Fufu (Pounded Cassava and Plantain with Light Soup)

Variations

• The Ghanaian and Nigerian versions are close to different foods. Ghanaian fufu is cassava and unripe plantain boiled and pounded straight away. What is called fufu in Nigeria (akpu) is made from cassava fermented for several days, so it is sour and distinctly smelly, and behaves differently (fermentation basics). This recipe is the Ghanaian one.
• The ratio: all cassava is stickier and stretchier; more plantain gives something softer and faintly sweet. 2:1 cassava to plantain is a common starting point, and some regions work cocoyam in as well.
• Instant fufu flour: stirred into boiling water and worked until smooth. It is the realistic answer without a mortar and is widely used in Ghana too — it just never stretches like pounded fufu.
• Machine instead of mortar: a stand mixer with a dough hook, or short bursts in a food processor. It has to be done hot, and overworked it turns to paste instead of going elastic.
• Change the soup: groundnut soup (nkate nkwan) or palm nut soup (abenkwan) instead of light soup. Groundnut is much richer; palm nut is red and oily.
• Against other West African staples: waakye is also Ghanaian but is rice, and jollof rice seasons the grain itself. Thieboudienne, ndolé and moambé chicken all put the stew in the lead role; fufu is the opposite case, where the lump of starch is the thing with the name.

Tips

• Peel thickly and discard the core. The cyanogenic compounds in cassava concentrate just under the skin. Even with sweet cassava, peeling generously and boiling thoroughly is the standard handling, and it is never eaten raw. The woody core in the middle stays as lumps no matter how long you pound.
• Do not salt the boiling water. Unseasoned is correct for fufu. Salt, heat and savouriness all come from the soup, and seasoning both makes the combination too much (balancing flavour).
• Pound it hot. This matters more than anything else. Gelatinised starch is pliable while hot; as it cools it starts to retrograde and no amount of pounding will make it elastic. Leave the boiled pieces sitting in water or let them cool and that batch is finished (thickening sauces).
• The stretch is not gluten. Elasticity in a wheat dough comes from a gluten network (dough and gluten) and there is no wheat here at all. This stretch is swollen starch granules being mechanically crushed into each other, which is why pounding time is the texture. You are not mixing it, you are hitting it.
• Water by the teaspoon. If the dough is stiff, wet your hand and keep pounding. Poured in all at once it goes slack, and slack fufu cannot be rescued — more pounding will not remove water.
• The turning hand is half the job. Working alone, only the spot the pestle lands on gets crushed. One hand has to keep folding the wet dough back under for it to come out even. Solo, alternate: a few strikes, stop, fold.
• Cracks are the doneness cue. If it will not roll into a smooth ball but splits instead, it needs more pounding. Wet hands and a roll tidy the surface.
• Serve at once. This dish does not wait. Cold fufu sets hard and rubbery and will not soften again in the soup (serving temperature).
• Reheat leftovers with water. Wrap it, then sprinkle a little water and microwave briefly, or put it back in a steamer. Reheated dry, only the outside firms (reviving leftovers, steaming). It freezes, but loses a good deal of its stretch on thawing (freezing and thawing).
• Add the habanero whole and take it out. That is how you dose the heat by time; burst it and the control is gone (chilli and heat).
• Do not thin the soup out. "Light" means not thickened, not weak. Water only to the level of the ingredients, then reduced, is what gives you clear broth that still tastes of something.