Customer Reviews

Cooking the West African Way (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks)

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Book is overpriced and the recipes is not enough. Would not purchase again for the price.