Efio Tiger Nut Togo Food
Efio Tiger Nut Togo Food
Lome, Togo West Africa
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Andy of HoboTraveler.com
This is called Efio in the Mina language of Lome, Togo, and the Nigeria man called it Tiger Nuts in the Nigeria English. I suspect the reason is because of the stripes on the side.
It taste something like a raw peanut, but peanuts taste much better. I think this nut has arrived in season or they are harvesting them now, as I now am seeing them sold. This handful of Tiger Nuts cost about 25 CFA or maybe 5 cents US.
This is another of the mysteries I encounter daily, what is this, why, where, how, etc, it is easy to see why curiosity killed the cat.
What is this? Does it grown on tree, in the ground, what is it?
Efio Tiger Nut Togo Food
Labels: Togo, Togo Food, West Africa Food
3 Comments:
Tiger Nuts
Tiger nut, chufa, earth almond
(Cyperus esculentus -- Family Cyperaceae)
Tiger nuts are fruits from a perennial which, like the potato plant, sends out underground runners. It is shunned as a weed in the majority of warm countries because of its creeping, rapidly expanding roots. It was the Arabs who brought this Cyprus grass plant from Africa to Southern Europe. It is now cultivated on only a small scale in North Africa and Spain, where it is esteemed for its nutritional content, as well as its nutty almond-like taste. These rhizomes are acorn-sized and chestnut brown to blackish-brown, with a wrinkled skin.
Wikipedia Tiger Nut page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_esculentus
They're delicious Andy. At least I think they are. Try them mixed with the rice the next time you cook rice. If you start with dried ones, very wrinkled and grey, then boiling them for a few minutes makes them swell and go from hard and chewy to tender and crunchy.
In Spain (and Mexico?) they make a wonderful cool drink from them called Horchata. You could sell it in your guesthouses. There's an idea!
http://www.xmission.com/~dderhak/recipe/horchc.htm
Bon continuation
Richard
richardtrillo@blueyonder.co.uk
http://theroughguidetokenya.blogspot.com
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