- Okay, okay, let me stop playing.
Okay, okay.
Ahh!
Hello everyone!
It is me, Elise.
Today, I'm going to be cooking
three traditional Ghanaian meals for my family
so that they may eat it and judge me.
My family is from Ghana,
but when it comes to the traditional meals,
it's usually my mom (bubble pops)
who will make them.
Not me, (bubble pops)
not I.
But today, we are reversing the roles.
She is the daughter, I am the mother.
Just kidding,
but I am going to make these three meals,
breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I'm gonna take this challenge on today,
and we're gonna see what my family has to say.
Let's do it.
All right, so it is time for breakfast,
and what I've decided to make is bofrot and Hausa koko.
Hausa koko is, like, a porridge,
and is a very typical Ghanaian breakfast,
and then bofrot is like a doughnut in a little ball,
kinda like a beignet,
and they're really good, nice and sweet,
and people usually eat them together,
and eating it for breakfast is fairly common.
We are going to make the bofrot first.
Okay, so we need half a cup of warm water,
a teaspoon of yeast,
a tablespoon of sugar.
Mix it well and then set it aside
so it can, you know, do it's thing.
Give the yeast a couple of minutes
to do whatever it gotta do.
We're gonna get a bowl.
Add two cups of flour and one cup of sugar,
and just a little bit of ground nutmeg.
Go ahead and add however much you like.
You can also add vanilla or cinnamon,
if you're into that,
a pinch of salt,
and then mix with your hands.
When you're making bofrot,
you don't use utensils, baby, okay?
You use your hands.
At this point, your yeast should be done
doing whatever it had to do,
so go ahead and pour it into your bowl
and get to mixing.
Add less water if you want dense and chewy.
Add more water if you want light and fluffy.
Store your dough in a dark, warm environment
for at least two hours.
This is my mixture that I made earlier today.
It's been sitting for maybe three or four hours.
So I'm gonna take this
and we're gonna fry it up. (flames roar)
Get a pot of oil,
get it to a boil,
and we are going to make these doughnuts.
There is a technique to doing this.
You wet your hand,
you scoop it up,
and you kinda do, like, a little,
and then you go like this,
and it squeezes out into a ball
and boils in your hot oil.
So you scoop it.
(exhales)
Tsk, boy,
maybe it's 'cause of the angle that I'm in.
This is clearly not for me.
Get a good, (batter plops) oh!
Definitely burned myself.
(batter plops)
No!
(batter plops)
Okay, that one was a little better.
We'll see how this goes.
As it's frying, you can use like a wooden stick.
This is a chopstick,
to kinda just flip them
and make sure that they cook evenly on both sides.
After about 7,000 tries,
I finally got it to work,
and you know what?
They look, but, they're fine.
It doesn't matter, leave me alone.
So now we're gonna make the Hausa koko,
which is very easy to make.
You just follow the instructions on the box.
Mix the powder with some cold water
and then pour that into some boiling water
and mix it continuously for like five to 10 minutes,
and eventually, it'll thicken up like a porridge.
Okay, so we gonna plate it up really quick,
you know, 'cause we fancy out here,
and with the Hausa koko,
you can eat it with milk and sugar if you'd like.
You don't have to,
but if you want to add it, go ahead.
Here they are.
Mom and sister.
Now they're going to,
(sister laughs)
they're gonna try my breakfast creation here,
the Hausa koko and the bofrot,
and they're gonna let me know how it is.
- Hm!
It tastes good.
I like the consistency.
It looks round and nice.
- Yeah, it took me (sister coughs)
a long time to get the technique.
Hmm.
Very soft. - No fruit.
- This is perfect.
- You hear that, folks?
- It's good. - Perfect.
Off to the kitchen I go!
- [Both] See you at lunch!
- For lunch, I am making
a traditional meal that
pretty much every Ghanaian has eaten,
spinach stew,
or as they call it in Twi,
kontomire.
That is what I'm going to make.
So it's basically just a spinach stew.
We're gonna eat it with rice.
Let's go!
Okay, so we got chopped tomatoes, onions,
habanero pepper, and smoked turkey.
You can find smoked turkey
at your local Asian or African market.
This is what it looks like before it's chopped up.
And obviously, the spinach,
so add a cup of oil to a pot
and simmer those vegetables for about five minutes,
and then go ahead and add the turkey in there.
We're gonna add some seasonings
which are bay leaves,
Season-All,
adobo seasoning,
and Maggi cubes,
which you can find at any Asian or African grocery store.
We are then going to take some egusi seeds
and add them with water into a blender,
and they turn into this thick white mixture,
and you add that to your stew.
After about 15 minutes, add the spinach,
and you're gonna cook all that together for like 20 minutes,
and it's nice and delicious.
Okay, so here it is.
I made the rice into a nice little square,
and the stew, I use an ice cream scooper,
and now we're gonna eat it.
- Looks good, tastes good.
- All right, so we got a 10 out of 10,
eight out of 10, nine out of 10?
- Minus two points for my bone.
- You're the one who could've, you didn't find the bone.
- I found the bone.
- [Both] See you at dinnertime.
(sister giggles) - Ta-ta.
- We are now at the end of the day.
I've changed my shirt because what did I do?
I stained it.
It is now time for us to make dinner.
As some of you may know,
Ghana is on the west coast of Africa.
When you're on the coast, what does that mean?
Water.
Where there's water, there is what?
Seafood.
So with that being said,
I decided to make (plastic crinkles)
red snapper, (bell dings)
with some yam.
Ooh!
The smell wafted directly into my nostrils.
Let's just go.
My mom told me I need to cut the head off the fish.
Ugh!
I don't want to cut the head off the fish!
Ahh!
Oh!
(fish taps) (whimpers)
The deed is done.
I'm just gonna cut off the fins,
'cause I don't think you eat this part.
(scissors snip) Oh, ouch.
Ahh!
That hurt.
So this is what the inside of the fish is looking like,
and now I'm going to make this tomato paste
that my mom usually makes with fish.
It just has onions, habanero, garlic, ginger,
and tomatoes all ground up together.
Now to blend this,
I now realize I took the blade out of the...
Oh, ooh, ooh, ooh, okay.
So once I figured out
how to use the food processor properly,
I seasoned the fish with some salt and some black pepper,
and then I put the ground-up mixture inside
and made sure to rub it on the skin.
You know, everything gotta be nice and seasoned and tasty.
Then I cut up some orange and yellow bell peppers and onions
and stuffed that inside the fish,
and then gave it a little bit of olive oil.
(chimes ding)
As the fish was cooking,
I just cut up the yams.
I shaved off the sides
and cut them into a fries shape.
Fried them in some oil,
and they came out nice and golden brown,
and then after 30 minutes,
the fish was done and so delectable,
so I plated it nice and fancy with some green onion on top.
Oh yeah!
Here it is.
Can you see?
Red snapper fish,
whatever this tomato mixture is,
and some fried yams.
They're going to have dinner.
It's dinnertime!
- Nice presentation.
Mm!
I love this, the filling.
- The tail is the best part, (Elise mumbles)
because it has all the crunchy boneness.
- So overall, how did I do today?
- You did wonderful.
It's a lot of work put into this.
- [Elise] Mm-hmm.
- Everything looks good, (sister snaps fingers)
and tastes really (sister snaps fingers)
good. - Now say period.
(sister snaps fingers)
- Period.
- Okay, bye everybody. - Bye!
- Well, that's it.
Making the three meals today was kinda difficult
because, you know,
it's hard to cook three traditional meals
all into one day.
My feet hurt and I'm tired and I'm going to bed,
but it was still fun,
and I'm glad that my family was able to enjoy
what I made for them.
I will see you guys in the next video.
(upbeat music)