Practical West African cookery

1 large teacup yam or sweet potato cut in pieces, 2 inches square. 1 onion. 3 tablespoons palm oil. Chop. (II). 1 breakfast cup okro. 2 or 3 tatassa. 5 or 6 gauta. 1£ pints water. 3 berkono chopped fine. 1 dessertspoon salt. 1. Cut up the fowl as for a fricassee and skin the pieces. 2. Put the palm oil in a native pot with a lid, when quite hot put in the onion and fowl, frying till a pale yellow, then add the water, okro, tatassa, gauta, chopped berkono and salt. Bring it to the boil, let it simmer for a short hour, then add the yam and continue boiling for twenty five to thirty minutes. If sweet potatoes are used, twenty minutes will be enough. Serve very hot in the native pot with a napkin folded round. Note. — There are many ways of making palm oil chop; this recipe is a mild one, the fresher the palm oil the better the dish is. Natives mix dried fish with the palm oil chop, but this is not much to the European taste. Exactly the same dish can be made with pieces of mutton, cut in two-inch squares. Curried 1 fowl. 1 dessertspoon curry. 1 large tablespoon butter, lard, or ground nut oil. Fowl. (I). 1 onion. 1 teacup stock or water. ; £ teaspoon salt 1. Cut the raw fowl as for a fricassee. 2. Put the butter in the flat saucepan. When quite hot, add the sliced onion, then the curry powder, fry till brown; add the pieces of fowl and fry to a deep yellow colour, then add salt and the teacup of stock or water. Let the curry cook slowly until half the liquid is absorbed. Serve with rice or mashed yam or sweet potatoes. Notes. 1. If the tomatoes or gauta are available they can be cut in quarters and added to the curry when the meat is half cooked. 2. Pigeons can be curried in the same way. 3. This is the very simplest of curries; there are many other good ones, but the ingredients not always being obtainable, we have not attempted to give them. I \ Poulet Menagere. (I.) 1 fowl l£ tablespoons butter, lard or ground nut oil. 1 large onion cut in 5 or 6 pieces, not sliced. 1 teacup tumuku, risga or sweet potatoes, cut in one inch squares. 1 clove. 2 berkono or one good pinch pepper. 1 teaspoon salt, i teaspoon dried thyme or chopped parsley. 1. Put one tablespoon butter into the flat saucepan. When hot put in the tumuku or risga, which have been scraped, not peeled, or the pieces of sweet potato. Keep the pan moving till they turn yellow ; add the onion, taking care that it does not burn. When the vegetables are half cooked remove them from the pan, putting them in an empty frying pan to keep hot, but do not let them cook any more, 2. Add to the fat already in the saucepan (but be careful that no particles of the vegetables remain) the other half tablespoonful butter. When quite hot put in your fowl whole, and fry both sides equally till light yellow, then put back the vegetables, add the clove, the herbs, pepper and salt, toss once more on the fire, then put aside and cover the pan so that it goes on cooking very slowly, till the fowl and vegetables are thoroughly cooked. The whole process can be done in a little more than half an hour. If towards the end you fear it may burn, add half a tablespoon butter or lard, (water would entirely spoil the dish). Note. — This is a useful bush dish.