Sun 21 Dec, 2008
I was at a latino butcher shop with my friends, somewhere between planning on abandoning dinner plans due to the multitude of parties to go to, and determined to still make dinner, despite the lack of eaters (I did end up with two eaters besides myself). While carefully examining everything on the shelves, I found fufu flour.
I asked Ickabod, who is a master chef, what is fufu flour? He didn’t know. So I bought it, and looked it up on Wikipedia.
The box said it was made from cocoyam, which took me through several Wikipedia redirects and disambiguations pages, which led me to decide that it was the root of xanthosoma. The directions were easy–just add hot water and turn into paste. It was then I really realized what fufu is–pasteballs.
After some searching the internet, I found an interesting recipe. My original plan was to follow this recipe, fufu with okra soup. However, I couldn’t find the broth, and due to vociferous objections against okra from my eaters, the soup turned out radically different.
With this dubious start I worked on the soup. I was planning on using Golden Curry as a broth base–it’s like this weird beef base thing for making curries, but it’s really thick, so it’s easily adaptable to soup, and I didn’t have any beef broth. But the store didn’t have any, so I found a coconut/lime/red curry soup instead. And becuase of the objections of okra, I made it with cauliflower instead.
- One cauliflower
- One can of “Red curry soup” (see picture above)
- Half bag of spinach
- One small onion
- One habanero
- Some string beans
- Some onion sprouts
- All the spices I found in the closet (curry powder, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper)
Hm, was that it? I started the soup with sauteeing the habanero and onion in the the soup pan with oil, and adding some finely chopped cauliflower in the idea that it might become some kind of little crispy crunchy stuffs, which it didn’t. I added the can of soup with lots of water, which turned out to have lots of interesting things in it, like bamboo and basil and I’m not sure what else. I added the rest of the ingredients, nervous the whole time that it wouldn’t taste good.
For the fufu, I carefully followed the directions. While the principle was easy, add hot water and turn into paste, all sorts of details were given, either by the box or the wisdom of the internet, such as wet all the surfaces the fufu will be in contact with prior to mixing, add the water in small amounts, etc. Really I think you could just pour water on fufu flour and mix with your hands.
I made smaller balls of fufu rather than the large mounds I find images of on the internet.
I also made a simple salad, adding some chopped string beans and onion sprouts to the salad. Onion sprouts are tasty! I give up rewriting the salad recipe every time and just put a page here, which will be linked probably weekly.
Do I dare tell you the results? The soup was fabulous! It was the tastiest thing ever! Raven attempted to make it again as soon as my back was turned!
But what of the fufu? The fufu was universally despised. Many suggestions were given to make more palatable, such as throw the box of fufu flour out the window, throw fufu balls at people you don’t like, or use it to paste things to walls. The general consensus was that if you weren’t a starving african, there was no reason to eat fufu.
I think that review is a little harsh, and that if you added flavor to it (any flavor!), it would be better. Make pancakes out of it! Deep fry it, call it donuts! One person said it was meant to be made with soup broth, not just water, that’s another idea! But in the form of water and flour, it’s just pasteballs, although pasteballs in soup is not that bad (after all, people like matzo ball soup, right?).
Steel Phoenix says:
The fufu flour box picture does seem to promise something a bit more pink than your paste lumps. Did you forget to add the fufu pinkener? I notice the red curry claims to add ‘exotic paste and aroma’.
Was the onion powder really necessary after you had already used onions and onion sprouts? I think you should rename it ‘Three Onion Soup’. For my readers I think I would sub out the three onions for a bag of prawns and your original suggestion of a bit of okra.
stanza says:
@Steel Phoenix
The onion powder was probably not necessary. Having made onion soup before, this was not onion soup. And you could easily sub prawns and it would be a tasty soup.
I did forget to add the fufu pinkener. The box doesn’t come with any, and when I said “we could run to the store and get food coloring!”, I was ignored.
Raven says:
Point One: No onion powder was used in this recipe. (I know this, because we don’t have any.)
Point Two: I maintain that the fufu was deeply icky, and pink ick is not better than white ick. At least the white ick’s looks suggested that you would be eating paste.
Point Three: I don’t know about prawns. As not a big onion fan myself, I would say that you could easily sacrifice the onions entirely and not lose much. The onion sprouts didn’t really taste like onion - just kind of peppery.
Lynn Brister says:
Hi there, I recently went to a native Nigerians home and tasted red sauce and fu-fu! I was absolutely amazed, so I went back on this past Saturday for a lesson! Ok, to get the beautifully smooth, almost springy fu-fu, it takes vigorous stirring with a wooden spoon (plastic will bend and stick), they have a bowl of cold water and a plastic almost like saucer next to the pot to scoop the fufu out. My take is fu-fu is the African staple of rice! IT WAS FUN!! I was told that you can make fu-fu out of several different types of flour including oat; I, like you however, purchased fu-fu flower. Fu-Fu is actually grounded melon seeds… this totally intrigued me.
The red sauce was on a different level. The fu-fu was fast, the red sauce took a while, but is so worth it. My friend used 4 roma tomatoes, 2 red (bell) peppers and 2 habenaros. She blended with water until it was totally liquified (this petrified me). Then she “fried” that sauce until the water was gone in vegetable oil. I had no idea this process was possible. None the less, I am going back for more ventures…. I like you am adventurous!
stanza says:
@Lynn
Hi there! I will definitely try out that recipe. Tomorrow’s recipe will involve frying yogurt until there is nothing left; so I’m not afraid of that idea yet. I might try that out next week, but at the moment, it seems hard to find good tomatoes. Though if I were to make a sauce of them, that wouldn’t be as important.
stanza says:
@Raven
Pink is too better than white. Whether or not it is ick. Everyone knows that. ;p