Every Thursday we eat an African meal together at the center. That brown lump is called foufou. It is made from manioc. You pinch off a piece in your fingers and dip it in the sauce of whatever you're eating. It's OK, but it's just a filler so not too exciting.
4 comments:
I just had Ethiopian food for the first time on Saturday night, and all of the entrées were served on top of this brown half cooked crepe looking thing, so I wonder if the brown ‘lump’ you are referring to was similar- we would tear off pieces of this ‘crepe’ to pick up the food and eat with our hands. The lentils were delicious, but I think there are a lot of other cuisines I prefer over the Ethiopian.
Yay for Ethiopian food! The spongy pancake thing is called njera (sp?). It's made from a grain and is fermented. It's sort of the same principle as foufou in that you eat it with your hand and use it with the sauce, but the texture and taste are quite different.
Oh my gosh! That's crazy! I just had "west african" food like two weeks ago too. I had that spongy crepe thing and I wasn't impressed. :) It had the consistency of styrofoam.
Elia & Stephanie - sorry to hear your first experience of njera wasn't a good one. It's worth giving it another try somewhere else. When it's done "right" it's Really good! It should have a consistency closer to a pancake or crepe than to styrofoam! It's really good with egg &/or chicken curry.
I may be biased... my first time for njera was when it was made by some wonderful Sudanese people in Spokane. It was EXCELLENT.
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