When I saw Kwame Onwuachi had a new cookbook, my interest was piqued. Any Top-Chef-favorite cookbook is going to get serious consideration in my kitchen, if for no other reason than it reinforces the lessons and ideas featured in the show, which I’m already invested in. Kwame’s cookbook, My America, was an easy choice to buy and try because it features regional recipes from the American South, Caribbean, and Africa. For example, the recipe featured here is from “Nigeria/Ghana/Senegal.” When combined with the handful of other recipes from this region in the book, you then have a straightforward menu for an impressive dinner party.

Rather than jumping into a full-fledged dinner party, I opted to give the cookbook a test run with some everyday cooking. Groundnut stew (essentially peanut-beef stew) from West Africa must be served with fufu (lest it be inauthentic or incomplete.) Yay – this is a big reason why I chose the recipe as fufu pops up occasionally on Top-Chef and I’ve always wanted to try eating and making it. The meal is also gluten- and dairy-free.

The groundnut stew took about 5 hours to make (yikes!) and I still had to abridge a recipe for the “Peppa Sauce” by making it in a mortar and pestle. My America will feature many such pantry recipes that are suitable for a kitchen that is devoted to this book, rather than standalone recipes for a hobbyist moving among many books. So far, none of these pantry items / ingredients seem very difficult or involved to make.

Fufu is made most traditionally and centrally with cassava flour, but variations can also include green plantains (very common), as well as true yams or malanga. I found about 4 different ways of making fufu. My America has a recipe that uses fufu flour, which I couldn’t find at my market, so I opted to use a recipe from AfricanBites.com, which chops, boils, and processes the ingredients. Another common method is to chop, process, and boil the starches; this is appealing because the chop-boil-process technique definitely overworked my food processor and I found the texture less gummy than I’d like (this can be improved by further cooking, hopefully). Finally, the most traditional and laborious method would be manually working the starching in a mortar and pestle. Next time I would like to try Kwame’s fufu-flour method.

The resulting stew was super rich and probably will last me more like 6 or 7 meals instead of the advertised 4. It also goes well with bread if you run out of fufu. The stew is of medium-mild spiciness, I would say, so don’t be alarmed by the scotch bonnets. Do watch the salt levels, as I could imagine it being too much if I hadn’t been careful to use unsalted peanut butter or taken the additional step of wiping the rub off of my beef shanks before searing them (good choice). The flavor has peanut notes, but is not monotone and has considerable complexity, and, again, above all, is rich. I did find myself wishing there was more textural variation in the stew though; I’d consider adding more meat or carrots or something too. As I mentioned before, my fufu was also not as gummy as I’d like (bordering on mashed-potato texture.) Still, it is an appealing flavor vehicle and I hope to improve the texture by further cooking.

Update: cooking the fufu did indeed thicken it (especially after it cooled); however, watch out as this stuff burns super easy! Also, note that fufu has around twice the amount of starch and calories as mashed potatoes. It’s easy to eat a lot then feel really full like 20 minutes later. The fufu and stew are kind of addicting even when cold. I bumped both ratings by 0.5 after this update.

Joe’s Rating: 7.5/6 (Stew/Fufu)

Difficulty Rating: 7/4