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Somewhere downtown amongst the bustle of tango dancers, Kurdish cooks and costumed martial artists, expect to find a man named Nana Otibribi III waiting to hand you a meat pie. After all, we don't call it Tucson Eat Yourself for nothing. (OK, that's the unofficial moniker for Tucson Meet Yourself, but it's so much more fun.) This free, three-day festival—aside from featuring a dynamic combination of folk music, dance, storytelling and art—is notorious for its tantalizing selection of ethnic food vendors.
This year, Oct. 9 to 11 at El Presidio Park and the main library's Jacome Plaza, 40 nonprofit ethnic clubs will sell food items from their native cuisines. The selection should span almost every continent, with new vendors selling food from Trinidad-Tobago, Persia, Kurdistan, Central Asian Ahiskan and more.
Otibribi, along with his comrades from the Arizona chapter of the Ghanaian Association, will attempt to represent the national cuisine of the West African nation Ghana. It's their first time at Tucson Meet Yourself as well.
At first glance, Ghanaian food is not unlike the cuisines of its neighboring countries. Some of the names are the same, but the recipes are a little bit different.
“We may all be eating about corn or we may all eat about fufu,” says Otibribi, who has lived in the United States for six years but is the chief of the Baika tribe in the Buem area of Ghana. “Fufu in Ghana is cassaba, but in Nigeria or somewhere it could be yam, it could be plantain.”
The cuisine of Ghana relies heavily on three similar carbohydrates: fufu, banku and kenkey. Fufu, which is a heavy dough ball, is made from the flour of cassaba root, otherwise known as yucca. Kenkey is made from corn flour, and banku is made from both corn and cassaba flour.
To make many of their foods, the Ghanaians pound up the ingredients and assorted spices with a large mortar and pestle.
While Ghanaian cuisine is diverse and includes a number of fishes, meats and porridges, the club wants to keep it simple.
“We don’t want to complicate things over there, because this is a big occasion for Tucsonans,” says club secretary Peter Huadzi. “What we’re going to do, we’re just going to try and bring out the best from Ghana. But it’s very, very simple—it’s ripe plantain, and they’re going to spice it with tomatoes, pepper and ginger. They spice it and then they cut it into pieces. Then they deep fry it, and then it goes with deep fried peanuts.”
That’s only the first dish. The second, an African meat pie, is composed of corned beef, onions, ginger, pepper and African spices, all baked inside a flour dough. It can be eaten as a meal, but also as a snack.
The third dish—“fried rice Ghanaian style,” or jollof—will be paired with a stew made from chicken, tomatoes, pepper, onion, ginger and assorted spices. The prices will vary, but don’t expect to pay more than about $5 for a combination plate with all three.
The Ghanaians will also perform a dancing and drumming routine, set for 4 p.m. Oct. 10. At their booth, you can join them in a game of Oware (similar to the marble game mancala) or a card game called spa. They’re also considering buying a mortar and pestle, so they can show visitors how they really prepare their cuisine.
“Back home, we pound it with a pestle and a mortar. But that’s not what you do over here,” Otibribi says. “The apartment would not allow us to do that.”
