Authentic Ghanaian Cuisine and Cultural Practices with Joanna Stein

Interested in the cuisine of Ghana? Internationally, West African cuisine is popular. But chances are you don't know or have never tried any of it before. Broaden your knowledge and learn about authentic Ghanaian cuisines and their culture. In this episode of Action Antidote, we spoke to Joanna Stein, a private chef and event planner about how she immersed herself in new west African cuisine flavors. Joanna is very passionate about cooking and helps their family business in catering services. She is dedicated to having everyone get a taste of Joanna’s kitchen authentic West African Food, Ghana. Whether you're a wanderlust or you're just someone who just wants a mental vacation, Actions Antidote will take you on a trip. Listen to this episode and get a glimpse into the country’s food culture. --- Listen to the podcast here: Authentic Ghanaian Cuisine and Cultural Practices with Joanna Stein Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Those of you who’ve been listening to my podcast, especially the last few episodes, know that I’m really interested in travel, but if you’re really open to travel and travel experiences, you realize that travel is actually a two-way street. Sometimes we get up, we go out, we get in our car, on a train, on a plane and we go visit another place, but sometimes people and experiences from other places come to where we are and that’s something that has happened to me quite a bit this summer, including only a few blocks from my home where food available from my guest today, Joanna, the founder of Joanna’s Kitchen, is available at my local grocery store. --- Joanna, welcome to the program. Hello there. Thank you so much for having me. Definitely. So, Joanna, you make food from your original homeland of Ghana and I’m sure that there are a lot of people listening to this podcast who have never had Ghanaian food or never even had West African food and so what I’m wondering is what can people expect when they try it and what should people be thinking about going into the experience? So, Ghanaian food is very flavorful, it’s full of spice. I do definitely try to make it more of a medium mild so everybody is able to enjoy it but I also do have gluten-free option, I have vegan option, and then meat option. I try to make it so that everybody, regardless of your dietary restriction, you’re able to enjoy the cuisines, a little bit of everybody. So it’s just full of flavor. I’ve had a lot of clients from all parts of the world tell me that it kind of reminds them of like their grandma’s cooking or their back home cooking so it definitely feels good to be able to connect with people from all over and not just Ghanaian people. When you talk about the spices, are you talking about being like heavily spiced, and if someone were to want the full authentic Ghanaian experience, would this most likely be a level of spice that overwhelms the average American here in Colorado or anywhere else? Yes, I would definitely say the average Ghanaian is more of a high to an extra high so it’s more peppery and more spicy and, for me, my experience is just for you just to try our cuisine. So I definitely have the spice there but my goal is more of the flavor. And so like our bell peppers, we use lemongrass, I use a little bit from every cuisine so we use like curry, we use nutmeg, and so I feel like it’s amazing to be able to like see the same ingredients that we use here make the same dishes and so that’s why I also offer cooking classes because I love to be able to show people that you can make this dish, like it’s not unique ingredients that I’m getting sort of from Ghana, like there is certain things like palm oil but most dishes you are able to create yourself as well. Oh, wow. Yeah, because your business is not just about the food, it’s about the catering and the cooking classes. And so what can someone expect from a cooking class? Because I’m sure a lot of people have thought about taking a cooking class or even during the pandemic, a lot of people thought a lot more about cooking and took that up as a common habit. So with my cooking class, I try to create the whole experience so we’re going to be listening to Afrobeat, we’re going to be listening to Ghanaian music. All the plate wears are mostly clay like, we have the African pots. A lot of our dish are eating with our hands and so with that in-home experience, we are going to be most part using our hands to enjoy our meals. I do like to have my guests be a part of the cooking experience so everything is not made beforehand.Share on X So like we are cutting the tomatoes to making the sauce because I want you to see all the process. it is a little bit more of a lengthy process because I still do, say, I marinate it for a while but I also love to be able to see that what all it takes to make a dish. To make many of the dishes that you offer, both through your catering service and your cooking class, how long should someone set aside if someone were to like find a recipe and follow it properly? For most of our recipes, it goes between two and three hours. It is kind of lengthy from the start. If it’s a vegan meal, it’s much, much more simpler, like when we’re making fried plantain and black eyed peas, we would have to soak the beans for a little bit and then we make the sauce and then we fry the plantain so that dish is like an hour 45 minutes from cooking the beans to making everything, but if you’re making like something that has like goat, lamb, then the coarser the meat, it has to cook for a bit of time so it can take between four to five hours. So it’s definitely labor intensive. Oh, wow. What if I --- that reminds me of some of the Southern barbecue traditions that I found out, I’m originally from New York and lived in Chicago, in Colorado so I never really experienced like the real southern culture and then I found out that it’s only considered barbecue with them if you slow cook it over wood and that a lot of people who do their barbecues there will wake up early in the morning to like start cooking the meat that they’re going to serve at like 7 p.m. in the evening just because it just slowly cooks over wood for a long time. I’ve also heard about this movement called the slow foods movement, which is mostly around not being in a hurry all the time, not trying to like cram every activity to every minute or make something that should take a certain amount of time go faster just because we’re always starving for time in our culture today. I definitely agree because I feel like with certain meals, slow cooking the broth, there’s a lot of benefits in it and so being able to enjoy every aspect of it and also my sobolo drink that I make, it’s done in a process of a four-hour process so we brew the hibiscus and the pineapple skin and the ginger and we let that brew down and then once that cools, we add our ginger and our honey to it. So I do definitely feel like a lot of our meals, it’s love, like definitely it’s not a short time period. It’s made with love. And so does that mean that in the Ghanaian or West African tradition, when a food is made with love, does that also mean it’s made like in a group as opposed to just one person by themselves cooking? As a business owner, I am finding help because a lot of our meals, it’s not a one-person labor, it’s definitely a team effort, just because like because we make something called kenkey which is we take cornmeal, we ferment it for about two weeks, and then after that’s fermented, we cook partially of it and then we take corn husk, we individually wrap it and then we boil it for 8 to 12 hours. Oh, wow. Okay, that’s that whole day thing we’re just talking about, yeah. Yeah, and why would you taste it, it almost feels like it gives you like a sourdough because it’s fermented type of feel but I feel like that’s only created over that process, like you can’t just do that in one day and get that sourdough taste. A lot of meals are definitely more challenging for me to do as far as for catering and so, for those meals that are more labor intensive, I try to do in-home experience because I feel like it’s harder to produce that at a mass setting for pop-ups. So, in-home experience, is that where you come in and you cook the meal, like a home-catered meal in a way? In-home cater but also I have my clients be very much involved so they will be helping me cut the meat, mixing the stew. I like them to know what they’re making. So does this include like a lot of dinner parties that people put together, if someone’s having an event --- A girl’s night, yeah. Yeah, one of those, a lot of people over and they all kind of get involved, cook this meal together and then then enjoy it. So when these events, after you cook the meal, everyone kind of cooks it together, do you often like join everyone at the table and talk about like the cultural experience and stuff like that? I always start out by our culture, we are given a name based off of the day you were born. I was born on a Monday so my cultural name is Adwoa. So I always love to like kind of break the ice shell by like, “What day were you born?” so that we have that connection where you know what your cultural name is. And then a lot of the dishes, a lot of people are not used to eating with their hand, like it’s not like a two-handed, like the whole hand method and so I kind of go over like how to properly grab it so that you’re not feeling embarrassed but then also you feel comfortable to what you’re doing as well. Oh, wow. So I have to admit that I’ve been messing up, as I’ve mentioned before, your food is available in this convenience, grocery store a few blocks from my house, the Sun Market,...