Food for Thought – Zoe Adjonyoh
In the spring of 2010, Zoe Adjonyoh was living in an unfurnished studio in Hackney Wick. Peering out of her window, she noticed how thousands were flocking to Hackney Wick’s Art Festival and wondered where all these weary revellers were coming from, and if their stomachs were growling with hunger. Never one to miss an opportunity, Adjonyoh sourced a portable stove and started serving up her infamous peanut butter stew to festival-goers. Before she knew it, she had winding queues around the block.
“People wanted to know where the food was coming from and so started to ask me lots of questions about Ghanaian cuisine,” Adjonyoh explains. “A year later, the same festival came around, and I turned the flat into a restaurant. I went to Ridley Road in Dalston to buy a whole load of fabrics to deck out the place and raided local charity shops for plates. People thought they were eating in a restaurant, but little did they know, they were also in my living room, my office and my bedroom!”
Adjonyoh named the pop-up “Ghana Kitchen”, but it wasn’t long before her makeshift restaurant would metamorphose into a hugely successful brand known as “Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen” (ZGK). Adjonyoh went from serving stews out of her window to working at corporate and private dining events, hosting cookery classes, supper clubs and pop-up events across the UK and Europe. In 2015, she opened her kitchen in Pop Brixton – a community space with shipping containers housing bars and eateries. In 2017, she released her cookbook Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen as a love letter to Ghana. The acclaimed book features recipes like pan-roasted cod with grains of paradise and coconut and cassava cake.
The first chapter of the self-trained cook’s love letter to Ghana was written out of a desire to rediscover her heritage. “My interest in Ghanaian cuisine is a product of parentage,” Adjonyoh says. “My mother was Irish, but my dad was Ghanaian. He wasn’t very present in my childhood, but when he was, the food of Ghana was always present.”
Growing up in an Irish household meant Adjonyoh’s palate often revolved around “meat and two veg”. But it was when she spent time next to her father, watching as he made chalé sauce or kenkey with tilapia, that her curiosity was ignited. “I learned by osmosis, standing next to him. I fell in love with the vibrant textures, flavours and smells. It was so different to the “egg and chips” type food we had in my mother’s household.”
But before pursuing the culinary path, Adjonyoh, by her own admission, “had a strange flux of jobs”. She dabbled in marketing, editorial, journalism, PR and band management. “I guess I’m a solopreneur”, she admits, “I never really wanted to take the 9-to-5 route, and I still don’t.” When Adjonyoh started her MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths University, she realised she wanted to be her own boss. Hosting supper clubs meant she could spread the word on Ghanaian cuisine, while also funding her studies.
As her brand started to attract more and more attention, Adjonyoh realized there was an increased demand for a restaurant: “There wasn’t a place to eat Ghanaian food outside of local communities, nor was there a space to bridge the traditional with the contemporary, and I thought I could address that gap.”
To “bring Ghanaian food to the masses”, Adjonyoh started gathering tips and tricks from the “aunties” of Ridley Road. However, she soon realised that to gain a wholly-encompassing understanding of the cuisine, she needed more first-hand experience; “I went back in Ghana in 2013, and went to see the women in my grandmother’s house and ask my actual aunties for advice”, she says. “I went round to the Volta and up to Elmina. I would eat in solo chop bars (roadside eateries), and if I enjoyed the food, I would stick my head in the kitchen and ask them to show me how they made it.”
During the visit, Adjonyoh realised how many ingredients were at her fingertips. However, she makes it clear that this “diversity” is not national but hyperlocal: “I think there is a desire to shorthand a country and the cuisine,” she says, “but that’s not possible with most countries and especially not with Ghana.” There are staples, of course, “like fufu, plantain and waakye”, but these vary depending on the region. “There is a lot of emphasis on what is grown locally,” the chef says: “in the North, there is a big Muslim community, so there are many fermented foods and less meat. Along the Volta, it is very lush, but the only lake is Lake Volta which tends only to have eel or pike. Along the coast, you have an amazing variety of seafood, from prawns to barracuda.”
To bring this briefcase of West African flavours back to South London, Adjonyoh “wanted to pioneer a contemporary take of traditional Ghanaian ingredients, and for people to taste the traditional but also the new.” The wide-ranging but small-plate menu did just that, offering Zoe’s JFC (Jollof fried chicken) with shito mayo, Suya Style Griddled Rump Beef Kebabs, Red Red Spiced Bean Stew with fried plantain to Okra tempura fries.
The ZGK restaurant shut up shop in 2018, but Adjonyoh has continued to trailblaze. She has moved to America, where she is currently house-hunting in New York with her sous-chef, business partner, and wife Sara. The pair have recently set up “Sankofa Kitchen”, which is a way for Adjonyoh to explore a host of other cuisines.
“It’s a way for us to be more playful with pan-African ingredients from countries like Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria,” Adjonyoh says. “My wife Sara is also Jewish-Italian-Hungarian-American, and we will incorporate those cuisines as well. The experience will be reservation only 12-course meal.”
For Adjonyoh’s last ever supper, she chooses to kick things off with “something cold and light”. While she is deciding, Sara tries to suggest a “prawn cocktail”, but after a quick consideration, she humorously disobeys her wife and opts for a “ceviche of octopus”. To follow, she picked Nkatsenkwan (Ghanian peanut stew with lamb). “It’ll always be my last meal on earth as it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever put in my body,” she enthusiastically says. According to Adjonyoh, the key to a fantastic Nkatsenkwan is using peak-performing ingredients. She explains how you need to let mutton cook for hours and use fluffy, oiled yam with “week 5” plantain. She is not usually a “dessert person” but still indulges in some “sticky toffee pudding with custard”. To drink, a glass of “sparkling pink lemonade”.
When reflecting on her rollercoaster journey, Adjonyoh admits that she was never really supposed to be a chef and that it was more of a happy accident; “I didn’t get into cooking, it found me”, she says. “The universe sent it my way in a very heavy-handed series of events that I could no longer resist.”
Her new podcast Cooking up Consciousness is available to stream now.
Nkatsenkwan (Peanut Butter/Groundnut Stew with Lamb)
Serves 4-6
Nkatsenkwan, as this dish is known in Ghana, is most frequently eaten with Fufu (pounded green plantain or yam with cassava), but you can also serve it with boiled yams, cassava or even rice. It’s equally good served on its own as a rich winter stew with a sprinkling of gari (fermented, dried and ground cassava) and a side of fried sweet plantain. This recipe is for lamb (or mutton), but it can be made with any combination of meat and seafood. There is a traditional Fante version of the recipe on my blog that features large forest snails and crabs for the adventurous palate.
Ingredients
2kg (4lb 8oz) mixed bone-in lamb (or mutton) neck and shoulder, cubed
500ml (18fl oz) water or good-quality vegetable stock
1 onion, finely diced
5cm (2-inch) piece fresh root ginger, grated (unpeeled if organic)
1 garlic clove, crushed
8 green kpakpo shito (cherry) chillies, or substitute 1–2 Scotch Bonnet chillies, pierced, according to desired level of heat
1 tsp extra-hot chilli powder/ 1 tbsp curry powder
2 tsp sea salt/ 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
500ml (18fl oz) uncooked Chalé Sauce
100–200g (3 ½ –7oz) organic peanut butter, depending on how thick you want it
1 red Scotch Bonnet chilli, pierced
3 tbsp crushed roasted peanuts, to garnish
Method
Put the lamb into a large, heavy-based saucepan, cover with the measured water or stock and add the onion, ginger, garlic, kpakpo shito chillies, chilli powder, curry powder, sea salt and black pepper. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer over medium heat for 25 minutes until the lamb juices run clear, skimming off any froth that rises to the surface.
Stir in the chalé sauce and then add the peanut butter 1 tablespoon at a time while stirring until it has all dissolved.
Add the pierced Scotch Bonnet and cook for a further 45 minutes–1 hour over low heat, stirring regularly so that the sauce doesn’t stick to the pan until the peanut oil has separated and risen to the top, which means that it’s done.
You should have a soupy consistency and super-tender meat falling away from the bone.
Serve with your choice of side dish (see recipe introduction), or with crushed roasted peanuts or gari sprinkled on top.