Burkina Faso

In West Africa Burkina Faso is a landlocked country.  Colonized by the French, British and Germans quite a bit of their food has influences of these nations.    Burkina Faso cuisine was challenging to find recipes for.   Africa in particular is quite the challenge as recipes are not readily available online and what you do find is a very adulterated recipe of how people remember the recipes.  I find at times struggling through google translations and trying to come to a compromise of how a dish should or would have tasted.   However having said that there is also the matter of ingredients and how they taste here versus the home country.   Irish cream and butter would be a great example of the huge difference of quality and taste between Canada and Ireland.

The Menu

Bicycle Chicken

This was a unique recipe to say the least, with a unique name.   The name comes from two possible explanations I came across online.   First from the gait of the chickens as they ran around and the second explanation is from the way the chickens were delivered on a bicycle.   I was very nervous while making this marinade as the chicken had to be marinated in vinegar and spices overnight.  I thought the marinade would denature the chicken too much and cause the meat to become mushy.  This was not the case and the chicken turned out stellar.   However realistically if the chickens were delivered by bicycles in the heat I could see marinating it in vinegar to kill of any bacteria or germs that the chicken may have.    I used chicken thighs but am sure a chicken breast would not stand up to the vinegar marinade for so long without getting mushy.   I will make this chicken again and will experiment with vinegar based marinades that are very acidic to see what can be achieved.   

Peanut Spice

I made this spice from an explanation of how it should taste.   Roasted peanut powder,  Maggi and ground chilies.   From my understanding this is a common spice that would be used to sprinkle over the food.   My rendition was a complete fail and no one liked it.  

Riz Gras

Fat rice,  a dish made with lamb, chicken or any meat gets its name from the amount of oil used in its preparation.   I was using fatty lamb shoulder so really took out quite a bit of the oil that the preparation called for.  The ingredients were straight forward however I did not like the directions of the recipe.   So I made a few modifications like searing the meat and deglazing with the onions etc.   I was quite happy I did these little additional steps as I believe the recipe directions would have produced a dish that would have been inferior to what I made.   Its amazing the little tricks and tips you pick up from reading countless recipes and watching so many cooking videos.  

A typical dessert would have been a Welsh cake however I was not in the mood to fry some dough.   It was one of those desserts that I just could not justify the effort involved in making it.   I was also in a low action mood, from those lazy, hazy crazy dayz of summer.