Around the World in the Hetzel Kitchen

Guinea-Bissau is a small West African country bordering Guinea and Senegal.  There has been a lot of unrest since they gained independence from Portugal in 1974.  Their conveniently-named capital is Bissau.  Read more in the CIA World Factbook . We're catching up to life a little bit here, although this was still about four months ago.  I cannot for the life of me find the original recipe I used.  I did Bolo a Moda da Guine Bissau - basically, Cake in the Style of Guinea-Bissau.   This one is fairly close , but not exactly what I followed. Oh well, we press on anyway. This looks simple.  A five ingredient cake.  I can do this without anything special from the store!  Butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and milk.  Let's do this! Did I not soften the butter ahead of time?  Was I supposed to?  The world may never know. Brendan spent some time as photographer.  I apologize.   Add some flour and milk and we'r...

Guinea is a coastal nation in West Africa.  The official language is French and it is slightly smaller than Oregon.  Read more here ! According to what Google tells me is West Africa, we have already done The Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, and Burkina Faso.  I have already had a lot of difficulty finding recipes for countries in this region, so I decided to take a different tactic this time.  I got out my trusty International cookbook and found a recipe that said it was from Western Africa.  Do they make it specifically in Guinea?  I don't know.  But I am in the right region. The recipe that caught my eye was Kaklo - Banana and Chile Fritters.  How awesome does that sound?  More of a side dish or appetizer, but I can work with that.  I was originally going to do this in Colorado over Christmas, but things got a LITTLE busy.  Turns out adding seven to nine people to a household of normally two can create some chaos. When ...

" Flag of Ghana ". Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons . Background : First sub-Saharan African country in colonial Africa to gain independence Location : West African, bordering Cote d'Ivoire and Togo Size : Almost 240,000 sq km; 82nd largest in the world          Slightly smaller than Oregon Population : About 25.75 million; 49th largest in the world Source: CIA Worldfactbook This one was a while ago, so bear with my memory.  This was during that glorious time where first-trimester wooziness was gone and third-trimester oh-my-god-I-only-want-to-sleep hadn't started.  What better to do with that time than cook African food? As always, there was a lot of searching involved.  It was a bit easier to find Ghanaian recipes than many other countries.  There were lists like the 10 Ghanaian Foods You Must Eat Before You Die .  Fact: I found this list after I did this cooking and picked some different foods because I...

Photo courtesy user H2O Alchemist on Flickr Location : Western Africa Geography : Surrounded by Senegal on three sides with a small ocean border.   The map is quite interesting. Area : Over 11,000 sq km; 167th largest in the world          Slightly less than twice the size of Delaware          Smallest country on the continent of Africa High Point (Elevation) : Unnamed elevation, 53 m Official Language : English Population : Over 1.8 million; 149th largest in the world Capital : Banjul Airports : 1 Source: CIA Factbook Apparently small African nations like to answer their embassy e-mail addresses to help people!  I got responses from first Gabon and now Gambia with regards to recipe suggestions.  I really appreciate that they have people that take the time to do this. The Cultural Attache attached three recipes in two documents.  The  first  starts with the ingredient "2 cups of peanut bu...