Category: Recipe

Posted on

Scallion pancakes and cabbage pancakes

In a previous post, I mentioned that I’ve been making all kinds of vegetable pancakes. I gave an example about zucchini pancakes and mentioned that I have pictures of others I’ve made. Today I finally got round to digging them out of my hard drive, so here they are.

First, scallion / green onion pancakes. Scallions and green onions are the same thing, depends on who you’re talking to. For just 1 cedi at Agbogbloshie you will get a ton of them, and they’re good for cooking fried rice, adding to an omelet, making various stir fries, etc. But when they’ve been in the fridge for a while and you’re out of ideas, just chop them up small, add flour, salt, pepper and fry them up as a pancake.

Green onions burn easily, but they taste fine even when browned like this, so it’s no big deal. TBH the taste of these scallion pancakes is a bit bland, so you’re better off making Chinese-style crispy pancakes with the same ingredients. Either that, or add other ingredients to make this a more exciting dish. But for a quick and easy breakfast, this is one of my commonly made ones.

Next, cabbage pancakes. I’ve only made them once, because they didn’t turn out looking too great. I think I got lazy and cut the cabbage into large pieces, so the whole thing came out chunky. If you want to make it, try shredding or mincing the cabbage really finely.

I’m seeing some flecks that suggest I added some chili pepper flakes and maybe onion? Onion really lifts these pancakes to the next level, so add a little if you can.

First, the correct way to fry cabbage pancakes, or any pancake with chunky ingredients. A little bit at a time, and slowly so that the heat goes all the way through. The cooked batter will still be soft, but it will be cooked all the way through. And you will get a vaguely presentable-looking pancake. Now for the wrong way to cook cabbage pancakes:

A certain lazy and greedy food blogger put a heaping amount of batter in the pan because she was hungry and wanted to finish frying quickly. Unless you’re a master of flipping pancakes, it will all fall apart when you try to turn it over. AND it will still take forever to cook.

 

Exhibit B. Nicely browned, and almost completely cooked. I thought I had flipped this picture before uploading it but I guess I messed up somehow.  In retrospect, instead of letting it fall apart like that, I should have deliberately divided it into four nice quarters.

The final result. It looks like a strange omelet, doesn’t it? But no, it’s a cabbage pancake. I think it would look better if it browned even more, but it’s been long eaten and digested so that’s that. I can’t remember what the sauce was, but based on the looks, I’m guessing it was chili oil, soy sauce and vinegar. When I put chili oil into the fridge, my house people think it is shitor, so they lap it up like soup. I’m thinking of making my own, but that’s a topic for another day.

In conclusion, I like veggie pancakes a lot, so I’ve been experimenting with different ingredients and ratios for a while. If you’re trying to get more vegetables into your diet, or if you just want to try something new, give them a try and see how they work for you.

Posted on

Zucchini pancakes!

In Korea there is a dish called “yachaejeon” (야채전) which literally means “vegetable pancake.” You mince or chop veggies finely, add a little flour and some seasonings to taste and then fry them up. In Ghana we’re used to pancakes being a sweet food, but once you try it and season it to your liking, you’ll have a whole new item to add to your repertoire.

I made these zucchini pancakes as an experiment to see how they tasted, and they were great. If you don’t have zucchini, you can use pretty much any other vegetable. Onions, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, even the dandelion you find growing in your backyard. It can be just one veggie, it can be a mix of veggies, you can throw in some seafood or an egg or two for binding. The only things that don’t work too well are wet veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers, but there might be a way to make them tastier.

Recipe (of sorts)

-Finely chopped, minced or grated veggies

-Enough flour and water to form a pourable batter. Be careful with the water because some vegetables like zucchini and cabbage release water as they sit.

-Add an egg for better binding if you wish. I usually add one for protein

-Add a little salt, sesame oil, black pepper, other condiments to taste. Leave out anything you don’t want except the salt. I usually chill the batter in the fridge for an hour or two to allow the flavours to meld and develop. It’s a tip I picked up from a blog, but whether it really works or not, who knows?

-Heat up a pan with a little oil, add a ladle of pancake batter and fry on both sides until crisp.

The insides will still be moist and fluffy because of the moisture content in the vegetables, so don’t think about getting the whole thing dry.

This almost-burnt one is for my mom, who is of the Ghanaian persuasion that food must be cooked and cooked and cooked aaa until it can’t be cooked any more. And then cook it a little more just in case.

Enjoy with whatever sauce you like. In the blue bowl I have a mix of soy sauce and vinegar, my preferred dipping sauce for savory Asian dishes.

But instead of soy sauce and vinegar, you can use ketchup, salad dressing, chili oil, shitor, or just enjoy it plain. A word of caution: it doesn’t taste as good when cold or reheated, so eat it as fast as possible. You can also store the batter in the fridge for at least a day, so fry it up when ready to serve. Enjoy~

I should have other pictures I’ve taken of other vegetable pancakes that I’ve made, so I’ll post them whenever I find them. See you then!

Posted on

Recipe pictures from a magazine

Back in 2016 I was doing my hair at a salon when I came across some recipes in a magazine. Which magazine? I can’t remember. But the recipes all looked tasty and low-fuss, so I whipped out my old phone and took pictures of them.

It’s been 4 years and I haven’t made a single one. It’s only a matter of time before I lose them to a hard drive format or something like that. Before that happens, it’s better for me to share them here. That way, others can make them and benefit from them. And who knows, maybe I’ll make them someday. After COVID is over and I can actually go shopping for some of those foods, that is.

In fact, I have a pet theory that one of the keys to saving money in Ghana is acquiring a taste for local fare… and only local fare. Imported foods are expensive! But that’s a discussion for another day. Enjoy the recipes and let me know how it turns out if you make one!

Asian beef tacos with quick pickles (you’ll have to find substitutes for some of the ingredients like the radishes)

Spicy Grilled Salmon (the prices of salmon at the supermarkets will turn your stomach even before you can eat this)

Chicken Caprese (very cheap and doable as long as you leave out the mozzarella)

Shrimp and Zucchini Scampi (some vegetable stands sell zucchini, calling it “squash”. Shrimp is expensive though)

Chicken Cacciatore (Oh, I’ve made this before, minus the orzo. It’s just chicken tomato stew. But tasty!)

Lowcountry Skillet (maybe substitute something for the kielbasa)

Sweet potato, bean and rice soup

Pork cutlets with white beans and roasted peppers

Easiest ever pastry dough

Posted on

Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken recipe (not exactly authentic)

Actually it’s a bit hard to define “authentic” when it comes to Chinese food, because they have the same principle as Africans when it comes to cooking: just put everything in and adjust to taste. None of this measuring left and right stuff. The theory is that Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken is called “Three Cup” because it takes a cup each of rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil, but in practice how much to add of each is up to you.

The recipe I sort-of followed, sort-of was inspired by is Bob’s Your Uncle’s version:

Bob’s Your Uncle is a Cantonese cooking channel I used to watch to listen to Cantonese and learn simple recipes. Content warning: he’s a bit vulgar in some of his videos. I say “used to watch” because for the past year or two he’s just been posting cruise ship reviews and travel videos, which aren’t really my thing. But his older videos are good for a watch and most of the food looks easy to make.

Enough with the intro, let’s get down to cooking! Except… it’s been over a year since I made this recipe, so I’ve forgotten all the precise proportions I used. Wait, I shouldn’t lie. I didn’t use any proportions. I just used whatever I had in the house:

accrafoodie taiwanese three cup chicken 1

For example, most recipes call for Thai basil or any other basil, but I don’t have any basil so… I substituted our local herb known as “kowɛ.” It’s a variety of mint but hey, it’s green and it’s leafy just like basil so… yeah. Also I only had a sprig instead of the massive quantities used in the recipe so that’s another change. In the video Bob also finished up by cooking everything in a clay pot, but I don’t have a clay pot so my little skillet had to do. African cooking man, just throw it all in.

Ingredients I used: Chicken thighs, soy sauce, mint (kowɛ), oyster sauce, onions, ginger, garlic, pepper, sesame oil, rice wine, green onions (I happened to have some on hand so why not?), jerk sauce (ditto), a little mirin (ditto). BTW you can find all the stranger ingredients like oyster sauce and sesame oil at a Chinese grocery store like Great Wall Supermarket at Danquah Circle or Jiahua Agricultural somewhere in Osu, I forget where.

Process: I marinated the chicken thighs in a bit of soy sauce and oyster sauce for about an hour before cooking.

  1. Brown the chicken in a little oil (if you marinate it like I did, it will already be brown, but fry it up for extra flavor anyway)
  2. Take out the chicken and set it aside on a plate
  3. Add sesame oil to the pan and fry the sliced ginger and garlic gloves for a minute or two, until fragrant
  4. Add the sliced onions and fry briefly, then add all the chicken back in.

5. Time to season to taste with the extra soy sauce, oyster sauce, jerk sauce, mirin (many recipes call for rock sugar, but mirin is a sweet Japanese condiment so it’ll do), rice wine (optional IMO if you can’t take alcohol) the leftover marinade, anything else you can throw in.

6. Once you’re happy with the taste, toss in the fresh herbs like kowɛ and stir them in, then lower the heat, cover the pan and cook it for 10-15 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. You can add a tiny bit of stock or water if it’s too dry, especially if you skip the rice wine.

7. Taste, adjust final seasoning and serve on a bed of hot, freshly-cooked rice.

It’s really easy to make, TBH with minimal chopping as long as you have the ingredients already on hand.

The only draw back is that the color is a bit dark, so for extra attractiveness serve some greens or salad on the side. I haven’t tried this with substitutes like beef, pork or tofu, but the basic seasoning should work with any other protein. Give it a try and enjoy!

Posted on

Mushroom omelette – or at least I tried!

I like eggs. They’re cheap and tasty and can be cooked in 2 minutes or less. In a pinch some people eat them raw, but I’m not that hardcore yet. And even picky kids can be coaxed into eating a fried egg or two, so it makes a good bribe.

I also like mushrooms. Not as much as eggs, but they’re supposed to be really good for you and we have a regular oyster mushroom supplier, so I eat them quite a bit. Most often as a meat substitute in a quick gravy when all my meat is frozen or I just can’t be bothered to fiddle with meat.

So you put the eggs and the mushrooms together and you get a mushroom omelette! Or omelet, if you’re American. In the past I’ve experimented with slicing the mushrooms really small and beating them into the omelette, but I didn’t quite like the taste. It still seemed a bit undercooked, and rather flavorless. So this time I had a new idea. First prepare the ingredients as usual:

Mushrooms, onions, eggs, pepper, salt, any other seasoning you wish to add. I then fried up the onions and mushrooms with the seasonings:

Just a few minutes over medium heat so the mushrooms are a little wilted and soft but the onions still have some crunch. Then I started beat the eggs with some salt and pepper and poured it into the pan:

This was where I was supposed to put the mushrooms on top of the egg and fold it over. I would have liked the middle to be slightly creamy and the outside not too dry, but I think I left the heat on too long. It still turned out relatively nice:

But it was more like a plain omelette wrapped around a mushroom filling rather than a mushroom omelette. I.e. I didn’t get that mix of egg and mushroom I wanted, each is still very much its own entity. It was still delicious though. Went great with some hot buttered toast and tea. And a very good time was had by all. If/when I get a better camera I’ll attempt this recipe again and see if I can get it just the way I like it. Until then!

Posted on

Easy breakfast – rice and egg drop soup

Still clearing up old photos I have on my hard drive for some reason. The disadvantage of that is that sometimes I can’t remember exactly how I cooked something. Or even why. I think in the case of the egg drop soup I had some leftover tofu I wanted to use up. I tossed in some other stuff as well. It’s a very simple breakfast to make when you don’t feel like the usual bread and tea or porridge. You just need:

Ingredients
Eggs – as many as you want
Stock/broth. Powdered is fine, and in a pinch you can dissolve a maggi cube in some water
Thinly sliced or precooked vegetables, meat or tofu as needed
A little light soy sauce for extra salt and flavour
A pinch of powdered pepper or curry powder

1. Bring the stock to a boil. No quantity given because it’s a very versatile recipe that’s hard to mess up.
2. Throw in your veggies and any meat if you’re using it. In this case I added some grated carrots, glass noodles and tofu. It would have been nice to get some green veggies in there for added colour.
3. Beat the eggs in a separate container until frothy.
4. Take the soup off the heat, stir the soup till you get a good circulating motion going then pour the beaten eggs in in a thin stream.
5. Wait a minute or two for the eggs to set then return the soup to the heat.
6. Bring it to a simmer again. Stir gently and add pepper, soy sauce and other spices to taste.
7. Serve immediately with rice or plain noodles.

There, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? It’s too late now, but I think it would have looked great if I could have stirred some chopped green onions in at the end. Or if I served it with a leafy salad on the side. I like a mix of colors in my dishes, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the stuff I’ve posted so far. We have a lot of dandelions growing in our backyard because of the rainy season, so they would be a good addition.

So that’s it! One day I’ll do a proper recipe with quantities and everything, but that day is not today. Enjoy!

Posted on

Chicken and bell pepper stir fry!

A stir fry is the easiest of the easiest dishes to make when you’re hungry and lazy. Chop up some veggies, chop up some meat, stir them all in a pan until they’re reasonably cooked, enjoy with plain rice or noodles! This chicken stir fry is something I made a lot when I was a student, not so much nowadays. Because it’s such a flexible recipe I’m not going to bother with amounts, just use whatever veggies and meat you have on hand in whatever quantities you want.

Ingredients for chicken and bell pepper stir fry

Chicken breast or thigh, boneless, sliced into thin strips
Bell peppers (a.k.a sweet pepper/green pepper), sliced into thin strips
Onions, thinly sliced
Minced garlic and ginger to taste
Green onions, roughly chopped
Oil
Light soy sauce and a little oyster sauce
Salt and pepper to taste.
1tsp cornstarch mixed with a little water/stock (optional)

Recipe

If you sliced and chopped everything like I told you in the ingredient list, congratulations, you’re half done already! If you have time to spare, you can marinade the chicken strips for about 30 minutes in a little lemon and soy sauce with a pinch of curry for kicks. But it’s not necessary if you spice the dish itself correctly.

Find yourself a big pan or non-stick wok and plop it on the stove on high. When the pan is nice and hot, and a tablespoon or two of oil and stir fy the chicken briefly until lightly seared.

Remove the strips from the pan, add a little more oil if necessary and begin to cook the onions with the garlic and ginger. Keep stirring so they don’t burn. After about a minute, add in the bell peppers, cook for another minute, add the chicken back in.

Add about a tablespoon of light soy sauce (dark is fine too but then you lose the beautiful colour of the dish) and oyster sauce. Taste for salt and add pepper and other spices to taste. Instead of powdered red pepper I like to chop up real chili peppers and stir them in. Depends on how hot you like your food. As soon as the chicken is cooked through and the bell peppers are cooked but still crunchy, you’re ready to eat!

Last but not least, if you looked at the photo of the dish and thought, “That looks a little dry” then mix up a thin mixture of cornstarch and water or stock, just enough to coat the pieces in the pan without drowning them. Stir in and cook for another minute to get a nice, moist stir fry. Personally if I have really good rice and fresh meat and veggies I don’t mind the dry version, but a little moisture does help it go down easier.

Chopping the veggies can take a bit of time, but the cooking process from start to finish shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. And then you have a fragrant, colourful dish to entertain your belly with. Enjoy!