A Word on Toh - and other Malian culinary excursions

So I think I once described toh as a giant gnocchi, lacking any other sufficient comparison. But gnocchi is more firm and not grainy enough and in my toh-some adventures here in Mali so far I have come up with a MUCH better comparison: it’s like cream of wheat with far too little water so it’s all congealed together rather than soupy. That is exactly what toh is like.

Personally, I like toh. I have had two kinds of toh: manioc toh and millet toh. Manioc toh is yellowish white and millet toh is purplish. Manioc is what we had in Guinea (as everyone there grew manioc all the time and I don’t think I ever saw one millet plant). In my village in Mali, it’s ALL about the millet. I can’t say I prefer one strain to the other (though can’t wait to look up whether millet has a higher nutritional value than the nearly completely void manioc). But I do prefer peanut sauce with my toh. Mainly because I prefer peanut sauce nearly all the time (since there’s no more manioc leaf sauce for me). The sauce they usually give with the toh, however, is baobob leaf sauce, which as I have before stated, many volunteers refer to as “snot sauce”. This is a fair comparison. It is slimy and long slimy strings stretch from your spoon (or hand) to the bowl once you’ve dipped your toh. Plus it’s green. And fairly salty. So “snot” might actually end up being a fair comparison.

At any rate, I think we eat toh for one meal every two days or so. They also have come up with a surprising number of other iterations of millet. There is the keke-like thing, which is like millet sawdust but I don’t like it as much as the manioc keke. Then there is a coarse grits-like thing, but like the toh, it is like a congealed mass of grits rather than soupy. Then there is a cous-cous which I think I have only had once. And, of course, the porridge for breakfast (I stand by my statement it would be greatly improved with a little powdered milk, cinnamon and sugar, which I am going to try out next time I can get my hands on those three things). For sauces there’s the baobob leaf sauce, peanut sauce, a bean sauce and tomato sauce. I wasn’t super fond of the tomato sauce. Once I got the grits-like thing covered in a very thin oil sauce (kinda like a vinaigrette). It was tasty but I am betting nutritionally void. They do not appear to make any other leaf sauces, which is a disappointment (leaves have vitamins!). Also, they don’t really do the piment thing. Which I thought was weird (have to bring my own piment). Also, they don’t put mashed up dried fish in everything, which I often despised in Guinea but now realize was WAY better for your health since you’re at least getting some protein that way (here I can go all three meals without a speck of protein – the kids’ distended bellies are huge). At least they make bean sauces. And there’s lots of peanut eating going on (this might be partly because they just harvested all their peanuts – not sure how long the peanuts end up lasting throughout the year).

And the other thing is: they have SO MANY animals. In my compound alone, there are about 6 cows, 15 goats, 20 sheep, 20 pigeons (which as I mentioned, are food here), and maybe 30 chickens. I don’t think we personally have any ducks. So basically what I’m saying is, there’s no lack of eggs or milk or even meat, but I have never (in my whole week here…) seen it getting eaten (although there was sour milk in the porridge yesterday so that’s something!). So I’ve decided that whenever I leave to go to Bamako or wherever, when I come back I will always bring some form of protein (like a rooster or some fresh fish) and some form of vitamins (like a watermelon). Plus I am going to ask Haoua (my APCD) ASAP where I can get my hands on some moringa seeds. And then work on perfecting a moringa leaf-peanut butter sauce.

EDIT: tonight was tomato sauce again with the grits-clump. Not like I remember it the first night, that’s for sure. I think the first night I was still coming off my high of pizza and carbonara sauce I’d been enjoying for three weeks and the thrust back into African cuisine was a bit of a bump. But now? It’s just like any other sauce. And it’s got some vitamins in it!