Hmmm! Foooood!

Today's post will be short and sweet. I am going to let you have a recipe for a bread which people in Sierra Leone and Liberia love to eat. It is called Rice Bread and it is made with rice flour, bananas and sugar.
Bananas are cultivated in West Africa, they produce fruit year round and are a staple of the West African diet. They fry, boil and bake bananas and people can sometimes get sick of them.
Bananas start off with a lot of starch and very little sugar. As they ripen, the starch turns to sugar. As the sugar starts to increase in the fruit, it shows up as dark spots on the skin. So the darker the banana, the sweeter it is. This is why with this recipe, you add the sugar to your taste. The bananas themselves contain a lot of sugar; the riper the bananas are, the less sugar you should add.
Because there are always a lot of bananas available and it is hot, they tend to become overripe very quickly. And also because it is plentiful, very few people eat the overripe bananas. In Sierra Leone, the fruit traders in the market will give away the fruit at the end of the day because no one in their right mind will buy overripe bananas. Even now I still won't eat overripe bananas (I find them far to sweet). I will, however, eat them baked or fried or in fritters. This recipe is one of my favourite ways of using them.
Here we have a recipe which will give you enough mix to bake a loaf of about 20cm x 10cm x 5cm (8in x 4 in x 2in).

A Recipe for Rice Bread
You will need:
6 large overripe bananas
1.5 cup rice flour
3/4 - 1 cup sugar (depending on the ripeness of the bananas)
1 whole nutmeg (grated)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
90ml vegetable oil

What to do
1. Mash or blend the bananas into a smooth paste.
2. Mix in the flour slowly to avoid bumps.
3. Mix in the sugar slowly. Add enough sugar to your taste.
4. Add in the grated nutmeg, cinnamon and oil.
5. Make sure everything is mixed in properly and pour the mixture into a non-stick loaf tin. If you are using a loaf tin that sticks, rub in a drop of vegetable oil.
6. Bake for 45-60mins at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. You can put a skewer in to check for doneness.
7. Leave on a wire rack to cool.

Now go off and make some rice bread. This is your time to try something new. Enjoy a slice or two of rice bread with a nice hot cup of lemongrass tea or with very cold ginger beer (I'll show you how to make a good ginger beer soon).

Amiexx