raw vegetables, Ghana-style

Living in Ghana, you have to take some unusual precautions depending what kind of cooking you do.  

This is my setup before eating any kind of raw, unpeeled vegetables.

They're in a bowl of Milton, which is a chlorine-based (read: bleach) sterilizing fluid.  You dilute it with water and use it to sterilize anything from baby bottles to veggies.  We do this in case of bacteria on the produce; you can't just rinse that stuff off.  In any case, you can't use tap water to do it.

If we want to use tap water it has to be boiled for at least three minutes first, then ideally filtered.  We drink (and rinse veggies) from 500-milliliter sachets of "pure water," instead.  Pictured: a sachet next to our Milton bowl of prep for this weekend's cooking: salsa, gazpacho and raita.

Yes, I made gazpacho again.  You can find the recipe in my earlier post, but here are some in-the-process photos.

These are the blanched and peeled tomatoes.

 And here is the food processor, waiting to be filled with peppers, garlic, olive oil and other lovelies.  

The final product after a few days of ripening.  It's a luscious liquid salad.  The olive oil adds creaminess and body.  Serve with croutons if you got 'em.

This weekend we also made Brazilian cheese bread (pao de queijo), which I'll keep y'all in suspense about for another day or two.  It's nicer to spread the posting than to flood it all in during the weekend.