Hey I made my first African dinner the other night. I did the Queen of Sheba salad, the matoke and the curried chicken in little hot pots.
On the Matoke: I think the balls need to be quite larger. I started out with medium meatball size and they start to fall apart. But then I went to a larger hamburger size and it seems the mass combined with the spinach helps to hold them together.
Definitely recommend freezing them to keep them together in the deep fry. Also seems they need to be quite dark on the outside, as sometimes not all the banana cooks up if the fry is just light brown.
My wife and I both thought it could do w/o banana in the mix. Bananas in fried food have a certain richness (think bananas Foster) but this is in contrast to the earthiness of yams, onions, etc. I would go with just yams for the base. I used spinach, onions, carrots in the mixture. I dont think I could really taste the spinach but the onions make a nice contrast to the others.
Everybody liked them; my wife would eat them again but only if it was yams only.
I used peanut sauce to dip these in as it seems traditional. I wonder if you could use honey or honey mustard?
I have little to go on in the way of african sauces to accompany this and other dishes. Some suggestions?