Updated
September 21, 2000
Gambia
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English West African
Cookery
Utensils
Wood and Aluminium are the most popular, with very large and brightly
patterned enamel plates and dishes used for serving
Aluminium Spoon
and Knife
In The Gambia, nothing is wasted, recycling is a way of life. Much modern equipment contains aluminium parts and these are stripped out, melted down and cast into knives, spoons, pots and pans from very small to enormous - what I call missionary pots.
The actual process is amazingly primitive, with sand moulds and melting furnaces made from bits of old bicycles, yet the end results are beautifully functional and failures are just melted down again and reprocessed.
The shell of the calabash is used as a container. These fruits vary greatly in size and shape, from ones small enough to use as ladles or drinks holders to ones half a metre across to hold anything. They are balanced on children's and ladies heads as a means of carrying things around.
Traditionally cooking was done over an open fire, but even now in the towns many Gambian cooks use an out door charcoal burner as the source of heat for their cooking. The charcoal ignites very easily with just a couple of bits of cardboard as the starter, so no expensive lighters are needed. Such stoves are made from re cycled sheet metal from old cars or flattened 40-gallon oil drums.
Every small market will have at least one stall selling charcoal lump wood measured out in different sizes tin cans and costing a few dalasi.
The other major utensil for food preparation is a huge mortar and pestle. This is made from a hollowed out trunk, like a giant bucket. The pestles can be 3 or 4 feet long also made of wood with a bulb at both ends, this is rhythmically thrown in and out of the mortar by 2 or 3 woman, until all the vegetable and spice ingredients are crushed to a pulp, ready for cooking.
New materials like cooking foil are used to wrap the raw ingredients which are then cooked in their own juices directly on the hot charcoal.
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