African cooking staple: fufu flour

There is no denying: I am crazy. When I discover a new kind of exotic foodstuff I am excited like a child.

The first time I heard the word fufu was in 1996 in a song by a New Yorikan poetess Dana Bryant named Food where she sings and ode to home-made meals tracing their lineage back to "five thousand years of history on the Nigerian countryside". The very name of "egusi soup with fufu" evoked colourful images of what traditional African cooking might be like. But I really had no idea.



My first real life encounter with the cuisine of the Black Continent happened in Bangkok, which has a sizeable African community. I discovered the delights of West African stews and such delectables as fried ram balls. But they did not serve fufu there.

Here in London, Brixton is home to a variety of Black communities from the Caribbean as well as Africa. You can find any imaginable ingredient, except, perhaps, giant snails that were banned from selling for alleged animal abuse. Here I finally found if not the final product then the main ingredient for fufu. It exists in two versions, plantain (savoury kind of banana) and cocoyam (taro root). I am very excited about fixing fufu at home for the first time.