Vol. XXX · The Cuisines of the World Plate 9 of 11Africa, African cooking, Ethiopia, injera, teff, berbere, West Africa, jollof rice, groundnut stew, maafe, fufu, cassava, gari, cyanide, konzo, ugali, sorghum, millet, fermentation, processing, food safetySF

Africa.

Bitter cassava, fresh from the ground, can be dangerous to eat. Three days of soaking and fermenting turns it into fufu that feeds hundreds of millions of people safely.

A continent of fifty-four countries has no single cuisine, but some patterns recur: a starchy staple — teff, sorghum, millet, maize, rice, yam, plantain or cassava — served as a porridge, dough or flatbread and eaten with the hand, alongside a stew or sauce of vegetables, pulses, groundnuts, fish or meat, rich with palm oil or peanuts, sharp with chilli, deep with fermented seasonings. Ethiopia ferments teff batter for two or three days into the spongy sour flatbread injera, which serves as plate and spoon for wat stews spiced with berbere. West Africa's jollof rice is cooked in a tomato, pepper and onion base; groundnut stews (maafe) thicken with peanut paste; fufu and banku are pounded or stirred starchy doughs.

Cassava, brought from South America in the sixteenth century, is now a staple for hundreds of millions of Africans: it grows on poor soil, tolerates drought and stores in the ground. But its roots contain cyanogenic glycosides that release hydrogen cyanide when the tissue is damaged — little in sweet varieties, a great deal in bitter ones. Traditional processing removes it: peeling, soaking for days so that the root ferments and softens (fufu), grating and pressing then fermenting and roasting (gari), or grating and sun-drying for flour. Where processing is cut short, in drought or famine, chronic exposure causes konzo, an irreversible paralysis. The workshop processes cassava.

Below: the cyanide potential left in cassava of the variety you choose after the processing and days you choose (teaching first-order removal rates, in the range reported for each method), against the Codex limit of 10 mg per kg for cassava flour.

What you will learn
Workshop
Fresh root (typical): sweet varieties about 40 mg HCN-equivalent per kg, bitter about 300. Removal (teaching, consistent with reported ranges): boiling peeled pieces removes about half, whatever the time; soak-and-ferment (fufu) e^(−0.9 per day), then boiled ×0.5; grate–press–ferment–roast (gari) e^(−1.2 per day) × 0.3; grate and sun-dry (flour) e^(−0.6 per day). Limit: Codex CXS 176-1989, 10 mg/kg for cassava flour.

Process the root, then cook the stew

In the teaching model bitter cassava that is only peeled and boiled keeps about 150 mg/kg — far above the 10 mg/kg limit; soaked and fermented three days and then boiled, as for fufu, it falls to about 10, at the limit; grated, fermented two days and roasted as gari, about 8. Sweet varieties, boiled, keep about 20 — why they are eaten simply boiled or fried, while bitter ones are always processed. Buy cassava products from trusted producers, and cook fresh roots only if you know they are a sweet variety.

Jollof rice (4): blend 400 g tomatoes, 2 red peppers, 1 onion and 1–2 Scotch bonnet chillies; fry 1 sliced onion in 80 mL oil, add 2 tbsp tomato paste and fry until it darkens, then add the blend and cook down 20 minutes until thick and the oil rises (as in XXIX.4); season with thyme, curry powder, bay, stock cube or salt. Stir in 400 g washed long-grain parboiled rice and 600 mL stock, cover tightly with foil and a lid, and cook on low heat 30 minutes without stirring, until tender; a slightly smoky, caught bottom ("party jollof") is prized. Maafe: simmer chicken or beef with onion, tomato and peanut butter (150 g for 4) loosened with stock until thick.

At the stove

Cook a small pot of jollof rice and compare its method with a pilaf (XXIX.6) and a paella: the same idea of rice absorbing a seasoned base.

Teff, the grain of injera, is the smallest grain in the world — about 150 grains weigh as much as one grain of wheat — and was domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands; it is naturally gluten-free (XXVI.9).

Terms

Injera
Ethiopian sour fermented teff flatbread.
Fufu / gari
Pounded fermented cassava / grated, fermented, roasted cassava.
Konzo
Irreversible paralysis from cyanide in poorly processed bitter cassava.
Jollof
West African rice cooked in a tomato-pepper base.
African cuisines pair a starchy staple with a rich stew. Bitter cassava must be processed — soaked and fermented, grated, roasted or sun-dried — to remove cyanide below the 10 mg/kg limit; short cuts cause konzo.

Sources

  1. Codex Alimentarius, Standard for Edible Cassava Flour (CXS 176-1989): total hydrocyanic acid no more than 10 mg/kg. Bitter cassava roots can hold several hundred mg of HCN equivalent per kg fresh weight; soaking, fermenting, grating and sun-drying remove most of it (FAO/WHO JECFA, 2012).
  2. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.