Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Everything surrounding the subject of food here is vastly different than in America, from where and when and what you purchase as ingredients, to prep and cooking time and storage, to presentation, taste, and impact on energy level and digestive processes. Despite those differences, I feel like I'm eating pretty well here. 80% of my meals contain rice, but they also have a variety of soups (potato greens, cassava leaf, kidney bean, pumpkin, okra, eggplant, pepper, etc) made to the same basic pattern as below: onion, peppers, tomato paste, and the namesake vegetable, which is usually super fresh. There are no processed foods, and no storage, so everything is cooked and eaten fresh. And when I'm not eating rice and soup, I'm usually eating plantains and hard boiled eggs (my most frequent and most appreciated breakfast). I just looked up the nutrition facts online, and plantains have almost twice the potassium bananas have. I also eat  'plenty' pineapples, butter-pears (avocados), and other local fruits. 

At my insistence, Munah taught me to make kidney bean soup over the coal pot this weekend. I was very excited to learn because a) it is one of my favorite meals here, and b) I will be living in my own house in less than a month, and I will have to do everything for myself. The moral of this story is PATIENCE, because cooking by coal pot (or just in Liberia in general) takes a looooong time.

Kidney Bean Soup

Ingredients:
1 'cup' (aka 12 oz can) kidney beans, or dried beans cooked and prepared in advance
50 LD worth of chicken (roughly one thigh/drumstick combo plus "small more")
2 small onions
1ish handful of small and VERY spicy peppers
6 oz pouch of tomato paste
1 Vita/Maggi cube (shrimp-flavored boullion cube, pretty much straight MSG I think, the secret ingredient in almost all Liberian dishes)
+/- 1 cup Argo oil or red oil (I used considerably less, since I don't find a thick film of oil floating on my food as appealing as Liberians do)

Prep time: 1 to 1 1/2 hours depending on how fast you can get your coal pots lit

The kitchen I worked in is the dedicated cooking space behind the house, furnished with a cement half-wall, a plastic chair for the guest, a wooden table, and a couple of coal pots:

counter space, cutting board, and stove

kitchen sink and cupboard

Start the coal pot, using left-over hot coals from the morning or a small twist of rubber lit and placed under the piled charcoal. Fan coals to get them started, and BE PATIENT, because it takes FOREVER for the fire to be hot enough to cook on sometimes. 

First, wash and skin the chicken. Then boil it 'nice' with one chopped ('slashed') onion and some of the vita cube. While it boils, slash the second onion and the peppers, open the can of beans (with a knife: place tip on lid of can, hit base of handle with flat of palm, rinse and repeat until lid can be pried off), and add tomato sauce. When the chicken has boiled sufficiently, pour it and stock into a bowl. Put half the oil in the pan to heat and remove bone shards from meat. When oil is hot, add onions, peppers, tomato paste, beans, and chicken/stock. Add more oil and vita to taste, and leave on fire to simmer until 'dry'. While the liquid is simmering off the beans, start the second coal pot for rice. Wash rice thoroughly, picking out any rocks, bugs, or other foreign matter. Don't measure the water-to-rice ratio. Instead, just add 'some' and check frequently during the cooking process to add or remove water until desired 'softness' of rice is achieved. Serve soup over rice from communal bowl/pot. Eat with fingers or spoons. (Except in the case of American guests. They should be served alone inside at the table, with door closed to keep out mosquitos, air and light, spoon not optional.)

The end: it was delicious (even consumed alone listening to Liberian compliments through the window screen). I will not starve living on my own.