By: Heidi Herald
Welcome back to What’s Cooking @ HEPL! I am Heidi Herald, a Public Services Librarian at Hamilton East Public Library. I will be reviewing one of the library’s cookbooks each month. This month, I selected Saka Saka: Adventures in African Cooking, South of the Sahara by Anto Cocagne with Aline Princet. I tried several recipes from this cookbook, and enjoyed making some sauces called nokoss. I made both green and red nokoss that were used as ingredients in the dishes that I made. Although the recipes I tried from this cookbook were plant-based, there are many recipes that include meat in the cookbook.
I made red rice which appears to be a very simple dish. However, it has many ingredients and was a fairly complicated recipe. The recipe calls for red nokoss which contains 10 ingredients including red chiles, fresh ginger, tomato, garlic, and soumbala powder among other spices. I used jasmine rice to make this dish so it maintained its texture. It is a delicious, tomatoey dish.
I really enjoyed the sauteed okra with mushrooms. This is almost a vegan recipe. If you wanted to make it vegan, you would just omit the dried shrimp in the green nokoss used in the recipe. I served this with white rice.
Here’s a close-up of the green nokoss. It is very flavorful, and often used for fish and crustaceans. I only needed a few tablespoons for the recipes I was making but the recipe made a lot of nokoss! A chef friend of mine suggested freezing the nokoss in an ice cube tray. She also suggested mixing it with cream cheese for a dip.
Finally, in the video below I make Black-Eyed Pea and Beet Hummus. This is great served with toasted garlic bread. Make sure to wear gloves while peeling the beets if you don’t want red-stained fingers!
I hope you will borrow Saka Saka: Adventures in African Cooking, South of the Sahara by Anto Cocagne with Aline Princet from our library collections! It is available in print. Happy Eating!
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Credit goes to Danielle Acton, HEPL’s Adult Engagement Coordinator, for producing the videos and for her help and advice.