september 20th, 2008

September 20th, 2008

From the Market to the Table

(For a visual tour of this blog entry, check out the "Making Rice and Sauce" slideshow on the side panel of the blog - somewhere under my photo)

As a "thank you" gesture to our families, tonight Jesse (my fellow trainee who lives next door, a Amherst MA native) and I made a Guinean meal. I wanted to learn to make the soup sauce since it is my favorite of the sauces; Jesse went for the peanut sauce. We agreed on buying chickens since chickens are a treat. (Note: buying chickens means buying a live chicken, not a neat package in the back of the store!) We also wanted to have an American flavor as part of the meal; since it is Ramadan, it needed to be something easy on the system. We decided on garlic mashed potatoes. Guineans love potatoes, but I have yet to see them mashed.

It began yesterday when we got back from our conference; we went to the market after carefully constructing lists with our respective families. My list consisted of:

3 tomatoes
2 small eggplants
1 bulb of garlic
4 pimant (small peppers with a real big kick)
4 small onions
black peppercorns
2 potatoes
2 mantioch
squash pieces (if available - it was)
cabbage (if available - it wasn't)
1 small can tomato paste
2 maggi cubes (seasoning cube....probabably a lot of MSG - I've eaten so much of this - it can't be good at all!)
1 large sache of vegetable oil
3 kilo of rice
4 bags of charbon for cooking

The market trip was very fun - our first stop was just outside the big market at a stand with several items from the list. The two working were mother and son although she looked young enough to be his sister. They were sweet and even posed for a photo. We went on to find the other vegetables - everytime I asked if I could take a photo, everyone happily agreed. Then kids wanted in on the action. It was fun to have a true market experience and understand prices and the women of the market enjoyed when we could greet them in the local language. We even made it to the peanut butter gridning man - Jesse bought shelled peanuts and took them to him to have the peanut butter made.

The first step in the cooking process was the chicken. Jesse and our two 12 year-old host brothers, Dauda and Yaya, went to buy them while I went to church. As soon as I got back, Dauda and Yaya lit up like two twelve year-olds would who were about to be allowed to kill something. I didn't want to extinguish their excitement by telling them I wanted to kill the chicken, so I let them do the killing. (Yeah right. I was not looking forward to that part at all. I'm fine with the rest...but have no desire kill the chicken.) Dauda and Yaya proudly presented us with the three chickens. Jesse's host mom assisted us with lighting the charbon to boil a large pot of water to help with defeathering the chicken. Once the pot was boiling, we took it off of the fire and then put the chickens in, let them sit for a while, and then plucked all of the feathers off, Dauda's looked perfect and he did it in half the time as I did, but I did it all. The water helps make defeathering easier.

The next step was to help with all of the fine hairs or missed small feathers. We took the chickens, wrapped them in paper, and then put them on the charbon. The paper burned off as well as the leftover plumage. At this point the outside of the chicken was slightly brown. Aisitou helped us with cutting up the chickens properly. All of the parts we would typically use (wings, legs, breasts) were used along with heart, liver, neck, and stomach. I learned how to peel out the stomach lining; the lining had all of whatever the chicken at that day inside.

We cleaned up all the pieces with soap and water and then Jesse and I parted to our families' cooking areas. Time to prepare the sauce.

First, I put the black pepper in the pile, followed by the garlic until it was completely mashed. I coated the chicken with this and then placed in the pot which had hot oil at the bottom to brown the chicken. Once the chicken was browned, I removed the chicken and threw in the eggplant (dpeeled and diced), tomatoes (chopped) and onions. once these were going, i added the tomato paste with water, pimant (piled), maggi cubes, and a little more oil. Then i added the chicken back in and let it simmer for about two hours before adding in the peeled potatoes, mantioch, and squash. this then simmered for another hour or so - sometimes adding water. The passing of time is a funny thing here. There is no setting of timers, just observation of the sun.

While the delicious pot was simmering, I cleaned and prepared the rice and then made the mashed potatoes. At the end of the night was the Ramadan prayers and then the families dove into the meal (you'll notice in the photo the men sitting on one side, the women are on another.) They really enjoyed all parts. I tried Jesse's sauce and it was delicious!

I appreciate the time and energy that goes into cooking here in Guinea. The process of preparing the chicken, cooking, and then doing all the dishes went from noon until 7:00. I was exhausted by the end! And felt disgusting after sitting by that fire under the hot African blaze, handling chickens, chopping veggies in my lap (no cutting boards.) Any kitchen (by kitchen I mean outdoor cooking area) you walk by has all of the ladies sitting, working hard by the fires - and the men are always sitting around. No wonder the women look so weathered and the men look so young.

I hope to post some of the other delicious treats I've had as I try to prepare them at site!