Zoe Adjonyoh - Zoes Ghana Kitchen: An Introduction to New African Cuisine – From Ghana With Love

New African Cuisine is by now (2021) the understood shorthand for a new wave of African gastronomy steadily gaining recognition from the global food community. The phrase can be used to describe many of the recipes contained in these pages.

I want to push all cooks and arbiters of taste in this world to see and use the beauty of West Africas varied and enriching ingredients and flavours in inventive new ways while supporting Black owned farming and agriculture, particularly on the continent itself. In 2014, when I first wrote this book, I was compelled to balance tradition with newness: traditional recipes re-mixed for the modern kitchen I still, and will always, look back to tradition to understand what is new, borrowed and what can be re-imagined hoping to bring an ever wider audience into the fold of New African Cuisine.

The African Food Revolution I yearned for back in 2014 has well begun; with fervour, panache and explosive flavour an army of chefs on the continent and in the diaspora across the globe have a new approach to cooking foods from across Africa reimagining, re-inventing and pushing forward what is still the last frontier of food and this book was my early contribution to that cause.

Since that time the global mainstream food landscape has changed considerably. We have been noticed to some extent. And yet, we still dont see African cookery shows on TV; we rarely see reviews of the myriad pan-African restaurants serving up great food from an incredibly rich and diverse continent, whose influences have nevertheless spread all over the world. African cuisines remain surprisingly marginalized, both in peoples consciousness and on the high street.

Whilst Africa remains the last continent of relatively unexplored food, I urge the diaspora to engage with their food to consume, to cook and to buy in order to support this new wave of gastronomy to play, re-invent, feel nostalgia or feel fearless whatever your approach to cooking, the recipes in this book are for comfort, for play, for inspiration and come served with love love of the journey, love of the process, love of the past, love for my ancestors and love for the generation who get to pay it forward and change the food landscape forever.

Within the African diaspora, two important trends are taking place. First, people are transporting themselves back home to reconnect with the culture of their ancestors, bringing with them their knowledge of and appetite for modern Western entrepreneurship in order to resettle, repackage and export what is good about their homelands. They also want to show off the vibrancy and variety of their home nations cuisine wherever they reside.

This was the main mission behind Zoes Ghana Kitchen: to share the passion of and for this food with a wider audience. Its important to note that I am not a trained chef, nor did I grow up with a Ghanaian grandmother pouring her cooking influence into me. I am self-taught, and that should encourage anyone who is new to Ghanaian food or wants to reconnect with it.

The point of this book is not to give a definitive guide to Ghanaian cuisine but to highlight Ghanas great ingredients and flavours, and most importantly to make that food accessible and highlight how to incorporate those ingredients easily into everyday dishes.

Within these pages, I have sought to strike a balance between paying homage to tradition and my own interpretations of certain authentic dishes. Ive also given some new ways to incorporate favourite Ghanaian ingredients into other dishes, for those already familiar with good home-cooked Ghanaian food.

Id love to see more people incorporating West African ingredients and flavours into their everyday cooking without trepidation. This is why Ive opened an online shop (zoesghanakitchen.com) to sell all the spices contained within these pagesto encourage people away from seeking substitutions and replacements for ingredients and get them to understand the real flavours inherent to West African cooking. I hope that recipes such as Chunky Yam Fries, Suya Flank Steak, Jollof Fried Chicken, Savoury Fried Yam and Jamestown Grilled Shrimp, for example, demonstrate how easy it can be to mix it up a little and bring those flavours into everyday cooking. The spice mixes, too, should encourage people to be adventurous with flavouring and marinating dishes in celebration of Ghanaian flavours!

You will no doubt be pleasantly surprised by the relative ease of cooking or preparing most of the dishes. That being said, these recipes are not didactic. Our tradition is aural and oral, we cook by instinct, intuition, colour, taste, smell and sight. We add pinches, dashes and use tins as measures. To that end these recipes can only be guides and adaptations to keep them alive. The methods for most of the traditional dishes have been handed down orally and vary from region to region, and there are innumerable variations up and down Ghana on the ways of cooking and the ingredients used. This makes the recipes super-flexible, as you can take the basic principles and adapt them easily to what you have available in your larder or fridge. In any case, recipes that dont adapt over time risk being lost completely.