Fufu

• 1. Introduction

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  Fufu appears in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, a sign of how firmly this pounded meal belongs to West African life. The word is Twi, and it originates with the Akans in Ghana. Yet the same word now covers related dishes in well over a dozen African countries. It also reaches into the Greater Antilles and Central America, where African culinary influence runs strong. Some versions are built on cassava, some on plantain, and some on cornmeal. Traditionally the food is eaten with the fingers. What makes a dish count as fufu once its ingredients, method and name have all changed? And how did a pounded meal travel so far from Ghana?

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• 2. A Word for White

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  The historian Miller wrote that "the word Fufu literally means white in Twi." The likely source of the name is the pale colour of the cassava in the Ghanaian version. Plantain changes the picture. When none is pounded in with the cassava, Ghanaian fufu, also called fufuo, stays white and sticky.

  The dish is believed to have begun in what is now Ghana, among the Asante, Akuapem, Akyem, Bono and Fante peoples of the Akan ethnic group. It is now generally accepted across the whole country. Fufu was a major food of the Ashanti Empire. In Ghana, the base is pieces of boiled cassava, sometimes with other tubers such as plantain or cocoyam. Those tubers have to be pounded, and the tools for that job have Twi names of their own.

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• 3. Mortar and Pestle

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  A locally made wooden mortar called a woduro sits at the centre of Ghanaian fufu making. Cooks pound the boiled tubers with a wooden pestle called a woma. Between blows, the mixture is turned by hand. Water goes in gradually until the mass becomes a soft, sticky dough. It is then formed into a rounded slab and served. The fufu machine has made the work far less labour-intensive.

  Ghanaians eat fufu with liquid soups known as nkwan. One is light soup, called nkrakra nkwan. Another is abenkwan, a palm nut soup. There is also nkatenkwan, made with peanut butter, and abunubunu soup. Diners pinch off a piece with the fingers of the right hand and shape it into an easily eaten ball. The ball is dipped into the soup before it goes into the mouth.

  The pairing has spread to Beninese, Cameroonian, Guinean, Congolese, Nigerian and Togolese cooking. There it comes with hot pepper soup, okra or other stews. Yet the cassava at the heart of the Ghanaian recipe arrived on the continent only in relatively recent centuries.

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• 4. Before Cassava

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  Portuguese traders brought cassava to Africa from Brazil in the 16th century. Before then, fufu was mainly made from cocoyam, plantain and yams. Cassava has since taken a central place in many versions.

  In Ghana, Ivory Coast and Liberia, one method mixes equal portions of boiled cassava with green plantain or cocoyam and pounds them together. Another method stirs cassava, plantain or cocoyam flour with water over a stove. Cooks then adjust the thickness to their own taste.

  Recent years have brought substitutes. Semolina, maize flour or mashed plantains may take the place of cassava flour. This is common among people in the diaspora and in families living in urban cities. Rural families with access to farmland still hold to the original recipe built on cassava. In Nigeria, cassava is the only ingredient, and it is fermented first.

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• 5. Fermented in Nigeria

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  Nigerian fufu is made solely from fermented cassava, and that gives it a thickness unlike the versions in neighbouring countries. It remains a staple in both Nigeria and Ghana. Among the Igbo, the cassava-based version is called akpu, properly written akpụ, which is also the Igbo word for cassava. Akpu takes several days to make and is often eaten with egusi soup. Other Nigerian pairings include ogbono soup, vegetables, and plenty of beef and fish.

  The process starts with raw cassava, peeled and washed until it is white. It soaks in water for 3-4 days to ferment and soften. Cooks then filter it through a porous calabash or a sieve. To drain the water quickly, they pour the wet paste into a sack and weigh it down with a heavy, flat item such as a plank and a brick.

  The paste is pounded and molded into large balls, which simmer for 30-60 seconds. After a thorough pounding to remove lumps, it is molded into smaller balls and boiled for 15-20 minutes. One last round of pounding makes it smooth.

  Yoruba fufu differs slightly. It also starts with fermented cassava, but the soft pieces are sieved out. The starchy remains are boiled and stirred with a wooden rod until they turn into dough. Elsewhere in Africa, the dish carries other names, and some of those names belong to quite different foods.

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• 6. Names and Look-Alikes

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  Côte d'Ivoire uses two words for two different foods. Ivorian foufou is specifically mashed sweet plantains. Foutou is a stronger, heavier paste made from yam, cassava, plantains, taro or a mix of these.

  In the French-speaking regions of Cameroon, the dish is called couscous, which should not be confused with the North African dish of the same name. Angola calls its version fungi or fungee and serves it as part of the national dish. It is made with cornmeal and okra. Burkina Faso calls its version tô, and Benin uses santana as well as foufou. In the two Congos, the names include moteke, luku and bidia. Mozambique has sadja, sadza and xima, and one of Nigeria's many names is simply swallow.

  People in Eastern and Southern Africa use the term fufu, or fufuo, for their corn or maize dough dish called ugali or nshima. Ghana does not treat these as the same food. Ghanaians do have ugali or nshima, but under other names: akple, nsihoo and tuo zaafi. Nsihoo is white etsew, made without the corn bran. All three are made from unfermented corn flour. Fermented corn dough foods such as etsew, dokuno (kenkey), banku and fonfom form a separate group.

  Across the Atlantic, the family of dishes grows again, with new names, new ingredients and new techniques.

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• 7. Across the Atlantic

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  Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico all have substantial populations of West African origin. In each, plantains, cassava or yams are mashed with other ingredients. Cuba keeps the original African stem of the name, calling the dish fufú, or adding a description such as fufú de plátano or fufú de plátano pintón. The Dominican Republic has mangú, made from mashed, boiled green plantains and topped with red onions sautéed in vinegar.

  In Haiti the dish is called tonm tonm and foofoo. It is mostly made of breadfruit, though plantain or yams can stand in, and it usually comes with an okra-based stew or soup. People eat it mainly in the southernmost regions, the Grand'Anse and Sud departments. The city of Jérémie is regarded as the tonmtonm capital of Haiti.

  Puerto Rican mofongo is a fufú of much higher density and bolder seasoning. It keeps a conspicuous African character but borrows from the island's Iberian culinary tradition. It is made from fried green and yellow plantains, cassava or breadfruit. Mofongo is firmer and crustier than the mushier fufús of the Caribbean and West Africa.

  Green plantains are deep-fried once, unlike twice-fried tostones. They are then mashed in a pilon, or mortar, with chopped garlic, salt, black pepper and olive oil. The mash is pressed into a hollowed, crusty orb and stuffed with meat, traditionally chicharrón. Some recipes pour a salsa criolla over the hot sphere. In western Puerto Rico, the trendier mofongo relleno uses seafood inside and out. The poet and blogger Arose N Daghetto called mofongo a type of "fufú paella" and "the big daddy of fufús." Boiled and roasted plantain mofongo predate the fried kind and are still found, though rarely.

  Funche, a dish of taro and green and yellow plantains, was once popular on the island. The plantains were boiled and mashed with butter, garlic and pork fat, then formed into balls. They were eaten with a broth made from sesame seeds. Funche appears in early Puerto Rican cookbooks from around the 1800s, but it can probably be traced to enslaved Africans on the island. Today funche in Puerto Rico is cornmeal cooked in coconut milk and milk.

  In the Anglo-Caribbean, the vegetable or fufú sauce is not fried first. Plantain is used less, since it already goes into so many other dishes. Barbados serves a version as part of its national dish, called cou-cou. It uses cornmeal or, less commonly, split peas, green bananas or breadfruit, as several other English Caribbean islands do.

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• 8. Nutrition and Potassium

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  One hundred grams of dry fufu flour made from cocoyam contains 2 g of protein, 0.1 g of fat and 84 g of carbohydrates. That adds up to 267 calories. A cooked serving of 240 g holds 3.6 g of protein, 7.2 g of fat and 81 g of carbohydrates, for 398 calories. Fufu is low in cholesterol and rich in potassium. Doctors commonly prescribe it for people whose blood potassium runs low.

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