Having given Cameroonian
cuisine a bad rap in an earlier entry, I will plug a couple tasty snacks from Central Africa,
which I was introduced to in Congo but which are also found in Cameroon, and which I treated myself to this past weekend after my first week in Yola.
Actually, the first treat is
nothing you’ll find in a restaurant in U.S.—something I knew under the name
"nsafu" in Congo. I'm not sure what they are called in Cameroon, but
I seem to recall they have a somewhat deceptive English nickname like African
plum, which describes their appearance more or less, but not the taste or
texture.
I had gathered from a friend
who works in Cameroon that this fruit is found there and possibly even up into
northern Cameroon (just across the border from Yola), so I was a little hopeful
that I might come across them here, imported if not actually growing here.
Before I even got around to making an intentional inquiry about this fruit, it
came up by accident in casual conversation, and one of the local AUN staff members
recognized what I was describing right away. They're called "piye"
(pee-ay) here.
So, the other day when I
missed the shuttle bus back to my flat and was provided with a private driver
to get home, I asked the driver to let me know if he saw any piye. We didn't see any along the way
home, but the driver, Jibril, decided to try a few more spots where he expected
to find some. It turned out to be a wild goose chase, but Jibril said he had
seen them at the market. So, I put that on my list of things to find at the
market on Saturday. So, a couple days later, as soon as we arrived at the
market, before could Jibril wander off anywhere I asked him just where he had
seen the piye the previous week and I
headed off in the direction he indicated. After winding through most of the
circute where fruit sellers were stationed, I stopped and asked someone.
"It's finished" I was told. "But someone said he saw them just
last weekend," I replied. "No, in all the market it's finished".
Oh well. I figured the season was over, but at least some day over the next I'd
come across them. I proceeded to go after other items on my list: a
rechargeable lamp in case the lights are out for an extended period of time;
miscellaneous household items; a couple dvds to tide me over until I could get
access to some TV channels other than the free Chinese programming with French
subtitles. After I was about ready to head back to the car, lo and behold I saw
tray full of piye and promptly bought
a couple dozen.
The only real complication with nsafu of piye is getting your hands on the darned things. These fruit are part of the same family as olives and avocados I think, purpole in color when they are ripe and about the size of a date fig. When they come off the tree they are hard. To make them soft enough to eat you just need to warm them up a bit by dipping them in hot water or setting them close to a fire.
Perhaps another way to warm
them to ripeness, as I learned the hard way, is to leave them in a plastic bag
in a hot climate :( That is, when I went to enjoy my hard-sought piye the next
afternoon, I found most of them over-ripened to brownness, some being to
develop a coat of fuzzy mold.
 |
| left: piye at market; right: piye FAIL |
Fortunately, I salvaged a
handful of good ones and heated up some water. Once they soften up, enjoy! The
softened inside is bright green and buttery, more or else like it's big brother
the avocado, but is has a very slight stringy texture like a squash and is a
bit acidic in flavor.
 |
| Stages of piye preparation: (1) start with hard, plum-purple piye from the tree, (2) place them in/by a source of heat (e.g. in hot water), (3) a change to a paler shade of purple-grey means they are getting soft, (4) enjoy the buttery, somewhat acidic flesh (the bright green part), optionally sprinkling with salt |
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