Cameroon – Local Cuisine of Beans and Miondo

by Wirba Brice Divine Ransinyuy

Local cuisine of beans and miondo is a foof cooked and eaten in ghetto due to the fact that it does not take much money and energy. Locally, the name used to refer to beans is not beans, it is jazz. In suburb areas around most cities in Cameroon, to refer to beans, most say, BH, which means beignet haricot. Haricot is the french word for beans and beignet in English means puff balls. Though Cameroon is made up of the francophones and the anglophones, if there is one thing that brings them together and they say in common is beans. Back here in Cameroon, beans is loved meal. Generally, it is being eaten with rice and also with miondo. In the English parts, it is eaten with miondo, where in the French parts, it is more often eaten with beignet. The point of interest today is the preparation and eating of beans with miondo. What do you have to buy from the moarket in order to cook this deliciousmmeal, well appreciated by children as well as by adults with no exception to it.

COOKING METHOD

A bottle of groundnut oil. It does not mean that you will use all the bottle.

• Four or five tomatoes.
• One big onion
• A stem of percil.
• A stem of celeri.
• Get maggi and salt in small qualities. Make sure to get quality maggi, not any type of maggi.
• A sachet of poivron
• One or two poirro.
• Total spices.
• Canda if you wish to put in meat.
• Three or four miondo, depending you. The miondo is very small in size, the much you take, the better for you and your full satisfaction

COOKING PROCEDURE

1. Soak your beans in water to make it soft. After doing it for a period of one hour, select the dirt from it. Proceed by placing it on fire for another period of one hour thirty minutes. When on fire, do well to put salt to give it some nice taste. When it is ready, remove from fire, Wait for a couple of minutes for the boiled beans to become cold. When it is no longer hot, remove the dirty water from the clean one, then wash the beans with clean water. Do it like two or three times.
2. Now, concerning the miondo, you can decide to either buy it or prepare it yourself. Preparing it by yourself wil take a lot of time, energy, money and resources. So I advice you to buy it when it has already being prepared so as to save your time and energy. What you could do after buying is to heat once again. It is good to know that miondo is made out of cassava stick.
3. After the boiling and preparation, prepare all the spices and fresh spices.As for the tomatoes and onions, you can either grind them or chop them into very small sizes. Having prepared them all, put the pot on fire and pour in groundnut oil. Do not allow the groundnut to steam, immediately putting the groudnut oil, begin putting the spices simultaneously and stir. Now, take the boiled beans and pour into the pot and stir again. After stirring, pour a cup of water, then add maggi and a little bit of salt. If you wish to add canda, do it now and close your pot for about ten minutes. After ten minutes, your food is ready.