup with Fufu and the Curry were great hits at a dinner party I recently hosted. I find the recipes in this book to be authentic, delicious, and in fact rather simple to prepare. Many of these recipes require an hour or longer to prepare, but I found the extra time well worth it as the dishes are very scrumptious. Many of these recipes are a bit spicey, and that is one thing I LOVE about African cooking, but if you cannot tolerate a bit of spice, then this might not be the book for you. There are only a few ingredients called for in this book that might be difficult to find in the typical American market, but in most cases alternate ingredients are listed. This recipe book also includes a map of the area and a some pages describing the people, culture, holidays, and cuisine. I love this book and its recipes, however, I only give it 4 stars because of the price. This book has fewer than 80 pages, and not so many recipes so I thought that $20 and up is a bit steep. However, there are just a few recipes in there that I simply must have, even at this slightly higher-than-expected price.

4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Starter Recipes for West African Cooking, September 17, 2010

By 

Jeanne Ukwendu "BellaOnline.com African Cultu... (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cooking the West African Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks) (Hardcover)

Cooking the West African Way is a great introduction to cooking food from West Africa. This cookbook contains recipes from Nigeria, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. The authors carefully explain the food culture of West Africa. For example, how many Eat Africans only eat a couple of times a day and eat very fresh food due to the lack of electricity and refrigeration.

This book is geared to Americans who want to learn to make West African recipes so the recipes use American measurements, utensils, and methods. There are two sample dinner menus in this cookbook along with the shopping list for each dinner menu. Cooking the West African Way includes basic cooking instructions and explanations of cooking equipment, terms, safety, special ingredients, along with low-fat cooking tips and metric conversions.

Cooking the West African Way includes the following recipes:

Fufu
Sweet Potato Fritters (Ntomo Krako)
Groundnut Sauce
Akara
Groundnut Balls (Kulikuli)
Coconut Crisps
Sweet Balls (From Ghana)
Fruit Salad
Boiled Corn and Beans (Abrow ne Ase)
Boiled, Fried, Grilled, and Baked Plantains
Egusi Soup
Fresh Fish Pepper Soup
Okra Soup
Jollof Rice
Spinach Stew
Vegetables in Peanut Suace
Casamance Fish Stew (Kaldou)
Curry
Chicken Yassa (Yassa au Poulet)
Ginger-Fried Fish
Yams and Squash (Futari)
Chickpea Salad
Groundnut Cookies


This is a great starting cookbook for West African cooking. There are color pictures for almost every recipe along with clear instructions and cultural explanations.

The fufu recipe in Cooking the West African Way is rather disappointing since the recipe calls for cream of wheat and mashed potato flakes instead of casava or yams.

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative, March 9, 2009

By 

Lori Jo Gillen "book lover" (Alabama) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cooking the West African Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks) (Hardcover)

Great recipes. The pictures helped me to visualize what my outcome should look like. I am a complete novice with African food and this was very helpful.