More on food in Ghana

I had a request by e-mail from a friend of mine in the US to provide a better description of Ghanaian foods. Fortunately, the standard Ghanaian menu is pretty short. So I will attempt to provide some description of various food items here. First, there is fried chicken and jollof rice. Fried chicken is the same here as everywhere else in the world. Jollof rice is a spicy red rice that is similar to Spanish rice or dirty rice. Then there is red red served with either fried chicken or fried rice. Red red is beans cooked in palm oil and plantains. The following three items are I think unique to West Africa. The first is fufu, a mixture of cassava and plantains that has a very jelly like texture and is served with various soups. The second is kenkey, a mixture of cassava and maize that is fermented and then steamed in banana leaves. It is eaten with pepper sauce and fried fish. The final item is banku which is similar to kenkey, but is cooked in plastic bags rather than banana leaves and does not have as dense a consistency. It is often served with okra stew.