Fufu is to Western and Central Africa cooking what mashed potatoes and pap is to us. It's a starchy accompaniment for stews or other dishes with sauce.

To eat fufu: use your right hand to tear off a bite-sized piece of the fufu, shape it into a ball, make an indentation in it, and use it to scoop up the soup or stew or sauce, or whatever you're eating. You can also place it in the bottom of a bowl, and scoop soup of stew over it.

In Western Africa, where Ghana sits, Fufu is usually made from yams, sometimes combined with plantains. But you can't substitute rice or potato flour for it in a non-traditional recipe.

QUICK FUFU

Ingredients:

2 cups of water
1 can of chicken stock
2 cups of potato flour (plaintain flour is best, but hard to find. In a pinch you could use rice flour)
1 cup of tapioca or cassava flour

Method:

Mix the ingredients before you put the mixture in the stove. Put the stove in medium-high heat and put the pot on. While it heats, continue to stir consistently for approximately 15 minutes until the contents become thick. Add a little water as it becomes thicker to achieve the perfect texture. Cover the pot and leave it to cook for approximately 2 minutes. Stir the final product . 

Shape the fufu into balls (this can be done by putting a cup of fufu into a bowl with a few spoonfuls of warm water and shaking the bowl back and forth until the fufu shapes itself into a ball).

Serve immediately with meat stew (such as Algerian veal stew with spinach and chickpeas) or a soup (such as Organic spicy peanut soup) any dish with a sauce or gravy.

SWEETCORN FUFU

Sweetcorn has become an important food source in much of the continent, used both as a vegetable and dried as ground to make flour. Here corn adds texture to a flavour-rich udate of fufu.

Put 1 small sweet potato (peeled) and 2 medium baking potatoes (peeled) in a large pot, add water to cover and bring to a boil. Boil until tender (about 30 minutes). Five minutes before the potatoes are done, add 6 ears of sweetcorn, shucked. Drain the potatoes and corn and tranfer the potatoes to a large bowl.

Set the sweetcorn aside to cool slightly, and mash the potatoes with a fork. Cut the kernels from the cobs and fold into the potatoes. Combine 1 cup coconut milk, 30ml olive oil and 30 ml butter in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir into the mashed potatoes, then add 7ml garam masala and 2 ml salt and mix well.