Côte d'Ivoire - Foutou

Background
Côte d'Ivoire is a West African country and a former French colony. After independence, the economy was built on cocoa and coffee. The society is still largely agrarian. Like most West African countries, they have a heavy reliance on grains and tubers.
My research for an Ivorian breakfast when down lots of weird paths, including lots of information on the current election turmoil and a BBC article of a French style breakfast on a military helicopter in the country. I eventually turned to The World Cookbook for Students. This is a five volume cookbook that gives a general overview of every country in the world. It had been given in the search results on many previous searches but I had never used it as resource before now. It described breakfast as a porridge made using either cassava or maize. The best recipe we could find that fits the porridge is foutou, which is a mash of cassava and plantains serves with a peanut sauce.
We have used cassava flour in previous meals but we have never started with a whole cassava. Cassava is a major source of carbohydrate throughout Africa. Its prevalence on the continent would make one assume it is indigenous, but cassava is native to South America and was brought to Africa by the Portuguese.

Peanut Sauce

• ½ cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup hot chicken stock

1. Beat peanut butter in a bowl.
2. Slowly add add the chicken stock until you get a creamy, smooth sauce.

Foutou

• 1 ½ cups peeled and chopped cassava
• 3 plantains, peeled and sliced
• Salt to taste

1. Cover the cassava and plantains in water.
2. Boil for 20-25 minutes until the cassava is very soft. (Add more water if necessary.)
3. Drain and reserve some cooking liquid.
4. Beat the mixture using an electric mixer. Add more cooking liquid as needed. You want a consistency similar to mashed potatoes.
5. Roll mixture into small balls and serve with peanut sauce.

Results and Discussion
The hardest part of this dish was making the peanut sauce. Getting the stock mixed in with the peanut butter took much longer than I anticipated and required quite a bit of work. Next time we will use the electric beaters. The foutou would benefit from the electric mixer as well; our original recipe suggested a blender, which we used only to get a rather sticky, gummy result. We expect the good old Kitchen-Aid will give this the same fluffy texture it lends to your mashed potatoes.
The foutou has a slightly sweet, banana-y flavor from the plantains. The slightly lumpy, very sticky texture made it easy to eat by hand (though the fluffier texture we expect from the electric beater method would make it neater). The peanut sauce is much smoother is a delicious, savory counter point.