Cooking Afro-Fusion in Paris

By Debi Williams
SeeingBlack.com Diaspora Correspondent

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PARIS – In Africa, meals are lot like brothers and sisters. Most hail from the same pool of staple ingredients, but differ fundamentally in flavor, presentation and interpretation.

Such is the lesson of Chef Alexandre Bella Ola's gorgeous cookbook, "Cuisine Actuelle de l'Afrique Noire. " Chef Bella lets recipes map the distance from Cameroon to Senegal and points beyond. Along the way, he is met time and again by the staples found in so many pots across the continent — manioc, okra, peanuts, bananas, eggplant. With these old friends close at hand, the variations on cooking are endless, as a visit to Chef Bella's restaurant, Rio dos Camaraos just outside this city confirms.

Chef Bella opened the eatery ten years ago with his wife Vicky and has created a place where the Ndolle, a spinach and peanut stew from his native Cameroon shares equal billing with Tiep bou Dienn, a nationally loved fish and rice dish from Senegal, and Fumbwa, a savory vegetable stew from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Chef Bella covers a lot of ground to assemble more than 60 easy-to-prepare recipes from Western and Central Africa for the book. "I found cooks from places like Gabon, Congo, and Senegal," he says, "and invited them to talk about the products they use and the recipes that were the outcomes." The result is a study of Afro-fusion — similar products, different recipes and singular interpretations across international borders.

"Cuisine Actuelle de l 'Afrique Noire," beautifully photographed by Jean Luc Tabuteau, is divided into 12 key sections that draw from the main repertoire of African cookery: peanuts, onions, rice, banana, gombo (okra), seeds, condiments and aromatics, aubergine (eggplants), vegetables and fruit. Recipes are then offered for a vegetarian, beef, chicken, fish variation.

"In Africa," he says, "the use of products is a function of climate; people adapt and work the products accordingly." That explains the distinctive use of dried and smoked items such as fish, shrimp and meat in African cooking.

"Cuisine", written with journalist Joelle Cuvilliez, offers a proverb along with historical and nutritional information on each of the ingredients. The Manioc section, for instance, highlights the ubiquitous tuber in all its glory: "Rich and poor alike enjoy manioc. It turns up on plates as an important side dish in Cameron as miondo; in Nigeria as fufu and gari; and in Cote d'Ivoire as attieke. Like its starchy counterpart — plantain, or banana, it's an excellent side to eat with sauce or stew because it's economical and grows year round in extreme climates."

Many a meal is not complete in Africa without the king of all starch, rice. Chef Bella devotes an entire section to it and details three different varieties.

Those lucky enough to visit Chef Bella's cozy restaurant, (which translates to "river of shrimp," the first name Portuguese explorers gave to modern day Cameroon), know many of these dishes first hand. Vicky Bella Ola graciously serves plates of Poisson braise (marinated grilled fish); sizzling hot Assiettes de brochettes (grilled meat); and Poulet DG, a savory dish of chicken, plantain, peppers, ginger and a touch of curry. This is a meal designed to keep husbands at home.

When you're ready to try your hand at African cooking, Chef Bella suggests making a nice pot of Maffe, a spicy peanut and tomato-based stew popular in Mali and Senegal. "The base is peanut butter, carrots, cabbage, onion, tomato and hot pepper or what we call "piment." Then you can add the meat, fish or eat as a vegetarian dish. A steaming hot pot can be ready in about one hour and a half." As the Congo proverb states" Ceux qui ont poele a frire n'ont pas d'arachide, ceux qui ont des arachides n'ont pas de poele a frire," which loosely means "people who have a pot to bake in don't have peanuts and people who have peanuts don't have a pot to bake them in!"

The next time hunger hits you in Paris, hop the number 9 train towards Montreuil and tuck into Chef Bella's taste of old and new world Africa. Or pick up the book and head to the kitchen yourself.

Rio dos Camaraos, 55 rue Marceau, 93100 Montreuil, 01-42-87-34-84. www.riodos.com.
Cuisine actuelle de l'Afrique Noire by Joelle Cuvilliez, Alexandre Bella Ola and Jean-Luc Tabuteau (Editions Generals First ISBN 2876918196)

— April 1, 2005

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