Peanut Sauce and Ape Actors

Beninese Appetizer

PEANUT SAUCE

INGREDIENTS

1 small tomato
1 small onion
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1½ tablespoons chili powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cube MaggiTM beef bouillon*
1 cup water
10 tablespoons smooth peanut butter

* = While other boullion cubes work fine, Maggi’s are incredibly popular in Africa.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

blender

Makes 1½ cups. Takes 35 minutes.

PREPARATION

Puree tomato in blender. Mince onion. Add onion and peanut oil to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add tomato puree, chili powder, and salt. Reduce heat to low and sauté for 3 minutes. Stir frequently.

Crush boullion cube. (This makes it dissolve quicker.) Add bouillon and water. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add peanut butter. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 15 minutes or until sauces thickens to your liking. Stir frequently. This is served in Benin with boiled yam. It also goes well with rice.

TIDBITS

1) Peanut Sauce is, of course, an anagram for Tuna Ape Cues. Queen Mary I hated the theater, thinking it immoral. She tried fervently to ban it altogether, but succeeded only in driving theater going underground. People attended ribald plays in people’s attics where such animalistic passions such as hand holding and improv comedy took place. Mary I could not abide this licentiousness, so she imposed hateful regulations, such as having all roles played by gorillas holding tuna.

2) It’s important to realize that Joe Ape’s vocabulary was, and still is, quite limited, making line memorization challenging. And as with humans, line retention goes down while holding tuna. So, stage hands constantly cued the tuna holding apes. Hence, “Tuna Ape Cues.” The next queen, Elizabeth permitted human actors. To honor his new patron, Shakespeare, playwright, chef, and anagrammatist, turned Tuna Apes Cues into Peanut Sauce. His peanut sauce was tasty. What luck!

Chef Paul