Something/Someone Old

My Something Old today is African groundnut stew, often known as Maafe in West Africa.

The stew has many variations. Fundamentally, it's a sauce made of peanuts and tomatoes, including a bunch more vegetables and usually some chicken or other meat. The variation I know always includes sweet potatoes, meaning the lovely reddish-orange tuber we grow and eat here in the South, but in Africa it often also includes yams, meaning the very large starchy tuber from Africa:

The culinary interactions between Africa and the New World are often complex. And it can get really confusing because different peoples call the same vegetable different names. Also, different peoples often call different vegetables the same name! Hence the confusion between sweet potatoes and yams. Initially, slaves in the New World didn't have access to yams. They looked around for something similar, saw sweet potatoes, and decided to call them yams, because they were the closest New World approximation of the tuber they knew.

But the sweet potato/yam confusion is not the only one we have to deal with when it comes to Maafe. There's also the fact that what Americans call peanuts are called, in Africa, groundnuts; to make it more complicated, there's also an indigenous North American starchy tuber that botanists here call a groundnut. Yeah, I know--it's nuts.

What always blows my mind is how quickly foods from the "New World" traveled back to both Europe and Africa. Peanuts, or groundnuts, weren't indigenous to Africa. They were brought to Africa from South America by Portuguese sailors. The Portuguese, like the Phoenicians and the Vikings before them, certainly got around. (Even more fascinating is the fact that peanuts did not come directly to North America from South America, but were brought *back* to this hemisphere by African slaves).

Maafe, therefore, could not have been invented by the West Africans until the Portuguese brought groundnuts over. Food historians say it probably couldn't have existed earlier than 1560.
https://oureverydaylife.com/facts-about-italian-cuisine-12219484.html

Apparently, the first Africans to come up with it were the Malinese:

Mafe can trace its origins to the Mandinka and Bambara people of Mali. Its name in the Mandinka language is “domodah”, and “tigadenmga” in Bamanankan...From Mali it spread to neighboring Senegal and the rest of Western Africa.

https://gypsyplate.com/maafe/

I love this stew, though I'm guessing the version I've eaten is probably different in many ways than the versions they eat in Africa. But what a wonderful food!

Here's a recipe, in case anyone wants to try it:

This is what you need to make some great Maafe

Meat – I am making two batches here, one with boneless skinless chicken thighs and one with beef chuck.

Peanut butter – The STAR.

Onion – Chopped.

Tomato – Sauce and paste that gives beautiful vibrant color and flavor.

Aromatics – Garlic, ginger, cilantro (for garnishing).

Hot pepper – Some like it hot so they use habanero. Some don’t, so they can handle a little jalapeño.

Veggies

Chicken broth

Spices – Paprika, red chili flakes, freshly ground black pepper.

Cut the meat into big chunks. You don’t want small bites in stew, as they might disintegrate. Season them with salt, freshly cracked black pepper, paprika, chopped ginger and garlic. If you have time to spare, marinate it for a few hours.

When ready to cook, heat oil and sear the meat pieces 4-5 minutes per side. This gives them a nice color and adds flavor to the stew. Plate them out.

In the same pot, add in chopped onions and sauté, stirring up the brown stickings from the bottom. Cook till onion becomes golden brown.

Add in chopped garlic, ginger and jalapeño and cook for a minute. Add in tomato paste and cook for a minute. Time to add the tomato sauce along with paprika, red chili flakes and salt. Cook for 5 minutes. Stir in chicken broth and mix well.

Add meat back into the pot. You can add carrots too at this time, and any other root vegetables you are using. Cook covered for 5 minutes.

Add in a nice heap of peanut butter and keep on stirring till it melts nicely into the sauce.

Now you need to cook this sauce till the butter starts separating onto the surface, the stew develops a vibrant red orangey color, and the meat is nice and tender. In the last half hour, add in bell peppers chunks.

All that’s left is to garnish your stew with some chopped cilantro if you like or some fresh peanuts.

You can, of course, serve this over rice if you don't feel like you're getting enough starch from your vegetables. I hear that sometimes West Africans actually use sweet potatoes not IN the soup, but as something you pour the soup OVER.

Anyway. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Something New

I just started watching this series:

Yes, it is children's literature, and yes, it is a superhero fantasy. But it is well worth watching, even for those who don't like superhero fantasies. For one thing, like Harry Potter, it complicates the idea of a "chosen one" or superhero. It arguably does it better than Harry Potter, actually (anybody else ever get the feeling J.K. Rowling was pressured into a more conventional ending than she initially envisioned?)

Guillermo del Toro wrote this series, initially thinking of it as a live-action series. That was deemed too expensive, so he turned it into a book:

DreamWorks took out an option on film rights for the book, but it took them so long to do anything that Netflix turned it into not one, but several animated series instead.

It's rare these days that I think any new series made by an American media company is any good. This one's a keeper.

Something Borrowed

I just discovered this--though I bet a lot of people here already knew it.

This song:

was not actually penned by The Clash. This is Sonny Curtis, who wrote the song the year before he replaced Buddy Holly in The Crickets.

Here's the more famous (non-solo) version:

Here's a fun recent version. I love Nanci Griffith, and it's nice to see her singing with Curtis and the Crickets:

Something Blue

Somewhat oddly, I haven't had much interest in Audubon, apart from the society which bears his name (which I wholeheartedly support). It's odd because I have a real love for botanical art, and it seems like Audubon's work is rather a close cousin of that old handshake between art and science. But I just never got into it.

This, however, is really cool:

I have been beneath a Great Blue Heron. Literally beneath it. (It landed on the roof of the screen porch at my last rental.) I'd never seen a blue heron from that perspective. It gives quite a different impression when you're looking up at its long, long beak. I remember thinking to myself; "Well, hello! You're quite the beautiful assassin, aren't you?"

How are you all today? I hope those of you in the path of the hurricane are OK. Check in if you can!