Gonna cook Ghana Food part 3

Over a year ago, I posted that we were going to try cooking Ghanian food after I bought a cookbook for it with a giftcard. A month after the first post about cooking Ghanian food, I included pictures and a description of two other recipes we tried, though under a different post name.

So, this is part 3, even though the second part did not appear under that name. I recently thought about my abandoned goal, and decided to take that recipe book back off the shelf and make another recipe.

A few weeks ago, we made Beef and Bell Peppers.



It turned out really well. Blake was very skeptical of the recipe as it involved marinating the beef (we used bison) in red wine vinegar. He hates the smell of vinegar, and when he came home as it was marinating,  he was worried that he would not be a fan of this recipe at all. But when it was done cooking, and all of the ingredients were combined, we both enjoyed the flavor of the dish. It also had good lasting value as a leftover meal.

It is still a bit challenging to find recipes with all ingredients easy to find, and since so many of them are stews, a part of me wants to wait until fall to make them. On the other hand, I understand that Ghana is generally hot, and so I really shouldn't be put off from doing their recipes just because we are going through a heat wave in California.

While I am at it, I might as well share a few other meals that we have made this summer, many of them using our new pan, which I am really excited about. We finally cashed in some of our credit card thank you points to get a Williams Sonoma stainless steel pan. Up till now, all of our pans were non-stick, but some recipes need a pan that sticks!


This is a healthy spin on a Chile Relleno. The stuffing has quinoa, bison, zucchini, tomato, dried cranberries and onion in it. I used bell peppers, because the poblanos the recipe calls for are too spicy for me (meanwhile Blake added hot sauce). The white sauce on top is made with pecans, sour cream and milk, and adds a great touch to an already good combination.


I don't know if the above recipe has a specific name, but it is one we have made a number of times before, though our most recent batch was the best yet. It has pumpkin, swiss chard, onions, sausage and pasta in it, and amazingly, it has tons of flavor with very few "bad for you" ingredients. Especially cool about this attempt is that we used our own few home grown pumpkins for it. The pumpkins are roasted before they go into the saute.


So, I am aware that this picture is not the most flattering. But it started out as a good base recipe. Then, I used some of my blossoming cooking skills to enhance the original and make it even better. It is a packet that has zucchini, tomato, basil, mozzerella and chicken in it. I added some onion and garlic salt as well as more basil than the recipe stated. All of this gets wrapped up in foil, and then cooked in the oven. When you take it out, the chicken is flavorful, the mozzerella is melting, and it is really just a tasty combination.

Those are just the few meals that I remembered to take a picture of, but so far we have been really enjoying our new pan, and also learning how to cook in a way to not let food stick to the bottom.