Day 41

I made fufu and eru! Well, kinda. It turns out that the rough instructions I was given to make eru was incomplete. I took the ingredients I had, chopped eru and waterleaf, maggi sauce, and oil and obliviously threw it all in a pot before the meal was rescued by a Cameroonian couple staying at the guest house. Coincidentally, they had also planned on making fufu and eru that night, and I played apprentice while trying to salvage my own meal.

So for those of you who are curious, here’s a ballpark recipe for making fufu and eru:

Ingredients:
Dried fish
Dried crayfish (prawns)
Canidae (beef skin)
Maggi cubes
Red palm oil
Hot peppers
Eru
Waterleaf (spinach can be used instead)
Beef

Cut the canidae into squares and place into a large saucepan with a little bit of oil and enough water to just cover the canidae and cook until tender (may take a while, but you can get this precooked). If beef is being used, cook this as well. Wash and chop the waterleaf, and crush the crayfish until they’ve become powdery. If you want to add peppers, crush them as well.
Add a little bit of water (maybe half a cup to a cup) to the saucepan and add the eru until it’s begun to wilt and reduce. Also add the peppers, the crayfish, dried fish, and maggi. There shouldn’t be too much water in the pot, since the eru should be steamed rather than boiled. After the eru has been steamed, it will wilt down. At this point, add the chopped waterleaf and the red palm oil (about ¼ cup). Wait until the waterleaf is also wilted and mix everything.

The fufu involves adding water to fufu mix and kneading out all the lumps. This mixture is then place into a pot and cooked. The fufu needs to be “stirred” or pushed around with a big stick to make sure it cooks evenly and doesn’t burn on the sides of the pot.
The fufu is pulled into pieces and rolled up and served with eru. Traditionally, fufu and eru is eaten with your hands by pulling off a small handful of fufu, rolling it into a ball, making an indentation, grabbing or scoping the eru, and eating the ball.

Cameroonian, and most African, dishes are flavorful, savory, oily, and so damned filling. At first, I balked at the amount of oil that is required for making the eru, but the wisdom of African nutrition becomes evident when you realize that every traditional dish has ample amounts of complex carbohydrates, proteins, oils, and fiber.

Next project: quacoco, or pacoco