Ghanaian · Main
Tuo Zaafi ne Ayoyo
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with a warm current of chile, ferment tang with real depth behind it, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 500 g white maize flour
- 1.9 litres water
- 200 g ayoyo (jute mallow) leaves, stripped from the stems
- 1 tsp kanwa (potash), crushed fine
- 2 tbsp dawadawa (fermented locust bean), crumbled
- 2 tbsp ground dried okra
- 1 tbsp ground dried chilli
- 1 onion, sliced
- 2 tsp salt
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dissolve the kanwa in 800 ml of the water, bring to the boil with the onion, then drop in the ayoyo and boil uncovered until the leaves collapse and the liquid strings off the spoon.
- Stir in the dawadawa, ground okra, chilli and salt and simmer 10 minutes, until the soup draws in an unbroken thread and smells of fermented bean rather than raw leaf. 10 min
- In a second pot, whisk 100 g of the maize flour into the remaining cold water and bring to a simmer, whisking, until it thickens to a porridge that coats the whisk.
- Beat in the rest of the flour a handful at a time with a flat wooden spatula, crushing each addition against the side of the pot before the next goes in, until the mass is smooth, glossy and just holds a shape.
- Cover and leave on the lowest heat 5 minutes to cook out the raw flour, beat once more, then mould with a wet ladle and serve with the ayoyo alongside. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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