Cooking the West African Way

Cooking the West African Way

Offers an introduction to West African cooking, featuring typical recipes for everyday meals and snacks, and dishes for special occassions and holidays.

Product Details

Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822541637
ISBN-13: 978-0822541639

Editorial Review

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-These revisions feature low-fat and vegetarian recipes along with a new format and colorful close-up photos. Holiday includes fascinating information on celebrations and a wide range of dishes from more than a dozen countries. West African, which incorporates some of the material found in Cooking the African Way (Lerner, 1988), begins with a discussion of the land and people of Africa, an illustrated map of the region, and mention of several holidays. In both titles, "Before You Begin" sections cover safety, utensils, special ingredients, healthy-cooking tips, and metric conversions while chapters focus on such topics as soups and main dishes. Sample dinner menus along with shopping lists are provided. Most ingredients are readily available with just one or two that may need to be purchased at a specialty store. Recipe titles are both in English and the language of the culture in most cases. Glossy covers, pictures throughout, and well-designed layouts add to the overall appeal of these volumes. Although these are not essential purchases for libraries owning the original editions, they are handsome, useful updates, along with Fran Osseo-Asare's A Good Soup Attracts Chairs: A First African Cookbook for American Kids (Pelican, 1993; o.p.), and Diane Vezza's Passport on a Plate (S & S, 1997; o.p.).
Augusta R. Malvagno, Queens Borough Public Library, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

I checked this out from the local library, and have prepared many of the recipes in this book that are just fantastic! The Egusi Soup with Fufu and the Curry were great hits at a dinner party I recently hosted. I find the recipes in this book to be authentic, delicious, and in fact rather simple to prepare. Many of these recipes require an hour or longer to prepare, but I found the extra time well worth it as the dishes are very scrumptious. Many of these recipes are a bit spicy, and that is one thing I LOVE about African cooking, but if you cannot tolerate a bit of spice, then this might not be the book for you. There are only a few ingredients called for in this book that might be difficult to find in the typical American market, but in most cases alternate ingredients are listed. This recipe book also includes a map of the area and a some pages describing the people, culture, holidays, and cuisine. I love this book and its recipes, however, I only give it 4 stars because of the price. This book has fewer than 80 pages, and not so many recipes so I thought that $20 and up is a bit steep. However, there are just a few recipes in there that I simply must have, even at this slightly higher-than-expected price.

Cooking the West African Way is a great introduction to cooking food from West Africa. This cookbook contains recipes from Nigeria, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. The authors carefully explain the food culture of West Africa. For example, how many Eat Africans only eat a couple of times a day and eat very fresh food due to the lack of electricity and refrigeration.