"In the days after my most recent meal at Teranga, the new café at the Africa Center, a cultural institution in East Harlem, I found myself conjuring the flavor of the Senegalese-born chef Pierre Thiam’s fufu as though it were a song I’d learned and had been humming to myself ever since. Fufu, a staple in many West African countries, is a slightly spongy, slightly stretchy doughlike substance made from one or more starchy vegetables or fruits, such as cassava, plantains, or yams, which are boiled, pounded, and rolled into balls for tearing into pieces and dipping into sauces and stews. The versions I’d had at other pan-West African restaurants in New York were mild, if texturally fit for their supporting role of sopping up. Thiam’s, made with plantains and red palm-fruit oil, was stirringly complex: sweet, nutty, and vegetal, with a distinct funk akin to that of ripened cheese or cultured butter." - Hannah Goldfield
