United by Food: We Have Been Eating the Same Food Under Different Names
Our first documentary is out, free to watch, and nine minutes long. The people in it make the argument better than any of our press material has.
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Dietary tags come from contributors and AFN does not verify them. They also depend on the products you buy. Recipes here are published for learning, not as medical or dietary advice. If you have an allergy or a medical condition, check every ingredient yourself and talk to a doctor or dietitian. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Dietary tags come from contributors and AFN does not verify them. They also depend on the products you buy. Recipes here are published for learning, not as medical or dietary advice. If you have an allergy or a medical condition, check every ingredient yourself and talk to a doctor or dietitian. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Dietary tags come from contributors and AFN does not verify them. They also depend on the products you buy. Recipes here are published for learning, not as medical or dietary advice. If you have an allergy or a medical condition, check every ingredient yourself and talk to a doctor or dietitian. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement

Kenkey with pepper sauce and fried fish is a complete plate rather than a dish with accompaniments, and the three parts are not interchangeable with anything else. The sour fermented maize, the raw ground pepper and the well seasoned fried fish each do something the other two cannot, and the combination is what people mean when they say kenkey. The sourness is the axis. Maize is steeped for around two days, milled, and left to ferment for several more before any cooking happens, and the acidity that develops is what makes the plate work against fried fish. Ghanaian, Togolese and Beninese coastal cooking pairs sour starch with fried seafood repeatedly, and this is the clearest example of it. Anyone who does not already eat fermented cereals such as ogi, koko or eko tends to need a plate or two before the logic lands. The dish carries its names with it. Komi among the Ga, dokono among the Fante, dorkunu and dokonou across Togo and Benin. It travelled further than that: to Jamaica and Guyana as dokono and konkee, and to Trinidad as paime, carried across the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, where it survives with different fillings and the same technique.
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