Red Red (Bean Stew with Fried Ripe Plantain)

Variations

• The name: red palm oil and a red tomato stew — two red things, hence red red. In Ghana it is also called gob3.
• What goes with it: gari (toasted cassava grains) scattered over is standard, and fried fish or a boiled egg often goes on top. Many food stalls serve it as one item on a loaded plate, the way waakye is sold.
• Against waakye: both are Ghanaian bean dishes sold as a street meal. What differs is what the beans are for — there they are cooked with the rice and become the rice; here the beans are the stew.
• Against fufu: West African stews are distinguished by what you eat them with. Fufu is a dough torn off and dipped; in red red the fried plantain takes that place.
• Against jollof rice and ndolé: reducing tomato until the oil separates out is the shared grammar of West African stews.
• Against chana masala: the same order with the pulses — the tomato goes in after the beans are tender. Different continent, same pectin.
• The plantain alone: the same fruit tossed in spice and fried is kelewele, sold on its own as a snack in Ghana.

Tips

• Use plantains whose skins have gone black. This is the most common failure. A yellow plantain is still starch: fried, it is not sweet and tastes like a dull potato. The skin should be mostly black and it should give when pressed. If yours are underripe, a few more days in a paper bag fixes it.
• Keep the oil low. A ripe plantain has turned its starch to sugar, so it browns far faster than any starchy vegetable. At the 180°C you would use for chips the outside burns before the middle cooks. 160-170°C is right — steady bubbling, not violent (deep-frying).
• Cut it thick and on a slant. About 1.5cm. Thin slices crisp all the way through and you lose the custardy centre that is the point. The slant gives you more surface to brown.
• Salt them as they come out. Salt only sticks while the sugary surface is still tacky. Thrown on cold plantain it all falls off.
• Red palm oil is not a frying oil. Unrefined, it has a low smoke point and a very assertive flavour, so frying in it only scorches it and wastes it. Use it for colour and flavour in the stew and fry in something neutral (cooking oils).
• Tomato after the beans are tender. Acid sets the pectin in bean skins and they will never soften, however long you boil them. Conversely salt in the soaking water helps — the rule against it has no basis (soaking).
• Reduce until the oil rises. In a West African stew you know the tomato has cooked enough when the oil separates and floats. Add the beans before that and a raw tomato taste stays in it.
• Leave the chilli whole. A scotch bonnet is fierce; whole, it lends aroma and can be lifted out. Split, there is no going back (chilli heat).
• Fry in small batches. Plantain is wet, and a full pan drops the oil temperature enough that it soaks up oil instead of browning.
• The stew is better the next day — the beans drink the liquid and it thickens. Fry the plantain fresh, though: it softens within minutes.