Fifame Oussa Alahassa, co-owner of Tulsa’s Afrikan Delights, grew up in Cotonou, the largest city in Benin, a Vermont-shaped nation sandwiched between Ghana and Nigeria.
“In Benin,” she says, “women cook. I’d watch my mother cook all the time. I’d cry and beg her to let me help. I was eight. All the recipes of Afrikan Delights I got from her. And she got the recipes from her mother, who got them from her mother, who got them from her mother.”
At Afrikan Delights, everything you eat is authentic West African food.
Alahassa didn’t start out a chef. After high school in Cotonou, she moved to the United States to pursue higher education. She got a B.A. in health education from Southern Illinois University, then came to Oklahoma, where she got a M.A. in public health at OSU. Sometimes she’d cook for friends, who loved it.
After university, she says, “I worked, but I was not fulfilled. I decided to become a chef and share a piece of my culture.”
She did what every aspiring young chef should do – attended the launch program at Kitchen 66, a Tulsa-based entrepreneurial boot camp that teaches culinary hopefuls how to navigate the food business. After that, she and her husband bought a food truck. It was so successful that after only one year, she was given a permanent location inside Mother Road Market.
You can’t miss it. Her food stall is large and at maybe the best location in the market, right at a corner where two aisles converge and opposite the bar. It’s brightly painted with intricate red designs made to mimic Kente cloth. Her friends in Benin made the designs, then emailed them to her.
There are also big billboards with the huge menu, highlighting every area of Beninois cuisine. And what is Benin food like?
“Well,” she says, “all our dishes have onion and tomato, even the rice. We use a lot of seasoning: ginger, garlic, white pepper, black pepper. We use a lot of herbs like parsley and bay leaf. We use a lot of greens, including spinach and collard greens.”
At Afrikan Delights, you’ll find a dessert a lot like a beignet, an okra soup a lot like gumbo, and a rice a lot like jambalaya. You may think it reminiscent of New Orleans, and this is not a coincidence. These American dishes were in large part brought from Africa by enslaved people. What you’re getting at Afrikan Delights is the original version.
Another thing that all Alahassa’s dishes have in common is this: they’re not easy to make. They take time. Take the Jollof rice, for example, the one that’s like jambalaya.
“We use jasmine rice, like they do in Ghana,” Alahassa says. “We make a tomato stew with onion, ginger, bell pepper, garlic, and of course lots of tomatoes. We add a bit of oil and then the rice, letting it cook at a low heat in a covered pot so the steam cooks the rice.”
For the peanut soup — which, by the way, is delicious — “we use peanut butter, tomato, a lot of onion, also garlic and ginger. It must simmer at least two hours on low heat.”
What do customers think of these dishes, so different from what they’re used to?
“They’re overwhelmed,” says Alahassa, “by all the good flavor. ‘What did you put in it?’ they ask. ‘What is all this flavor?’”
Nigerian Style Goat Birria
From Fifame: This recipe is something that I came up with, which embraces my style of cooking which is ultimately what I call “Afro-Fusion.” I created this recipe in my home kitchen after accidentally buying the wrong cut of goat for my restaurant, and I needed something to do with the meat!
- 1 Goat shank, marinated with my imported Nigerian spice blend.
- Roast on low for four hours, or until tender.
- Separate all meat from bone and shred in a separate skillet.
- Add Clubhouse Market’s Premium Birria Seasoning along with a cooked mixture of the Nigerian “holy trinity” – red bell peppers, tomatos and onions, creating a Nigerian style “consume.”
- Cook on low for 15 minutes to let all of the flavors blend together, and serve over jollof rice.
