Fufu & Gari

In West African cooking, a swallow is the soft, stretchy dough eaten with the fingers alongside soups and stews. This category of our atta and flour department carries the dry ingredients for them. Gari is cassava that has been grated, fermented, pressed and roasted into crisp granules. Fufu flour is dried and milled cocoyam, plantain, yam or cassava, cooked into a smooth ball.

Ijebu gari, from south west Nigeria, is fine, very crisp and pleasantly sour. It is soaked in cold water with sugar, milk and roasted groundnuts as a snack, or stirred into boiling water to make eba. Cocoyam fufu is smooth and mild; plantain fufu is slightly sweet with a firmer bite. Both are eaten with egusi, okra soup, ogbono, groundnut soup and Ghanaian light soup.

Families new to these flours often start with a small bag, while regular cooks buy larger sizes. Cooks who also make Caribbean food will find cornmeal nearby, cassava flour for baking sits in gluten free flour, and red palm oil for the soups is in our oils range.

For fufu, bring water to the boil, pour in the flour gradually while stirring hard with a wooden spatula, then turn and fold the dough for several minutes until smooth and elastic. Wet your hands before shaping portions. Keep gari sealed so it stays crisp.