akassa — Togo

Akassa, also known as gui in the Fon-Gbe language, is a smooth, slightly fermented paste made from corn that has been cooked, ground and soaked before being formed into a firm dough. It is closely related to other corn-dough staples found across West Africa, sharing their fermented tang and dense, pliable texture, and is typically wrapped in leaves for storage and serving. The dish is reported from several West African countries, including Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, each with its own way of preparing and serving it. Within Togo it appears alongside other corn-based staples as an everyday accompaniment to a main sauce, eaten by hand in small portions pinched off the dough and dipped. To prepare it, dried corn kernels are soaked and left to ferment for a day or more, giving the finished paste its characteristic tang, then ground into a fine, wet meal. The ground corn is cooked in water over low heat, stirred continuously until it thickens into a smooth, elastic dough that pulls cleanly away from the pot. It is then shaped into balls, wrapped in leaves while still hot, and left to firm up before serving alongside a fish or meat sauce, or thinned with water into a warm porridge. Within the akassa family, the corn dough itself stays fairly constant while the accompanying sauce and the exact fermentation time are said to vary by household and by country, giving each version its own balance of tang and firmness. It is generally treated as a side to the sauce rather than a dish eaten on its own, and no version is held up as taking precedence over another.