Baked dishes

Epitsi and Boodoongo

1. Select mature ripped plantain

2. Peel them one by one into a palm mortar and pound

3. Continue pounding to get a plantain paste with a rough texture

4. Pound the mixture till it soften

5. Cut fresh plantain leaf and hover it over the fire in the tripod to soften

6. Scoop the plantain paste into a pan

7. Add the ground spices to the plantain paste and mixed together in the bowl

8. Add flour to the paste

9. Mix the flour and paste together with the hand

10. Continue mixing until a uniform mixture is obtained

11. Take a strip of the softened plantain leaf, smear palm oil on it and scoop the plantain paste onto the leaf

12. Wrap the leaf around the plantain paste and fold the ends to lock up

13. Put a scoop of the paste in an empty sardine tin

14. Pour palm oil on it

15. Arrange them nicely on the mesh of the traditional oven and set a fire under it

16. Soak clean fabric or jute sack and cover the oven to allow it to bake slowly by the rising smoke

17. Remove the fabric or jute sack from the oven when completely baked

18. Leave them on the mesh to cool down

19. The one in the sardine tin is boodoongo

20. The one wrapped in plantain leaf is epitsi

    
    
    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    
    
    

Captivating story

Epitsi and Boodoongo are dishes that depict hybridity of cultures. Baking as a cooking process introduced by the Europeans was appropriated as a traditional cooking method by smoking instead of using dry heat oven. The use of empty sardine tin is to preserve its foreign origin, while the use of plantain leaves represents the indigenous ingenuity within the culinary heritage.

Hovering of plantain leaves on fire: This is done to soften fresh plantain leaves and make them foldable. The trick is that after heating the leaves must be left to cool down in order to increase the tear strength so that they do not break or split while folding. That is why the softening of the plantain leaf comes up early in the recipe before being used to wrap the plantain paste for smoking.