Head's up! There's a lot of pictures in this post since this was a loooong process and included many components.
Tonight's meal took me a ridiculous amount of time to make. Of course I decided to make three different dishes, but I couldn't decide on just one. In the picture above is, clockwise from the bottom, Cameroonian koki beans, koki corn, ndole, and a bit of piri piri sauce. Ndole is a stew made from peanuts and greens (I used collards with a bit of spinach) mixed with some onion and beef (veggie steak strips). Koki are like tamales or dumplings. You make the mix and then wrap them up in foil (banana leaves if you're fancy/authentic) to steam.
I started in the early afternoon because I knew I had to soak and peel all of my black-eyed peas. This ended up being several hours of my fingers being all wrinkly while I constantly rubbed the skins off and picked them out. Luckily the skins mostly floated to the top so I could skim them off with a small mesh strainer.
After I finally got them all peeled, I pureed them and added some chopped spinach and West African seasoning. Cameroon just misses the cutoff for Wikipedia's definition of West Africa, but I think it worked.
That mixture then went into the foil packets and into a steamer basket to steam for an hour and a half.
After I got those going, I was able to start on my ndole. I started by boiling my peanuts to soften them. I used roasted peanuts instead of the traditional raw, but I think it turned out well. I used my immersion blender to puree the peanuts into a nice paste. I then realized I probably could have just used natural peanut butter but by then it was too late, I was in too deep.
While my peanuts boiled, I sauteed some onion and the veggie steak strips.
I mixed my peanut puree with minced onion and garlic, added some water, and let that simmer while I chopped up my collard greens.
I added those to my mixture with some more West African seasoning and a bit of veggie broth, and let that simmer some more. At the end of the cooking time, I added my steak strips and onions.
I didn't take any pictures of the process for making koki corn since it was very similar to the koki beans and it was the end of my cooking process so I was just tired. These were made with the fresh corn, some fine corn meal (leftover from Albania's cookies!), and more spinach. I think the koki corn had a better taste than the koki beans, since they tasted more fresh and more like a tamale, a taste I'm more familiar with. I was excited to be working with black-eyed peas, being from the south and all that, but the pureed bean taste just needed something extra (the piri piri helped).
The piri piri was just some piri piri spice mix I got for Christmas mixed with some water to create a sauce. I did some light research on piri piri to make sure that it would fit with a Cameroonian meal, and the site I got all my recipes from did mention that it could be found in Cameroon so I went with it. It definitely added some much-needed spice to the dish.
All in all this was a very satisfying meal, and I've got leftovers for the next week!
Recipes Used: Ndole // Koki Beans // Koki Corn
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