texture (mouldability and swallowability)

This week we learned to make a West African staple- tuwo. Tuwo is probably best described as a porridge with a gel-like consistency.

We had three choices:

1) tuwo shinkafa  (rice)

2) tuwo hatsi (millet)

3) tuwo masara (corn)

We chose millet, a staple around here.  The ingredients for millet tuwo are simple: millet flour and water. 

Millet flour. T had already pounded it (to remove the grain from the stalk) and ground it. 

Preparation is a bit more complicated.  I'm not sure if I can replicate the tuwo-making process.Its definitely an art. As in most home-cooking, precise measurements weren't used.

Tuwo Hatsi (preparation/cooking time about one hour)

1. Sift the flour

2. Make a slurry by mixing ~2 cups of flour with ~4 cups of cold water, stirring until smooth.
3. Add the slurry to about 8 cups of boiling water.
4. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon, adding hot water until the tuwo is the correct consistency.
5. Scoop tuwo into a bowl and allow to cool and harden into a gel/dumpling state.

a chunk of tuwo

Miya Kub'ewa (Okra Sauce)

Tuwo is usually eaten with a vegetable sauce with a tomato, baobab (kuka), or okra (kub'ewa) base. We made an okra/meat sauce. The meat sauce was very similar to the tomato-based sauce we have made previously, only we added two spoonfuls of ground, dried okra to it at the end.

Sauce spices from the market (clockwise starting w/ top left):
Kub'ewa bushewa, daudawa, kayan miya d'anya, kayan tashi

Kub'ewa bushewa- dried okra
Daudawa- locust bean flour cake (smells like gangrene, but adds a surprisingly good flavor to sauces)
Kayan tashi- literally "spicy things"
Kayan miya- literally "things for soup" (pounded onion/garlic)

The okra added a slimy/slippery texture to the sauce

Luke took one bite of the tuwo and couldn't eat any more. The tuwo texture (combined with a little sand which is inevitable due to the millet pounding process) was too unappetizing for him. I thought it tasted good, and the texture was ok. The three friends we had over for lunch (who have all lived here for a long time) enjoyed it. They say that tuwo "grows on you."

Apparently, Luke is not alone in his struggle to enjoy the texture of tuwo! I found an interesting research article online about tuwo production . The article was about maize tuwo, but I think the same principles apply to millet tuwo. :)

"One major problem... is that of textural and sensory quality inadequacies...thereby creating an unsatisfactory psychological enjoyment. These associated problems...have made the product unappealing to people particularly from non-Hausa-speaking communities while various efforts are also being made by the traditional consumers of the product to ameliorate these textural and sensory problems."

That article also had a standard formula for making tuwo. The ratios were very similar to the process we followed.

"The overall flour/water ratio for maize tuwo preparation should be 1:3.5. The sequential mixing of flour and water during maizetuwo preparation should also be as follows: initial slurry preparation (20 and 25% of the desired total flour quantity and water volume, respectively), water used in initial boiling (60% of total volume), flour added to the pap-like consistency (80% of total) and water added to the gel- like consistency (15% of total volume)."

In other news, the hot season has arrived. Its about 110F here, so no cooking with gas today!