Benin - home cooking

Another edition of cooking in our kitchen, as London is lacking when it comes to Beninian cuisine. Eating in Benin is heavy on staple foods - yams, maize, plantain. Fish is also popular. But of course, given the chance, I will always aim to cook something that doesn't involve seafood. Furthermore, I will usually strive to cook something involving chicken so long as it is a common, popular national dish. Two years working at KFC are to be thanked for that.

After some research, one word came up again and again. Amiwo. Better known to you and me as polenta. That's not necessary a direct translation (it might be) but certainly that's what you end up with. Read on for my experiences of turning cornmeal into polenta...(!)

Again, this recipe was split into two parts. The making and cooking of the cornmeal, and the preparation and cooking of the chicken.

For the polenta I bought half a kg of cornmeal, 1 onion, 125ml of peanut oil, a tomato, a pepper (I chose green) and a clove of garlic. Another ingredient that was suggested was dried ground crayfish. I didn't expect to find that anywhere. And I didn't. Instead I added a dash of fish sauce. I've no idea if that was the right thing to do, but it didn't seem detrimental!

For the other half of the meal I bought four chicken breast fillets, 1 more green pepper, fresh parsley, 2 more cloves of garlic, another onion and a bit more peanut oil. I was also supposed to use celery for this part of the meal, but we both hate celery - one of the few things I just won't eat - so it was skipped.

It's best to get the chicken going first and then just keep it warm afterwards. I added some peanut oil to the pan, and seared the chicken fillets in that before adding the chopped pepper, garlic, parsley and onion. After frying for a bit, and adding a touch of water. I let this braise for a good 15 minutes or so. Originally I was a bit concerned that it would dry out, but actually there was more than enough liquid for it to braise.

Now to the "amiwo". In a second pot I heated the 125ml of peanut oil, which seemed like a huge amount, and then fried in this the tomato (pureed), chopped pepper, crushed garlic clove and fish sauce with a touch of water. Separately I dry fried the cornmeal in another pot. This felt strange. I was frying one of the driest substances you could imagine. It seemed a bit fruitless, especially when I started to sense some burning smells. The cornmeal did start to turn a little brown which I think was the idea. I then took a third of this and mixed it with a good bit of water and stirred into a bit of a paste. I then stirred this into the other sauce pot and heated for 15 mins on a low heat, gradually adding the rest of the cornmeal.

This is where I feared it was all going wrong. It all started getting extremely thick. To the point I couldn't really stir it any more. I ended up adding so much more water than I thought I'd have to. In the end, however, I ended up with a pot full (full being the word) of home-made polenta which seemed to have a great consistency.

Once it was all ready, I arranged a base of polenta and on top of that added the chicken fillets and vegetables, spooning over a good bit of the sauce to mix with the polenta, garnished with some fresh parsley.

Stodge. That was the crux of this meal. A big dollop of stodge with chicken and veg. Polenta is polenta. Not particularly interesting although the way it was cooked in this instance meant that the polenta itself had more flavour than any time I'd had it before. The extra sauce helped as other the meal would have been incredibly dry.

The chicken itself was good. Not hugely flavoursome, but succulent. It was definitely a sufficient meal. I suppose where it falls down, according to my personal taste, is the lack of spices. 

Not a bad meal at all, just not hugely interesting.