The Sunday Classic

It is Saturday night and we have to discuss the Sunday special in many a chop bar throughout Ghana. For those who don't know what a chop bar is, go to Ghana, look for a funny sign board, like "Don't mind your wife Chop Bar", or "In God we trust chop bar" and enter whatever type of building is there. You will find... Ghanaians, a loud radio, a curtain in the doorway made of bottle tops, and fooooood. Chop means to eat, and chop bars serve traditional Ghanaian meals for a bearable sum of Cedis. The food is plenty, tasty and, yes, cheap. Going to a chop bar is a true Ghanaian experience. And believe me, some chop bars do NOT have white people as regualr customers.

A chop bar that used to be my go to place, was a little wooden shed in Adum, Kumasi. It was hidden through som narrow streets, close to the bus station. Me and my fellow exchange student found it on one of our many times spent together in Kumasi town. An old cute lady was making groundnut soup, fufu, banku, rice balls, rice and stew.. We came in our school uniforms one day, sat on the benches inside and said in our purest twi what we wanted. And it was the BEST banku and groundnut soup I have ever tasted. We came back often. Today, it is crazy to think that these days really happened in my life. Being in Norway now, living such a normal, Norwegian life, thinking back to a time when I walked around in Kumasi in a school uniform, speaking Twi, eating in chop bars is almost unreal... I was such a Ghanaian, although I wasn't. It's 10 years ago.

This was the intro. This post is supposed to be about one of my favorite Ghanaian meals.

Nkateenwan and emotuo, or in plain English:

Groundnut/peanut soup and rice balls.

It is so yummy. I have made a photo montage to show how it's made and with what. This is a Ghanaian meal I have perfected! In fact, my husband said that my groundnut soup tastes better than his mother's! Can you get a greater compliment from a man?  

How to make it... :

Take some meat (I prefer chicken), steam it with onions and garlic and ginger, after a while, and groundnut paste (peanutbutter or blended peanuts, if you can't get the real thing), cook this together for a while so the chicken takes in the peanut taste. After a while, add water, tomato, tomato paste, pepper, salt.. Cook, taste, add more salt, cook, taste, add more pepper.. cook, cook, cook. Boil rice with extra water for extra long, use a big stick to stir it HARD, mash the rice...into a dough of rice. Shape balls out of the rice. Put the soup in a plate, put the rice ball in the soup, eat with your hands, ENJOY!! 

Thanks to Hubby's excellent cooking skills, we enjoy groundnut soup and rice balls in Norway anytime we want. And it tastes almost as good as in Ghana. Highly recommended Ghanaian dish!