BENIN - CHICKEN IN TOMATO SAUCE WITH SMOKED FISH, CRAB CALALOU, BAY LEAF RICE & FRESH CHILLI CONDIMENT
Perched on the Gulf of Guinea, Benin is a West African country with a deep history of devotion to the Earth and a belief system that everything in nature is sacred. In keeping with those long-held values the ancient farmers of Benin had practiced sophisticated agricultural traditions of cultivating yams, millet, rice, sorghum, cowpeas and oil palm, alongside a rich variety of Indigenous vegetables, fruits and other crops for millennia before Europeans turned up. Portuguese traders first arrived on Benin’s Atlantic coast by sailboat in the late 15th century. They introduced new culinary ingredients to the Beninese kitchen (such as corn, tomatoes and chilli pepper varieties), which local cooks embraced and married with their traditional foods to create a new food story. Then, at the turn of the 20th century Benin came under French colonial rule until 1960. Surprisingly, the culinary influence of France was fairly small. The French did introduce European bakery good...