Food on the Brain

July 16, 2012

So I have two important things on the brain right now: palm oil and fish bones.  Firstly, palm oil is delicious and Liberians certainly love to cook with it.  It’s making me break out actually, but it’s so totally worth it.  Tonight I had Liberian sweet potato and arrow (? It’s a root) with a fish and palm oil soup [every sauce here is called a soup.  From what I can tell, if it’s eaten with rice and is cooked/served in separate bowls, you’re eating soup!!].  I almost died of pleasure at the potato and arrow root with the palm oil, but the fish bones are really starting to get on my nerves!  Today I successfully swallowed three fish bones in two meals, and not for lack of taking my time picking them out and chewing properly!  I swear, they appear out of nowhere – bam!  By the end of my portion I’ve caught myself starting to wonder if it’s actually worth the work!

One of the things I was really excited about coming here for was the chance to try new foods.  This might be embarrassing, but I figured I’d give the food an honourable mention and fill you in on what I’ve been filling my stomach with for the past almost four weeks!  To put it simply: rice, palm oil, beans, potato greens, hot peppers and fish or chicken.  From what I’ve experienced so far, you can make a lot of Liberian food using those ingredients.  So palm oil is nothing like what I was expecting.  First off, it’s red and doesn’t just taste like oil.  It actually has a unique flavour which is amazing.  It also stains everything it touches; clothes, skin, whatever.  White girl that I am, that does present somewhat of an awkward problem at work where there is no silverware and eating with your hands is expected!  I’m sure I’ve provided the staff at the health center with a generous share of amusement as they watched the white girl “eat like an African”!  One of the staff was teasing me today, and told me to use a spoon – he then spelled spoon on his hand and said, “This is a Liberian spoon!” 

So I’ve only found one food item that I really don’t care for: fufu.  It’s one of three cassava variations available here [fufu, jhibi (?), and dumboy], and comes as a sticky paste.  You roll it into bite-sized balls in your hands and then dunk it in a fish soup [sauce] that’s made to be very slimy to help the fufu go down easy.  The taste isn’t terrible, but combined with the texture it’s definitely not my favourite.  I do like jhibi though when I’ve had it.  The one time I’ve had dumboy, I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat it the proper way, so I don’t feel like I can speak for it. 

In terms of fresh fruits and vegetables, the options are fairly limited.  That being said, bananas are ubiquitous and super cheap.  Pineapples are harder to find, but cost 50LD for the large ones so the price makes up for it when you can find them [there are roughly 75LD in 1USD]!  I’ve been particularly enjoying the avocados, which are known here as butter pears.  They can also be hard to find, but for a large avocado you pay 15LD.

The street food has also been interesting when I’ve gotten the chance to try it.  I tried a ‘meat pie’ in Ganta the other day, and noticed that it had no meat but contained plenty of hot peppers and oddly enough, spaghetti noodles.  It certainly tasted fine though.  The rice bread is also quite good, almost like banana bread but not as sweet and much denser.  Corn is all over the place but I haven’t bought any yet.  I’ve enjoyed the coconut a lot; I prefer the older ones with more meat, but the coconut water in the young coconuts isn’t bad either.  I’m very sad that mango season is over, but I got a good share of mangoes while I was still in Monrovia during my first week here.  I think my favourite street food is the boiled peanuts.  They’re amazing.  You pay 5LD for a huge handful of peanuts, and then you get to shell them and it’s absolutely fantastic.  I picked up a fried plantain at the market earlier this week, which was really tasty.  I also bought some bread that the woman said was shortbread – it’s not any kind of short bread I’ve ever experienced.  I don’t know yet whether or not I like it, but either way it’s interesting!

So there’s my thoughts on food, you might have noticed that I’m a big fan!  Haha.