Burkina Faso: Babenda, To and Bissop
Burkina Faso is a West African country that is known as “The Land of Honorable Men,” but sadly, the country has been ravaged by violent terrorism and poverty since 2016. Almost 7% of its citizens rely on humanitarian assistance for survival and school attendance dropped from 60% to 25% over the last few years, as many school have closed due to the huge amount of terrorist attacks and violence perpetrated against school children and buildings.
To be honest, finding recipes for Burkina Faso was extremely hard but, after lots of searching, and a visit to our local African market, I decided to make babenda, to and bissop.
I chose to make babenda because it was one of the most frequent dishes to pop up in my google searches, and because it uses an ingredient that I thought might be interesting- fermented locust beans. Also called soumbala or dawadawa, the locust beans are said to taste and smell like blue cheese. I think that description is being generous. It was incredibly foul smelling- even the owner of the African market told me to put it in the freezer immediately, until I used it, because if stored in the fridge it would “make everything stinky.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong, and I’m not gonna lie, it tasted exactly how it smelled: not good. I literally had one bite and just couldn’t do it. The smell and the aftertaste was just TOO MUCH for me. It didn’t help that it had dried anchovies in it as well- I’m not exaggerating when I say it tasted like rotting fish. This is the first time I haven’t been able to eat/finish a dish or meal, so far- we actually ended up having frozen pizza for dinner lol! Now, I’m guessing that I probably didn’t make this right (either that or this dish is an acquired taste), but I can promise you I will NOT be making it again.
Babenda mixture… looks appetizing right? LOL.
To go with the babenda, I made to (pronounced like “toe”), a mash made from millet flour, which was also not very good. The initial taste is pretty bland, which I expected since it’s made from only flour and water, but the aftertaste from the millet was quite bitter! Another dish I will not be repeating…
Lastly, I made bissop, which is a hibiscus tea, and it was the one highlight of the meal! Most of the recipes I found had pineapple and/or mint added for flavoring, and since Burkina Faso is also known for their strawberries, I added them as well! I made a simple syrup infused with the pineapple, mint and strawberries and added it to the hibiscus tea. I was able to find hibiscus tea at the cutest little tea shop in Denver- Kucha Tea! I ended up buying wayyy too many fun teas and some tea accessories as well, but it was worth it! This tea was really refreshing and such a beautiful color!
Bissop!
Pineapple, strawberry and mint simple syrup.
Gorgeous hibiscus tea leaves!
Unfortunately, I would not call this meal a success, but it was still fun to try new things and now I have lots of delicious tea! Anybody else have cooking fails? It was a bit disheartening to have made such an inedible dish, but I figure 1 out of 28 (so far) isn’t toooo bad lol.