Equatorial Guinea - April 27th 2020

We are in the middle of a pandemic.  We now live in London.  Both Eric and I are retired.  We could be doing so many things with our time.  And to a great extent we are.  But we are also restricted to doing all these things in the house.  I could be waiting for the restrictions to be lifted and invite friends over for dinner but frankly, there will always be a reason to do something else and it feels like everyone else is cooking (baking more like it) these days so I've decided to just go back to the beginnings and cook for Eric and I.  That's how it started anyway in 2002.  Similar circumstances (I had no job), different country (lived in Atlanta) and there were no lockdowns in place (but George W. Bush was President in the US, the UK was still part of the EU and Salvini was just some idiot that nobody in Italy knew about, and yet we probably all felt things weren't going particularly well... you know, we figured it could get definitely better but not much worse...)

Based on the little I read about Equatorial Guinea on Wikipedia, they probably didn't give much of a shit back then about the President of the US or the EU as they have their set of problems.  I will be brutally honest and admit this is another country I've barely heard of... I was vaguely convinced that it was in Africa but if someone had told me it was in Central America I wouldn't have necessarily disagreed.  As I was reading the stats about the country, I thought that their GDP per capita is not at all bad, $24K, and that's because they're rich in natural resources... but I suspected there was more to that and I was right.  Yeah, per capita means it's the total GDP divided by the number of citizens (for my non economic savvy friends) but doesn't give a measure of inequality.  And there is a lot of inequality there.  In fact, their president is some other dictator who really cares only about himself.  Corrupt as hell and with an appalling human rights violations record.  It puts our problems with Trump in perspective (but I still hope he's going to be voted out in the November election.  Assuming there is an election). 

Back to cooking. All this staying at home is dampening my mood at times.  As Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish and Portuguese colony at various times (got independence in 1968), their cuisine has a lot of Iberian influences as one can expect (and also a lot of peanut butter).  I didn't find a wealth of information on recipes but enough to make a nice meal.  A couple of recipes are even weight watchers friendly (now that I'm back in London, I'm back on weight watchers and happy to report that I am one of the few people who didn't balloon during lockdown - quite the contrary). 

As a starter, I made Succotash.  According to Eric, this is quite a popular dish but frankly it's not something I remember hearing of before.  The recipe called for lima beans but since I couldn't find them fresh or canned, I substituted for canned white beans.  It also called for three cups of corn kernels.  Sounded like a lot to me... so I used 2 small cans instead.  I mean, does anyone even use fresh kernels?  The corn was a bit overpowering but both Eric and I really liked the result.  I think I will make this dish again and experiment with different beans and herbs.  We ended up eating the entire pot.  I think the dill also gave it a nice flavor. 

As a main course I made fish with three sauces.  The recipe called for fish steaks and the only ones I could find (without having to go to a big supermarket and line up to get in for an hour - did I mention we have social distancing and only a few people at the time are allowed in supermarkets?) were tuna steaks.  Eric thought they were too small and perhaps they were.  Also, the recipe suggested we grill them or barbecue them but I pan fried them instead. 
The three sauces were spinach, peanuts and avocado. 
The spinach sauce required 50gr of smoked fish flakes but I think they mean 5gr... I bought smoked fish flakes from Amazon and even 2gr felt like too much!  Eric thought the sauce was a bit bland but I quite liked the flavor of the fish flakes in it even if it vaguely reminded me of fish sauce (that was very popular in dishes when I lived in Myanmar and I hated it). 
The peanut sauce was Eric's favorite.  It was slightly more spicy than the other 2 but I couldn't taste the peanuts very much (possibly because I only put 2 tablespoons of peanut butter instead of 1 cup - but then I was making it for fewer people).
The avocado sauce was ok.  We could barely taste the avocado but that's perhaps because I put too much beef stock in it and that was a bit overpowering. 

As a side dish to go with the fish, I made hot curried okra.  It was hot as in caliente but not spicy.  I could taste a little bit of the peppers but it was definitely not hot.  Also could not taste the curry either but as it only called for one teaspoon of curry, I'm not at all surprised.  Perhaps it meant 1 tablespoon?  Eric said it wasn't as gooey as okra normally is and I take he didn't hate it.  I quite liked it and will be eating the left overs as a weight watchers friendly lunch. 

Finally, I forced Eric to eat dessert.  He usually gets away with having a small bite or not having it all, but since it was just the two of us, I insisted he tried it.  Or else, who would have given me some measure of how good or bad it was (ok, this point is moot and I'm a bit silly for even asking someone who doesn't like dessert to tell me how it was).  I made banana fritters.  I thought it was really nice but Eric's only comment was: I'm not much of a banana's sort of guy.  Or a strawberry... or any fruit really.  But he ate the entire serving so he didn't hate it.

As I don't normally score my own dishes and Eric is a low scorer, I felt that asking him to be the only judge would have made this a worse than usual meal... so in the interest of fairness, I didn't ask him to give me a number score.  But I would have to say he loved the succotash.  I think that was a winner...

Here's the full menu with no score but links to recipes:

Succotash 
Pescado con tres salsas (Spinach Sauce, Peanut Sauce, Avocado Sauce)
Hot Curried Okra
Bunuelos de Platanos 

I'm hoping that I won't have to continue to make these dinners just for the two of us... I have enough room at my table to social distance with at least one friend so perhaps I'll be able to have someone over for the next one: as all the F countries are done, we are going to Germany next time!

Stay safe and stay tuned!