Palm Oil, Garri, Milled Chilli Pepper, Red and White Beans, Dried Cray

Product Description

GARRI (CASSAVA) Garri is a fine to coarse granular flour of varying texture made from cassava tubers (also called cassava roots) which are cleaned after harvesting, grated, water and starch squeezed out of it, left to ferment and then fried either in palm oil or without palm oil and serves as a major staple food in West Africa. It is also called garri or gali in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa. You can not claim to have eaten any West African food without having eaten garri!

Garri is most widely eaten as Eba. Eba is made by sprinkling garri into a bowl or pot of boiling water and stirred until a dough of garri is formed. You could add more water to the dough and stir to your desired texture. The finished product is called eba. Eba is served with vegetable soup and fish or meat. In combination, this constitutes a very balanced diet. Before you finish reading this line, a ball of eba has just been swallowed with a heap of delicious African soup somewhere in Africa, Europe, America or Australia… oh how mouth watering!

Even more refreshing is a meal of coconut and garri under the hot tropical sun! Do you like yours with akara (beans cake) or smoked fish? Put a handful of gari into a bowl and add about half a cup of cold or ice water. You may decide to add sugar and or salt. Some even add evaporated milk and eat with smoked fish, beans, peanuts or coconut. This is frequently taken for lunch in many parts of tropical Africa.
  BEANS Beans is a common name for large plant seed of several genera of Leguminosae used for human food or animal feed.

Beans or Legume seed and foliage have a comparatively higher protein content than non-legume material, probably due to the additional nitrogen that legumes receive through nitrogen-fixation symbiosis. This high protein content makes them desirable crops in agriculture.

Grain legumes are cultivated for their seeds, and are also called pulses. The seeds are used for human and animal consumption or for the production of oils for industrial uses. Grain legumes include beans, lentils, lupins, peas, and peanuts.
  DRY CHILI PEPPER Red Pepper is made from the ground fruit of a plant in the Capsicum family. The fruits, commonly known as "chilies" or "chili peppers," are fiery red or orange pods which rarely grow to more than 4 inches in length. The ground product ranges from orangered, to deep, dark red. Red pepper is a pungent, hot powder with a strong bite.

In Africa, "Red Pepper" is the preferred name for all hot red pepper spices. Traditionally, Red Pepper is used to achieve the characteristically hot flavor of African cooking. It also is used in coking many other kinds of food, including rice, and barbecue sauce as well as meats, salads, and casseroles. Red Pepper is a biting condiment, and the flavor intensifies as it is cooked.
  EGUSI (MELLON) Melon (Colocynthis citrullus L.) is widely cultivated and consumed oil seed crop in West Africa. Its popularly called 'egusi' contain about *3% oil, *8% protein and some other important mineral nutrients. It is consumed in 'egusi soup', melon ball snacks and ogiri, (a fermented condiment). Melon seeds contain a fairly high amount of unsaturated fatty acid, linoleic acid. 
The oil expressed from the seeds is used for edible purposes while the residual cake is fried and consumed as a snack. In South Eastern Nigeria, the inhabitants mix milled seed with ground Pleurotus tuber regium and shape them into balls to substitute meat in their diet.

Egusi soup is a soup thickened with the ground seeds, popular in West Africa, with local variation. Besides the seeds, water, and oil, egusi soup contains vegetables, seasonings, and meat. Typical vegetables for egusi soup include bitterleaf, celosia, tomatoes and okra. Seasonings include chiles, onions, and iru (fermented beans). Meats include beef, goat, fish, shrimp, or crayfish.
  CRAY FISH Prawn or cray fish is a common name applied to large swimming crustaceans, particularly in Britain and Commonwealth nations, which may also be referred to as shrimp. Significant commercial species, valued for their eating qualities, tend to be large, and thus tend to be called prawns. Shrimp that fall in this category often belong to the suborder Dendrobranchiata. The term is only rarely used in North America, and typically for freshwater shrimp.