Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Chef Eric Adjepong has spent his life straddling two worlds. Here in New York, which was his home base, and across the ocean in Ghana, where he spent years of his childhood. These two worlds come together to form Eric's culinary sensibility. Home cooks can bring those recipes to their own kitchen with Eric's new cookbook. It's titled Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past.

Inside, you'll find classic dishes like Jollof rice alongside the fusion and fine dining recipes that are Eric's speciality. Also, Eric also opened his very first restaurant a few weeks ago, Elmina in Washington, DC. Eric Ajabong will be speaking tonight at an event with BEM books & more at Padmore's in Brooklyn, but first, he joins me here in studio. Welcome to All Of It.

Eric Adjepong: Such a nice intro, Alison. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Alison Stewart: I am so interested in Elmina. I almost went to Ghana last year, and now we're going to go to Elmina. When did you start the restaurant? Why did you start the restaurant? I hear all about it.

Eric Adjepong: Sure. In a really fable way, I started the restaurant around eight years old, at least, thinking about it and really romanticizing about the idea of bringing West African food, specifically food from Ghana, where my family was from, to the masses. Now in my adult age, I feel like I slap my younger self a high five every time I walk in the building. It's a pretty cool moment to have Elmina here in Washington, DC, and very similar to the book, bringing stories from the past, traditional recipes, and more modern takes on food and things like that.

Stuff that I've been inspired by through travel, through other chefs that I've worked with. It's the culmination of all of that in one space. Very similar to the book, Elmina is doing that in a space where people can convene and commune and eat together in a restaurant. It's awesome.

Alison Stewart: How did you want to update and modernize these recipes while remaining true to the tradition?

Eric Adjepong: What's really cool about the book is that we have two annotations. There's one specifically for traditional recipes, stuff that my ancestors would have cooked, grandparents, great grandparents. I wanted to keep those recipes as pure as possible, as true as possible, but then there's another annotation for more recipes that I've been inspired by with these West African ingredients and taken the liberty to do some 2.0, 3.0 versions of different dishes and stuff like that.

It's one of the really cool moments of the cookbook where you can go back and forth. Back in time, but then also look towards the future of what hopefully I would imagine, some West African food and Ghanaian food specifically can look like. It's not a monolith. I can't speak for all Ghanaians and all West Africans, but it's a really cool moment for me to put my own spin on everything and obviously do it in a book.

Alison Stewart: You obviously spent time there as a child, but you went back and you did research for this book in Ghana. What were you looking for?

Eric Adjepong: Inspiration. I really wanted to speak with the folks on the ground. Everyone is doing everyday life everywhere. We're living, we're commuting, we have families that we look after, but we're all doing it in different places of the world. I wanted to immerse myself.

I grew up in Ghana a little bit, from two to five, just about, and going back and forth as an adult, it's really great to see and humble myself and how life is lived somewhere else outside of New York City. The bustle of New York City. It's a bustle in Acra. It's just a different bustling, a different hustle. Just being able to go see how life is lived, how people eat, how food is a huge part of that was the inspiration.

Alison Stewart: What stood out to you?

Eric Adjepong: Communalism. It's a matriarchal society. Women are the backbone, creating the economy, building the economy. It really is. International Women's Month and Day just here, but truly, it's really the hallmark of Ghanaian food and economy is the woman. Really, the inspiration was just to pick up on all that I can and have a great cook in a mom and aunt, but also seeing how things are done in the market and how merchants are bringing food together and really commuting around that.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting how much takes place in the market.

Eric Adjepong: Oh, my gosh. Insane.

Alison Stewart: That is pre-production.

Eric Adjepong: You said it right. Exactly. Oh, I'm so excited that you said that. Yes. The pre-production of it all. It's magical when you see early morning people coming into their stalls and setting up their stations and selling food and promoting what they have, and the freshness of the ingredients and the inspiration and the vigor that these women have, these merchants have to sell their product. There's so much pride in there as well. Makola Market is where I spent a lot of my time.

It's chaotic, it's a lot, it's busy, but it's home for so many people to earn their living. Just to be engulfed in all of that and watching the economy grow in a very visceral way was awesome. I loved being there. I still love going there. You can get everything from spices to crab to clothing to cosmetics. It's all there.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Chef Eric Ajapong. We're talking about his new cookbook, Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past. He'll be speaking tonight at Padmore's in Brooklyn. Let's say I want to get into this. I want to get into West African cooking. What are some staples I should have in my pantry?

Eric Adjepong: Ginger, garlic, tomato, spices like curry and turmeric, peanut paste, peanut butter, heat. You need a little bit of habanero, some scotch bonnet, mangoes, soursop. I can keep going, Alison. So many amazing things.

Alison Stewart: Where would I go shopping?

Eric Adjepong: We're in New York City. The beauty now, maybe 10, 15 years ago, wasn't as accessible, but the Internet, you can grab a lot of these indigenous ingredients online, and they can come to your house in a matter of minutes or days. Being in a city like New York, there are so many different, eclectic neighborhoods and communities that sell these products and food directly. It's a pretty cool moment. Even for folks in the middle of America, again, using the Internet.

One thing about this book as well, it doesn't pigeonhole you to only using these ingredients. You can find inspiration in other things that give you the same textures and flavor profiles as well. I wanted to be able to have accessibility for everyone. Hopefully, this book does that justice.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about stews.

Eric Adjepong: Talk about it.

Alison Stewart: Stews are special.

Eric Adjepong: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Waakye?

Eric Adjepong: Waakye, yes. Oh, my God.

Alison Stewart: Waakye stew has lot of different components to it. How do they all come together in one dish?

Eric Adjepong: I have no idea. Some of the things on Waakye still are a little bit of a conundrum, but when you put it together, it's one of the most delicious bites. We sell Waakye at the restaurant in Elmina. There are so many popular dishes that are coming off the menu, but I think the Waakye itself is my favorite. I call it the original rice and peas. It's black-eyed peas that are cooked down in millet or sorghum leaves.

It bleeds off this beautiful magenta red color. Very rich, very earthy, the rice is, but then the stew is spicy, it's savory. We add things like garri, which is dry cassava or dehydrated cassava. We add Shito, like our exosauce, the number one sauce condiment in Ghana. Eggs are there, sometimes spaghetti. It's weird. It can get pretty crazy. When you put it all together as to your point, Alison, it's one of the most delicious bites that you'll have. It's just so comforting and warm.

Alison Stewart: This stew is called the Red Red Stew. It's on page 149. What makes it Red Red?

Eric Adjepong: Red Red gets its name from the palm oil that it's cooked in. Palm oil is very deep in color, very flavorful, very earthy. It's black-eyed peas that are cooked in that combination of palm oil and coconut oil. Again, crayfish powder's in there for umami. Think about a dip of a little bit of fish sauce in your black-eyed peas. We serve that as well at the restaurant. It's one of the more popular dishes as well, typically served with avocado for a little bit of fattiness. Some sweet plantain as well.

You get a little bit of everything in the dish. Man, I'm getting so excited talking about it now. Red Red is absolutely, absolutely delicious. One of my go-tos.

Alison Stewart: We're going to talk about the swallows. Tell us more about the swallows and the role it plays in Ghanaian-- Am I saying correctly?

Eric Adjepong: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Ghanaian cuisine?

Eric Adjepong: I say the swallows are the vessel, like pasta or rice. What's really cool and unique about using those swallows, there's fufu, there's banku, there's kenke, there's motu, the rice balls. The really nice part about it, and I think what's so unique about West African food, and to be honest, a lot of food all throughout, let's say, outside of the Western mindset of food, is that we eat with our hands. There's a ritual that goes behind it, cleaning your hands.

There's a visceral communication, a visceral relationship that happens when you're picking up food with your hands and there's no utensils, there's no spoon, there's no fork. You know exactly if it's hot. Your brain gives you that immediate connection to the food and you have a deeper relationship with it. The swallows are a vessel where you pick up the stews or the sauces, or a little bit of the meat or a little bit of the beans or whatever the case is, and you take a little bit of everything and you literally just swallow.

You might chew a little bit, but then it's gone. It's how a lot of babies get into food. It's how I grew up eating food. It's perfect. I love it.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to ask you about a specific recipe in here. It's an arugula salad and it features two Ghanaian ingredients. What are they and how did you come on this combination?

Eric Adjepong: The arugula salad, we're using egusi seeds, which is the melon seed. We are toasting that. This is one of those inspirations again that we take, or at least I took inspiration from having crunch and texture, and building a recipe. You want things that are not so mundane in a bite. You want a little bit of pop, you want a little bit of crunch, you want a little bit of softness in it. That arugula salad does just that. Having that recipe and using these ingredients in that specific way is so unique, but then also very familiar. That's really what the inspiration was.

Alison Stewart: One of your favorite dishes when you were a kid was bofrot.

Eric Adjepong: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What goes into making this dessert, I should say? It is a dessert.

Eric Adjepong: It's a dessert. Definitely, as a kid and as an adult, it's the running joke that can never leave me. When I was younger, at my grandparents house, I would scream out to the vendors every morning, "Bofrot, bofrot," my mom would say. It's a fried dough. You think about like a beignet or a sopapilla, and you have flour, milk, nutmeg, or warm spices like clove or cinnamon that gets mixed together and it's fried. It's like a little bit of a donut. Then we elevate it, or not elevate it.

Honestly, it's elevated on its own, but we push it with a little bit of cinnamon sugar. Man, in the restaurant, we put a Milo ice cream gelato paired with it as well. Right out the fryer, it's just the perfect bite. Summer, winter, fall, whenever the season is, it's always time for bofrot.

Alison Stewart: What is the easiest, simplest recipe in the book, and then what's one that our folks who like to cook, who think they can cook, should tackle?

Eric Adjepong: I would say the basis of the flavor profiles, ginger garlic paste. My mom would have quarts and quarts of this in the freezer, and it was the backbone, the genesis of a lot of the dishes that she made. I'd say the easiest thing to do is just blending ginger and garlic together, and really, you have the base of flavorful food right there. It's the umami. It's the herbaceousness. It's the allium back note for a lot of food. Then the most difficult thing, duache, probably. It takes a little time. It's very involved. You need that ginger garlic paste to get there anyway. There you go.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Chef Eric Adjepong. We were talking about his new cookbook, Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past. Eric will be speaking tonight at Padmore's in Brooklyn. It's nice to meet you.

Eric Adjepong: A pleasure. Thank you so much.