The Unofficial World Cup of Food 2010

Although the start of the World Cup is still several days away at the time of writing, I thought that it was perhaps inappropriate to leave a food page such as this without a solitary recipe appearing on it. I therefore decided to put the names of the countries which will be less well known to most of us in a cultural and culinary sense in to a figurative hat, pull one out and see what I could come up with in terms of creating one of that country's national dishes.

Purely at random, the country which I pulled out was Ghana, in West Africa. I thereafter spent a fair bit of time browsing the Web to find a Ghanain recipe suited to this project. The main problem I came up against was that many of the ingredients used are not too readily available in the semi-rural West of Scotland. Although it was always my intention to improvise, I did not want the dish to entirely lose its identity in this respect. I finally, therefore, found this dish, called "Shoko," which is a beef and spinach stew. The quantites here will serve two people.

Ingredients

1lb stewing beef (cut in to approx. 1" cubes)
2 14oz cans of chopped tomatoes in tomato juice
1 large white onion (finely sliced)
1 green bell pepper (de-seeded and finely sliced)
3/4lb fresh baby spinach leaves
1 red chilli pepper (seeds in, finely chopped)
1 tsp freshly grated ginger
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp caster sugar
1 tbsp sunflower oil

Method

The beauty of this dish is that it is an incredibly straightforward, one pot creation. The negative side is that it has a cooking time alone of two and a half hours, so it is one to prepare on a day when time is not going to be an issue or concern.

Begin by heating the sunflower oil in a very large pot. Then add the beef to brown, stirring it around constantly. Continue by adding the peppers and onion to cook off for a couple of minutes in a similar fashion. All the remaining ingredients should then be added with the exception of the spinach and the mixture brought to a gentle simmer. It should then be simmered for two hours. An occasional stir will be necessary and it may require the addition of a little boiling water if it is in danger of becoming too dry. Be careful, however, not to add too much. Something between quarter and half a pint should be sufficient, as water will come from the spinach when it is added.

After two hours, the spinach should be rinsed, squeezed dry and added to the pot. It will seem at this stage that the amount of spinach being added is excessive but the spinach will wilt very quickly and assume a fraction of its previous volume.

When all of the spinach has been stirred in, the Shoko should be simmered for a further thirty minutes. It is traditionally served with plain, boiled rice but I added a little parsley and grated garlic to my rice, not just for presentation purposes but for taste purposes as well. Allow two ounces of dried rice per person.