This post for Liberia is rather timely, yesterday being Juneteenth, the day celebrating the liberation of slaves in the United States. The timing is coincidental, as I actually made this dish on March 15th, the birthday of Liberia's first president Joseph Jenkins Roberts, and a national holiday in Liberia. Roberts was one of several thousand free born or freed African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans who settled in Western Africa to found the nation of Liberia. The settlement was stated to have started because many in the US at the time thought they would enjoy more freedom and opportunity, but some of the support was from slave owners for a much more sinister reason--they thought of free Blacks in America as a threat. Many Black Americans were pressured to "voluntarily emigrate" even though so many of them had lived in the US for generations, and some slaves were freed solely on the condition that they leave for Liberia. The US wouldn't recognize Liberia as a country until 15 years after they declared their independence.
Now that you know some of the fascinating history of the country, let's get into the food. I made pepper kala, which is a fried dough that's popular throughout Western Africa, especially in Nigeria where it's called puff puff. The main difference is that it's serviced with a pepper sauce. It starts with peppers of course, both hot and sweet, and some onion.
The peppers and onions are sauteed until soft, then blended to a puree. The puree is then cooked on the stove for a bit to evaporate some of the liquid.
Spices are then added--usually including bouillon powder which I've found plays a major part of many West African dishes. The most interesting part is toasted ground sesame seeds. My spice grinder has been coming in handy since I got it for Christmas--it made quick work of grinding the sesame seeds to a powder.
Now for the actual kala! The batter is made from flour, baking soda, a bit of salt and sugar, nutmeg, and then you just add water and mix until it's nice and thick like the consistency of mashed potatoes.
The dough is then dropped by the spoonful into hot oil to fry until golden brown. I've made several versions of fried doughs for other countries and this is the only one that gave me problems--I'm not sure if it was the temperature of the oil or the consistency of the batter, but a couple of these balls of dough actually started splitting and popping open, causing an explosion of oil, which is terrifying when you're cooking over a gas flame. Luckily I was not standing over it when it happened and nothing caught on fire, but it was an absolute pain to clean up. I was finding streaks of oil on the wall and the cabinets for like a week. I thinned out the batter a little and it did seem to help the issue a bit.
But I was not able to create the nice round balls that you're supposed to get. Mine were mostly round, but had little chicken feet shaped pieces coming from them from dropping them in the oil. Maybe I was dropping them too slowly, but I'm always scared of splash-back when putting things in hot oil. Either way, they tasted perfectly fine. Nice and crunchy on the outside, but light and fluffy on the inside. When I first starting frying things for this project, I tended to have the oil too hot, so many of my foods were basically raw on the inside because they got cooked too quickly on the outside. I've learned quite a bit since I started, so these turned out with a pretty good consistency!
And the pepper sauce was the perfect accompaniment, flavorful and spicy, the sweetness and acid helped cut through the greasiness of the kala to really balance each other out. I may not make these again for fear of blowing up my kitchen, but I would gladly eat them again if served to me!
Recipes Used: Liberian Pepper Kala
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