São Tomé and Principe is an island nation off the coast of Western Africa. Apparently it was actually uninhabited until Portuguese colonizers arrived. It’s the smallest Portuguese speaking country and the second smallest African nation! The residents born from Portuguese colonizers and African slaves brought from the mainland are referred to as mestiços, but also “children of the land” which is pretty cool.
For this meal, I finally decided to invest in some African red palm oil. It’s hugely important and popular ingredient in many different African countries, and adds a distinct flavor to stews and other dishes. São Tomé‘s national dish is actually palm oil stew, but I decided to make calulu which is usually made with fish but I substituted tofu.
Calulu is actually very simple to make. It starts by alternating layers of onion, tomato, garlic, greens (I used spinach), and fish (or tofu in my case). Generally one would use smoked dried fish, which is pretty hard to replicate with vegetarian substitutes.
You can also add okra and zucchini to bulk up the veggie content of this stew, but I decided to omit them. The next step after layering everything is to pour palm oil over everything along with some chili—the recipe I used called for scotch bonnet which is sometimes hard for me to find so I usually use habanero since it has a similar heat.
The stew then simmers for about 40 minutes until all your veggies are tender. I had reservations about just throwing everything into a pot and letting it cook. I’m more used to cooking the onions, them adding in more veggies, then adding liquid. I was afraid everything would just stick to the bottom and burn. Luckily that didn’t happen! The oil poured over the top seeped down throughout the pot’s contents and since it was covered, the spinach let out its own juices to create more liquid.
I had originally intended to only make something called “bobofrito” which is basically just fried bananas, but I realized it was super simple and also wouldn’t be a full meal. So I decided to just make it for dessert. Bobofrito is just sliced bananas that are fried in coconut oil. That’s it! Just fried bananas. I shallow-fried them because I couldn’t find many recipes, and none of them were very specific. The I ended up using I had to translate from Portugues, but it basically just told me to fry the bananas in coconut oil. I think it probably would have gone better if I had deep fried them. I also think the type of banana matters. I couldn’t find anything saying that you should actually use plantains— most recipes I’ve used have made that distinction. But I’m wondering if the type of banana used in São Tomé is actually starchier than the kind we have here in the US.
It doesn’t look particularly pretty but it was still pretty tasty! I served the bananas with some jam because I figured it needed a little something extra.
Recipes Used: Calulu de Peixe // Bobo Frito
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