Throughout Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past, author and chef Eric Adjepong speaks brightly about his mother, Abena Agyeman, and her influence on his techniques in the kitchen. “To understand where I come from and why I love food, you have to know about one person: my mom.”

We see her influence on Eric’s cooking through techniques rooted in long-standing tradition. Abena’s cooking is a source. He highlights his mother’s choreography in a compact kitchen, pulling kitchen tools and ingredients from an “endless number of nooks and crannies.”

Modern Technique Rooted in Tradition

What makes Eric’s point of view unique is his dedication to incorporating Ghanaian customs into modern techniques in an industry where West African culinary customs are not amplified. Plenty of West African dishes prioritize ginger, garlic, tomatoes and peppers as a baseline for flavor, and Abena brings out those flavors through time and tools related to Ghanaian culture like the asanka, a large bowl similar to a mortar and pestle with grooves used to break down and merge ingredients. These tools help Abena incorporate Ghanaian traditions so that her loved ones never feel far away from their roots, even as they live on a distant continent.

There are dishes in Ghana to the World that modernize and build upon the techniques Eric learned during his travels and culinary studies. Then, there are some where his mother’s love serves as the base for his vision: She spent time with her dishes, sometimes taking up an entire afternoon cooking in order to build on the flavor in soups and stews. Through her meals, he got to witness the building blocks of flavor. The Waakye Stew and Chicken With Light Soup takes hours to make sure the flavors are concentrated and precise.

Mom's Hot Pepper Sauce

His mother's expression of love through food is especially evident in the recipe for Mom’s Hot Pepper Sauce, the family's go-to hot sauce made with Scotch bonnets, onion, ginger, garlic and tomato, plus a homemade pickling liquid that can also be used to pickle veggies.

Mom’s Hot Pepper Sauce is a condiment that transforms with the recipe it is placed in, and Eric allows the ingredient to live in complex ways across various dishes in his cookbook. It's a transformative base to many recipes, providing the boldness, brightness or extra push in flavor the dish needs. In soups, stews and curries, like the Sweet Potato Peanut Stew, it adds a swift kick of spice that mellows out in a nutty, creamy stew that’s paired with the sweetness of coconut rice. In the Groundnut Soup With Guinea Fowl, Mom’s Hot Pepper Sauce is used as a marinade, providing a base of support for the meat. When it’s used in seafood dishes like the Garlicky Grilled Prawns, hot pepper sauce adds a bright heat to the funk. Mom’s Hot Pepper Sauce provides space for other ingredients to develop. The flavor is omnipresent, and it’s a great representation of Eric’s relationship to his mother.

Her influence on his culinary life is much like a Scotch bonnet pepper, simmering in a stew. It shines at the top of the stew, diffusing its spice throughout the pot. Scotch bonnets are a force to be reckoned with. They pack a heat that seems invisible for a second and then explodes immediately after. Depending on how they are applied in a dish, the heat can slowly grow and rise with intensity or provide a quick, intense jolt that takes time to subside. Capsaicin, like a mother’s hug, is long, warm and its impact spreads across the body.

Ghana to the World is an expression of love, showing how Abena used food in order to connect Eric back to his roots, and how he now reflects it in his culinary journey. Through Mom’s Hot Pepper Sauce, readers can experience spice and its lessons on time, love and tradition.