Back, with a Bean

I ended my last post with a wish that the flicker of hope I saw in the days after the 29 March election would reignite. I was wrong, however, to assume the flame had disappeared. It remained a smolder low to the ground, tended by brave people, despite the boots and sticks and metal rods trying to snuff it out.

Yes, blogging about food still seems trivial to me. But, it also seems like something I need to do to take a mental break from thinking about the situation here. So, after two months, with this post, I am back! I’ll be consciously avoiding any discussion about the political or humanitarian situation here (which you can read about here, here and here), mostly for my own sanity. So today, I will tell you only one thing about Zimbabwe – a story about the country’s indigenous nyimo bean.

Nyimo bean is the local name for the Bambara groundnut, a legume considered an underutilized, “lost crop of Africa,” because it is little known outside of the continent. Even in Africa, the Bambara groundnut is often thought of as a “poor person’s” crop and is eclipsed in popularity by its botanical cousin, the peanut, who arrived 400 years ago from Brazil and is now an important source of nutrition in more than 30 African countries, including Zimbabwe. Interestingly, both Bambara groundnuts and peanuts were brought to North America from Africa during the slave trade – there are references to both beans in the diaries of the colonialists. But, once again, the peanut outshone its kin. I bet, though, if you live in the U.S. state of Georgia, you might just be able to find someone still growing the Bambara groundnut. Let me know if you do!

Despite being repeatedly overshadowed, the humble nyimo bean still has its staunch admirers – those who respect its nutritional might (this bean is 20 percent protein!), its ability to thrive under harsh conditions, and its addictively earthy flavor. Zimbabwe itself gave birth to “BamNet,” the International Bambara Groundnut Network, in 1995.

Here, Tulimara cans nyimo beans for sale in some supermarkets. These work well in soups, or for making “African” hummus. Near the end of the rainy season, you can buy dried nyimo beans by the side of the road in rural areas, or from the vendors who ply busy downtown intersections. They are easy to mistake for peanuts, which have the same brown, fibrous shell. The main difference is that the nyimo bean’s shell is rounder – it was not blessed with the peanut’s hourglass curves.

You can prepare dried nyimo beans in several ways. What I do is boil them in their shell in heavily salted water under tender (about 30-40 minutes), drain, salt again, and serve. A bowl of beans with a nice cold pilsner are a perfect game-time snack. Just don’t get too scared when you crack open the shell – boiled nyimos do eerily resemble eyeballs! Like peanuts, nyimo beans will absorb flavor through their shell while boiling, so you could add soy sauce and star anise to the water, for example, if you want more complex tastes.

Boiled nyimo beans can also be roasted. And, they can be pounded into flour, either after boiling or after both boiling and roasting. This flour can be stirred into maize meal porridge. I’ve read that in Nigeria, women use the flour to make pancakes.

Now, I realize most of you readers are a long way away from the nearest Bambara groundnut! What learning about this little legume made me think about, however, are the many fruits and vegetables in our midst that might have been shoved aside by history – maybe because they didn’t keep as well during transport, looked ugly canned, had a unappealing name, or got a reputation as second-class food. They all might be worth a second look.

And on the Eighth Day…

We waited.

A week ago today, the citizens of Zimbabwe went to the polls. They emerged proudly displaying their pinkie fingers, stained pink from the ink used to mark their votes. Excited whispers of change wafted on the air like errant plastic bags, shreds of new information were panned like gold, and I saw – for the first time in my three years here – a flicker of hope on the faces of people in the street.

Now, a week has past. The ink has disappeared. And so has the flicker of hope. As the delay in the release of Presidential results continues and the political posturing takes a hard-line turn, a veil of resignation has again descended and I can almost tangibly feel people looking inside themselves, trying to determine how they are possibly going to dig a deeper well of patience.

What is going to happen?

The election has been on the front few pages of international newspapers this past week. At first, articles could follow a simple narrative – the possibility of a dramatic opposition party victory despite reports of vote-rigging, followed by mounting concern over delays in announcing the results, rising tensions, and the specter of Kenya-style violence. But, I fear, the story is no longer fitting the sound-bite style of the American press. It is dragging on too long, becoming too convoluted. How do you explain the point we are at today? STILL no Presidential results announced, when it is clear they must be known? The new possibility of a run-off in 90 days instead of the three weeks stated in electoral law? The ruling party accusing the opposition of bribing electoral officials; the opposition party going to court to demand that Presidential election results be released? We are used to craziness here (case in point: the Reserve Bank introduced a 50 million dollar note yesterday). But how do you continue to explain all this to someone outside the country?

Is there a strategy at play? Delaying, stalling, confounding until the short attention span of the West loses interest? And what will happen then, when fewer eyes are watching?

I’ve got three new posts half-written – one about a relative of the peanut native to Africa called the Bambara groundnut; another on a recipe for homemade graham crackers, culled from a circa-1980s African missionary cookbook; a third on Ethiopian-style cabbage and lentil salad. This all seems so silly. The posts will wait. For now, my mind is elsewhere, trapped in the maze of this saga’s twists and turns, and dreaming for that flicker of hope to reignite.

In addition to the coverage on BBC and Sky News, you can keep up-to-date on election news by checking these sites:

Sokwanele, and its related blog – This is Zimbabwe
Kubatana’s blog
SWRadio Africa

What a Contrast

Some people think things through as they talk. You can see it happening. At first, their explanation or argument wanders here and there, and then, all of a sudden, they see the way forward. Their words gain momentum – sentences tumble out, the decibel-level increases – until suddenly everything is tied together and the meaning is clear. Such individuals can start talking with only a faint idea or glimmer of an opinion, and somehow end up with a cohesive, communicated thought.

If I attempt this feat, my words trail off into a sea of mumbles in the hope that no one notices I had begun speaking in the first place. Instead, when I want to express an idea or an opinion out loud, I need to think it out thoroughly beforehand; rarely by talking do I hit my stride.

With writing it is very different. I can start with just the sketchiest outline of a thought, rest my fingers on the keyboard, and, as I type, figure out where that little idea was headed, and why it might have nibbled at me in the first place.

Today, I sat down to write about the idea of contrast. The nibble stems back to last December when, within a month, I visited two dramatically different places. First, I visited a rural area of Zimbabwe, where I stayed in a cement-block room which featured a faucet that occasionally dribbled water. The nearby “growth point” consisted of three dusty roads which merged around two blocks of shops, including a whopping three nightclubs. My colleagues and I bought bread, peanut butter, and bananas at the shops every morning, and, after several hours sitting on the ground talking to villagers, ate our lunch by the side of the dirt road under whatever tree we could find.

At the end of the very same month, for New Years’, some friends and I rented The Castle in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe – an actual castle, complete with dust and damp – perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the border with Mozambique. It was built by Italian prisoners of war held in the area during World War II. On New Years’ Eve Day we stopped at a nearby coffee shop named Tony’s, where the menu is be-tassled and the desserts are to die for. Tony’s may be famous for its chocolate whiskey cake, but the main attraction is simply the sheer strangeness of it all. There you are in Zimbabwe – with all its flour shortages and sugar shortages and fuel shortages – eating cake off gold-foil-rimmed plates. I couldn’t have been farther from that growth point if I had been on the moon.

These sorts of contrasts make life interesting – in fact, we often seek them out. A good part of travel, for example, is about comparing and contrasting what you see with what you know. “Isn’t it funny, they also eat with their hands here.” “I love mangos, but never realized you could cook with the green ones.” By comparing and contrasting we are able to weave together the experiences of our lives: “This raspberry dressing reminds me of the one we ate at Manna Epicure in Cape Town.” “Ugali seems a bit stiffer than sadza, don’t you think?”

At the same time, stark contrasts can be disconcerting. Slums and mansions. Hunger and plenty. Community and isolation. It is difficult to make sense of how such difference can exist on one planet. In fact, “making sense” may not always be possible. Contrasts can illuminate the unjust and the unfair. That unsettling feeling in your stomach? It makes you human. My experiences in December were certainly interesting – should they have been disconcerting, too?

So, this is where my keyboard has taken me. Within this post, you’ll see pictures from the two contrasting extremes I mentioned. First, there is a woman I met during my trip to the rural area; she was selling an indigenous green vegetable called nyeve (a.k.a. spider flower/spider wisp). I bought some. Nyeve is quite bitter and must be boiled for hours, draining and replacing the water a couple times to further dampen the bitter taste. Then, in classic Zimbabwean style, it is sautéed with onion, tomatoes, and a dollop of peanut butter, as shown in photo number two. I’ve been told you can also cook nyeve with lacto – a type of sour milk that is popular in Zimbabwe (and that I need to write about one of these days!). Third, as you may have guessed, is that very cake from Tony’s. And, below, the view from The Castle’s top floor. Quite a few contrasts, don’t you think?

Note: Top photo copyright Leslie Tuttle. Used with permission.

Tags: Zimbabwe, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

One Year, Happily Consumed

A year ago, as I pressed “publish” on my first post, I remember worrying that I might run out of ideas. Was creating a food blog focused on Africa a mistake? Africa is a huge continent and I had little knowledge of its many foods – just curiosity and an appetite. Plus, I am not African. What would Africans, especially Zimbabweans, think about a food blog written in Zimbabwe by a white woman from America?

Today, Field to Feast turns one. And, instead of worrying that I might run out of ideas, I am slightly overwhelmed by them. My list of things to make and notes for stories to share is lengthy. I could write for years and years, and hopefully will.

Meanwhile, some of the comments and e-mails I have read with the most pleasure have come from Zimbabweans, both in the country and overseas. There was the Zimbabwean man living in the U.K. who showed his British girlfriend my post on kapenta, former residents who’ve reminisced about sadza, and welcome support for my meagre efforts to use the subject of food to shed some light on the country’s complex political and economic situation. Thank you, all.

I started this blog primarily because I wanted an excuse to write and I wanted an excuse to cook. My, my, what a great excuse it is. Just ask my husband how many times this past year, tired and hungry, I’ve said, “But, we can’t get takeaway, I’ve got to make it [peanut stew, couscous, pumpkin fritters] for the blog.” It is as if the blog is a person who I report to, but who, thankfully, is very generous with days off.

Keeping this blog has introduced me to new people and made me more curious about the foods around me and how they are eaten. In the past year, eating along with Field to Feast, I have discovered dozens of new ingredients and recipes – many of which, like malva pudding, bobotie, Nigerian beans, peanut butter rice, Zanzibari coffee and rosella tea, have become part of my life. This year, I am planning at least a couple more "field trips" so that I can bring you additional on-the-ground perspectives on African food. I hope Mozambique will be first on the list. Peri-peri sauce and seafood, here we come!

I’ll leave with you with a few of the new fruits and vegetables I’ve discovered over the past year - the photos are along the side. The first two are wild fruits most often eaten in the rural areas of Zimbabwe – matawe and mazhanje (the former could be spelled wrong!). When I first opened a matawe, I had the impression I was cracking some sort of alien egg, a feeling enhanced upon observing the sticky yellow goo inside. The idea is to chew on the husk until it becomes a well-masticated pulp, while absorbing all of the goo – which, mercifully, tastes like honey rather than alien blood. The pale orange flesh of the mazhanje, meanwhile, has a faintly squash-like taste, and it is often made into jam. The African cucumber is self-explanatory, while the last fruit is a complete mystery to me. All I know is that it is incredibly bitter-tasting, and I bought it from a street vendor who said it is popular among of people of Indian ancestry, who typically eat it with salt. Can anyone tell me what this mystery fruit is?

Thanks for reading over the past year and for your supportive e-mails and interesting comments. Field to Feast has a lot of friends for a one-year-old!

Tags: wild fruit, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Supermarket Adventures, Zimbabwe Style

Today the headlines about Zimbabwe seem real. So said my husband after an excursion to the supermarket that involved 1) diving into a throng of people as it descended upon trays of fresh bread and 2) triumphantly escaping with a loaf in each hand. Indeed, I just read a headline: “Zimbabweans Rush for Food.”

Why all the fuss? The answer is Operation Dzikamai – Shona for “calm down.” Last week, with the stated goal of curbing inflation, the government ordered all retailers to roll back their prices to June 18^th-levels. In a normal economy there would be little difference between the prices of goods today and their prices from two weeks ago. But Zimbabwe has the world’s highest inflation rate – more than 4,000 percent, and that’s by the official numbers – so this roll-back effectively meant that retailers had to chop their prices in half. At first, government announcements made it seem as if the price cuts applied only to “basic commodities,” including mealie meal, flour, oil, bread, milk, sugar, salt, soap, and tea. Soon it appeared as if practically everything was fair game – Mazowe (a popular brand of cordial), boxed cereal, newspapers, hotel rates. Police quickly arrived on the scene to ensure that the price cut dictum was observed.

The evening Operation Dzikamai was announced, I drove home listening to a state-run news channel. The news reader, grave and solemn, said the station’s reporters had noticed a “disturbing trend”: retailers, instead of marking down prices, were simply removing items from the shelves. What the news called a disturbing trend was exactly what everyone else in the country knew would happen. In fact, people were already flocking to stores to purchase items while prices were low and, even more importantly, before they disappeared. Some of the people who were lucky enough – or pushy and patient enough – to get their hands on controlled items quickly began reselling these goods by the side of the road at double the controlled price. The black market is flourishing. Some stores have tried to shut rather than sell items at a loss. They may call it Operation Dzikamai, but the situation is anything but calm.

These days, a visit to a supermarket is a visit to a bizarre reality. There are three stores within an easy walk of my office. Two have simply removed whole shelves which used to contain bread, peanut butter and other staples. Almost every freezer case is empty. There is no meat or chicken for sale – and this in a country that doesn’t consider a meal a meal unless a hunk of meat or chicken is involved. Instead, I saw people hunched over the one tiny frozen fish compartment, picking up whole frozen trout and crumpled boxes of fish sticks, and shaking their heads.

What’s next? Who knows. In the meantime, Mark is greasing his elbows and doing sprints to prepare for his next supermarket foray. And I’ve realized that it may finally be time for me to learn how to bake bread.

Tags: Zimbabwe, supermarket, shortages, southern Africa, current events, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Helping Each Other: A Zimbabwean Feast

The world has many holidays to be celebrated, many guests to be welcomed, many special occasions to be recognized and many accomplishments to honor. In other words, there are many good reasons to hold a feast. Last Saturday, the women of Batsiranai held a feast to an honor an accomplishment – their own.

I have been meaning to write about this amazing group of women for a long time. The members of Batsiranai are mothers of disabled children who live in a township on the outskirts of Harare. Living in this township is hard enough – inflation constantly erodes the value of the money in your purse; electricity, water and telephone services come and go; many residents lost their homes in a government “clean-up” operation two years ago. Having a child with a disability creates additional challenges. Across Zimbabwe, it is common for husbands to leave their wives if they give birth to a child with a disability, as the woman is thought to be cursed. For the same reason, these women and their children often find it difficult to secure housing – no one wants to rent to them. And, of course, the mothers need to figure out how to get healthcare for their children in a country where the doctors are striking because of low pay and basic medicines are frequently unavailable.

Such circumstances would overwhelm the best of us. But Batsiranai means “helping each other” in Shona, and helping each other is the core of what these women do. By helping each other, the Batsiranai mothers have established a successful craft-making enterprise that enables their families to thrive. They sew, paint and embroider many different items – tote bags, purses, bookmarks, baby quilts, baby bibs, bottle-cap earrings, greeting cards and more. Attached to the women’s workshop is a day care centre where their children can rest and play while they work. A nearby hospital has an outreach team which regularly visits the center to talk to parents about how to help their children grow and develop. Batsiranai has other “helpers,” too, including volunteers who’ve made the day care center a welcoming place through colorful painting and donations of toys; volunteers who’ve connected them to retail markets outside of Zimbabwe; and all the people who buy their products.Last Saturday, Batsiranai celebrated a major accomplishment – the completion of an order for thousands of dolls. It was a huge project, and, to complete it on time, Batsiranai trained mothers of disabled children from other townships in how to make the dolls. The Batsiranai spirit is spreading. At the feast, one of the new recruits said, “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to earn money; now we come home on Fridays with pay and our husbands have already done the ironing.”

And what was the menu for this feast? Beef, beef and more beef, plus sadza, cole slaw and a tomato and onion relish. And, just as important as the food, the feast was preceded by hours and hours and hours of singing and dancing.

You might not be able to make it to Batsiranai’s next feast, but you can certainly honor these women’s accomplishments by buying their fair trade-certified products. Their products are of very high quality, and make excellent gifts! Simply visit www.batsiranai.co.zw.

(Full disclosure: my husband has volunteered with this group for almost two years!)

Tags: Zimbabwe, fair trade, crafts, Batsiranai, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

A Sprinkle a Day

When my brother and I were growing up, the treatment of choice for asthma was a medicine called Theo-Dur. To tempt little asthmatics like us, Theo-Dur was packaged in sprinkle form. I can certainly understand the marketing ploy – why not subvert children’s inherent aversion to medicine and take advantage of their pure, innocent, instinctive love of sprinkles on ice cream? And, the doctor assured us, you could also sprinkle them on applesauce! And pudding! They will make every food more fun!

Well, they didn’t. My brother and I hated Theo-Dur sprinkles.

Theo-Dur sprinkles may have been the first thing in my life that I reluctantly consumed because it was good for me, but it certainly wasn’t the last. I try not to remember, for example, those tasteless celery-sticks I ate in high school because they were rumored to have “negative” calories. My present-day equivalent of Theo-Dur sprinkles is moringa. Moringa oleifera is a tree that grows in tropical and sub-tropical areas, and its leaves, fresh or dried, have many amazing properties. Three times the potassium of bananas! Four times the vitamin A of carrots! Four times the calcium in milk! It is for good reason that the tree is promoted here in Zimbabwe by organizations concerned about people’s nutrition, particularly the nutrition of people living with HIV and AIDS. Leaf powder can be added to any food! It adds flavor and nutrition! Sadly, however, one of moringa’s amazing properties is not tastiness.

Undeterred, my husband has been dusting dried moringa leaves onto his yogurt and muesli breakfast, and even his oats and brown sugar breakfast, for quite a while now. I tried it once, insisted it made my breakfast taste like grass, and thereafter turned up my nose at the stuff. Grassy might be a favorable description when discussing a chardonnay, but not my morning muesli.

I recently discovered that I’m a bit anemic, though, and now instead of just giving me a “but it’s SO good for you” look of guilt every morning as I snub the moringa, Mark has become quite pushy. You see, one of moringa’s amazing qualities is that it is a good sourse of iron. Sigh. Rather than face grassy muesli every morning, however, I decided needed to find a better conduit for the healthy green stuff. Today, I had a breakthrough.

Zimbabwe’s electricity situation is bad and getting worse, and this afternoon we only had power in half of our house (strange, but true). This meant I had a functioning oven, but a non-functional stovetop. I never realized how many baked meals actually require a little sauté action beforehand. It is really quite a few. I finally settled on preparing a tapas-like lunch of brushcetta, feta-stuffed peppadews, roasted broccoli (tossed with dried red chili, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper) and roasted green beans (tossed with salt). In an effort to add a little more zip to the roasted veggies, I prepared a yogurt-based dressing, and, in a burst of inspiration, added a healthy dose of the dreaded moringa. Its grass flavor blended right in, and the dried leaves accentuated the dressing's mellow green hue. I’ll add a sprinkle any time.

African Green Goddess Dressing

Plain Greek yogurt
Avocado
Parsley, chopped
Scallion, sliced
Dried moringa leaves (optional)
Lemon juice
Salt
Pepper

The amounts here are quite flexible – do what tastes good to you! Blend everything together using an immersion blender or food processor. Serve as a dressing or dip for roasted vegetables.

Tags: recipe, dressing, dip, moringa, vegetables, Zimbabwe, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

The Dairy

“Right near your house there is a Greek woman who makes haloumi. Just round that corner and look for the black gate. Tell her I sent you.”

“The wife of my Japanese mechanic sells the tofu she makes at home – let me know if you want to buy a block.”

An endearing feature of life in Harare is the vast number of unmarked, unpublicized businesses that you hear about by word of mouth. Restaurants that only open for small groups on pre-arranged days; immigrants and expatriates that sell homemade, traditional foods, straight from their kitchens; talented artists who market sculptures from hidden backyard galleries framed by rows of maize.

One day, more than a year ago, two friends told me they knew a couple who drove twenty minutes outside of town to buy milk and cheese from a dairy farm, that the farm was impossible to find unless you followed someone, AND that it was only open for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. The couple with the insider knowledge was making a trip later in the day.

Did we want to go? Of course we did.

And so Mark and I became acquainted with what we now simply call “The Dairy.” The Dairy is run by an unintentionally charismatic mother-and-son team (let’s call them Shirley and Frank), and the reason it is open for only two hours a day is that these are the hours when the cows are milked. The milk travels from udder to pail to your container. It is still warm. And rich. And creamy. Like a concentrated version of store-bought milk.

In addition to milk, The Dairy also sells goat and cow feta, a dense and creamy soft goat cheese, and a cottage cheese speckled with chives or fresh thyme. This cottage cheese is what I would call cream cheese, although Frank says I am wrong. Cottage versus cream is not the only linguistic debate I have with Frank, who also contests my pronunciation of gouda. I say goo-da, he says gow-da. “Is the goo-da ready yet?” I ask. “I don’t make goo-da, I make gow-da,” Frank replies.

Speaking of The Dairy’s gouda…oh, how wonderful it is. Shaped like an oversized hockey puck, wrapped in wax and, inside, smooth with just a tinge of sharpness that unravels as it hits your tongue. The gouda is rarely available and, when in stock, is stored out of sight. You need to know to ask for it. To secure a wheel, you also must demonstrate respect and love for cheese. Frank tells the story of a woman who wanted to buy two wheels of gouda, one to eat now and the other to freeze for future consumption. He refused to sell her any cheese because she had considered desecrating the cheese by freezing it.

Today the gouda was tantalizingly close to me – Frank retrieved two wheels from his hiding place just so we could take a photo. He said the cheese tastes good now, but is too mild – it would be ready for sale in two weeks. I had an idea – couldn’t I just buy a wheel today and keep it in my fridge for two weeks? No, Frank said, he knew how much I liked the cheese and didn’t trust me – I would surely eat it early. The Dairy drives a tough bargain.

A few months ago, we heard The Dairy might be taken over as a result of the government’s ongoing land reform program. I can’t say we were shocked, but we were immensely saddened – sad for the family, the farm workers, the animals, and, quite selfishly, ourselves. No more calming walk past the animal stalls with the farm dogs scrambling around our feet. No more debates over goo-da and gow-da. And the thought of having to buy the soggy, chewy, greasy supermarket products that pass as “cheese” was just unbearable. Luckily, The Dairy survived. We appreciate it even more.

This post is an entry in Food Destinations #5: Where Everybody Knows Your Name, hosted by From Our Kitchen. Food Destinations is a food blog event established by I Was Really Just Very Hungry.

Tags: Zimbabwe, food blog event, Food Destinations, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Beer Brewin’

I once read that the arrival of tea on England’s shores helped fuel the Industrial Revolution. Before tea, the beverage of choice was beer, and beer-drinking was not exactly a happy accompaniment to working with machinery. Tea was. I don’t know if this story is true or not, but one thing that is true is that beer and other alcoholic beverages have been with us humans for a long, long time. In fact, our ancestors may have imbibed even more than present-day Australians. And before that very same Industrial Revolution, there was only one manner of beer and alcohol production. Whether it was brewed by monks or farmers or city-dwellers, your alcohol was home-brewed. As we all know, home-brew persists to this very day.

I, myself, have married into a celebrated homebrew tradition. My husband hails from the foothills of North Carolina – a place known for MerleFest, car racing and moonshine. In fact, he swears it was moonshine production that inspired the car racing that would become NASCAR, as moonshine brewers outraced the cops in their souped-up cars, and then began, as boys will do, to race each other.

Africa also has its indigenous brews. Talking with Zimbabweans, I don’t think I’ve heard of a grain or fruit that isn’t made into some sort of beer or liquor. What do marula fruit, mazhanje (a.k.a. loquats), palm tree sap, sorghum, millet and maize all have in common? They all can be made into alcohol. Typically this home-brewing occurs in rural areas, while urbanites drink one of several locally-bottled beers (Bohlingers, Lion, Castle, Zambezi), or the cheap favorite, Chibuku, made from sorghum and maize and sold in barrel-shaped containers. These containers are called Scuds – a name bestowed upon the product during the first Gulf War, when some (likely drunk) chap noticed that the shape of a Chibuku resembled that of a Scud missile. Strange, but true. As the economic situation here has deteriorated, the price of a Scud has rocketed out of many people’s price range (and by people, I mean men), and more and more people (and by people, I mean their wives) have begun to brew beer – even in urban areas.

With a lot of help from our housekeeper, Dorothy, this weekend we brewed chikokiyana, or one-day beer. I’m not going to write up a proper recipe (really, who among you is going to try this?), but here, for your reference, is the basic idea.

First you bring about eight cups of water to a boil. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, you mix together four wooden spoonfuls of mealie meal (the finely ground cornmeal used to make sadza) with some water to make a thin gruel. Stir, breaking up any lumps, and then pour the paste into the boiling water. Stir again, partially cover, turn the heat down to medium-high, and keep the pot at a low boil for 15 minutes.

Let the gruel cool for about five minutes, and then add another four cups or so of cold water. Stir once again to break up any lumps. Next, pour the mixture into your pfuko – the traditional round, chevron-decorated bowl with a narrow neck that is used just for this purpose. In a small bowl, mix together ½ cup raw sugar, ½ cup active dry yeast and 1½ cups chimera (fermented ground millet, or zviyo). Add to the pfuko and stir. Cover, and let sit in a warm place overnight.

Twenty-four hours later, remove the cover and watch the beer’s effervescent bubbles sputter and pop. Give the brew a stir, and then drink it straight from the pfuku. Or, if you are me, pour yourself a small glass. Chikokiyana is gritty, sour and yeasty – in other words, an extremely acquired taste. I could only get down about three sips; my husband four. Dorothy’s cousin downed the rest during the course of one day.

Apparently, you can also make a non-alcoholic version of this beverage, called mahewu by simply omitting the yeast. There is also a version of beer that is brewed for seven days and that, we hear, tastes a good bit milder than chikokiyana. I think I’ll stick to moonshine. And stay away from heavy machinery.

*Note: In keeping with the spirit of this post, I wrote it having drunk two beers (Phoenix, if you must know, the famous beer of Mauritius) on an empty stomach. Please excuse all resulting typos and errors of judgment.

Tags: Zimbabwe, beer, beverage, alcohol, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

A Tag, a Picnic, and a New Warm Salad

Maintaining a food blog isn’t all fun and games you know. Sometimes you get witheringly challenging assignments from your peers, like the one I recently received from lobstersquad. Stop by and admire Ximena’s endearingly carefree writing and illustrations, and then note that she has “tagged” me to respond to the following question: “Which menu would you serve food-blogging friends for a welcome dinner upon their first visit to your home?” This meme was started by Angelika of The Flying Apple, and has solicited numerous mouth-watering replies.

Well, my food blog friends, you’ve come a long, long way to arrive here at my home in Zimbabwe, and you’ll probably want to get out and see the country you’ve landed in. So, instead of being stuck inside my house, I’ll prepare a picnic lunch and we’ll all head off to nearby Ngomakurira, an imposing rock formation that features amazing ancient rock art. We’ll stop for our picnic beside a steep rock face that, because of its slightly convex shape, offers some welcome shade at its base. If you come now – quick! – before the rainy season starts, the sky will be a penetrating blue and the landscape’s colors – the light tan of the rock, the rust and lime lichen, the dark green scrub – will be almost flattened by the intense sunlight. You’ll have a clear view over the surrounding countryside from the rock’s peak, and will be able to spot a few villages and some people dressed in white who have gathered for church under a tree.

However, what you really want to know is – what will you be eating? Well, the assignment asks for “signature” dishes, and one of my entertaining signatures is dips. I love dips. In fact, this may sound like one tall tale, but I once shared my recipe for feta-walnut dip (a recipe adapted from Molly Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook) with a friend in North Carolina, who happened to be friends with the then-boyfriend of Rachel Ray, who loved the dip, made her own modifications, and prepared it on Oprah earlier this year. True story.

In addition to my feta-walnut dip, you’ll be munching on spicy hummus, beetroot pesto and olive tapenade, all waiting to be scooped up by toasted pita crisps. Other nibbles will include baked ricotta cheese and boursin-stuffed peppadews. You’ll wash these appetizers down with cool sips of rooibos sangria, straight from my trusty cooler.

Next up will be a creamy avocado gazpacho, followed by a warm green salad with spicy peanut-butter dressing and sadza-sage croutons. This is a special recipe I invested just for you. I know you’ll want to try some Zimbabwean food during your visit, but, to be honest, the local cuisine doesn’t really lend itself to picnics, multi-course meals or chardonnay-laced toasts. My salad adds some new flavors to a traditional Zimbabwean relish made with greens, tomato, onion and peanut butter and transforms its traditional sadza accompaniment into tasty croutons. You’ll find the recipe below (with an option to use polenta instead of sadza for the croutons) just in case you can’t make my picnic. The main course – a light one, since we have a bit of a hike back to the car – will be Savory Broccoli and Cheddar Strudel, garnished with a dollop of chakalaka.

The wine selection in Zimbabwe is quite limited and, to make matters worse, I am totally stupid when it comes to wine. So, I will bribe a fellow food blogger with the promise of a Zimbabwean stone sculpture gift (like this one) to bring several bottles of an appropriate white wine to accompany the meal.

Finally, I have bad – and long-standing – habit of trying out new recipes on unsuspecting guests. It is not surprising, therefore, that I have found the perfect untried and untested dessert for you all. I recently discovered a recipe in Food and Home Entertaining (September 2006) for a grilled fruit platter that looks simply stunning – grilled chunks of pineapple, cantaloupe, bananas, strawberries and guava in a mango reduction sauce topped with toasted fresh coconut. This dish is supposed to be served at room temperature, which makes it a perfect take-along picnic treat. Just in case this plan backfires, however, I’ll have some sweet baked nuts on hand.

Sleepy, full, and sun-kissed, we will lethargically make our way back to my house, drink some tea or coffee on the veranda, watch the sun set, and reminisce about that lovely warm salad.

Warm Green Salad with Spicy Peanut-Butter Dressing and Sadza-Sage Croutons
Serves 2 as a side salad
Adapted from a traditional Zimbabwean relish and a crouton recipe in Food and Home Entertaining, July 2006

Croutons
1 cup sadza
1 tablespoon butter
2 sage leaves, minced
1 teaspoon olive oil

Salad
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 dried red chili pepper, crushed
½ an onion, finely sliced
1 large bunch of greens, chopped (I used a medium bunch of Swiss chard, supplemented by a handful of beet greens)
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 small clove garlic, minced
Salt, to taste
2 tablespoons natural peanut butter
1 teaspoon hot water
Juice of ½ a lemon

To prepare the sadza croutons, first you need some sadza, which you could create by making this recipe. For those of you far from sadza, you can use polenta. Stir in the butter and sage during the last five minutes of cooking either the sadza or the polenta. Let the sadza or polenta cool slightly, then use the back of a wooden spoon to flatten the sadza/polenta into a square, 3/4-inch tall pancake. Cut the sadza/polenta into cubes and grill using a hot griddle pan and the olive oil. You’ll end up with a few more croutons than you’ll need for this salad, but you can store them in an airtight container for future salad-topping use over the next few days.

Now, begin the salad. Pour the oil into a large fry pan over medium/medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the dried red chili pepper and stir. Quickly add the onion and sauté, stirring frequently, until the onion has turned translucent. Add the greens, a handful at a time if necessary, stirring frequently. When the greens have begun to wilt, add the tomato, garlic and salt, and stir. Sauté for just a few more minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the peanut butter and hot water in a small bowl or teacup until it is smooth. Pour the thinned peanut butter over the sautéing mixture and stir. Cook for one minute more, and then take the warm salad off of the stove. Adjust the salt as needed and squeeze the lemon over the salad. Toss, and serve topped with sadza-sage croutons.

Tags: recipe, Zimbabwe, salad, food blog event, foodblogger's welcome dinner, sadza, relish, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Road Trip, Snack Trip

Road trips are 30 percent about getting to a destination, 30 percent about the journey, and 40 percent – heck, let’s forget math and make it 50 percent – about the food you eat along the way. In my years of roadtripping with friends and family, I’ve found that there are a variety of road-trip eating strategies.

First, there are the snack packers. Zip-lock bags and Lil’ Playmate coolers at their service, snack packers stow away all sorts of nibbles that successfully pass the no-crumb, no sticky fingers that need to be washed test. Especially worthy snacks include crackers sandwiched around peanut butter and raisins (our snack of choice on a recent trip), Goldfish and seedless grapes. I feel certain a South African would add biltong, just as a Montanan would add beef jerky.

Then there are the risk-takers. Like a water diviner sensing an underground spring, risk-takers use gut instinct and a tug of intuition on their arm (right arm in the States, left in the UK, Australia, Zimbabwe, etc.) to indicate which exit they should use to pull off the highway. The food available at the exit is unknown. The risk-taker does not care.

Meanwhile, the plan-aheaders pre-select and carefully mark on the map each scheduled eating establishment, all of which are conveniently located at hunger-pang-spaced intervals. A final category of road-trip eater includes the people who see road trips as excuses to eat junk food, and, licking their greasy fingers, happily take advantage of these plentiful opportunities.

Growing up, we utilized a strageic road-trip combination of snack preparation (after all, who wants to be in a car with two hungry kids?), observation of the plan-ahead advice offered by AAA travel guides, and close scrutiny of the blue “Gas, Food, Lodging” signs by the side of the road. If it was mealtime and one of these signs indicated that there may be a local joint at the upcoming exit, we would stop. Only local restaurants – that was the rule. Chain restaurants were not allowed on road trips because, as my mother said, travel was for experiencing new things.

I speak of road trips because this past weekend Mark, a friend and I drove six hours southeast of Harare for a holiday in Gonarezhou National Park, which is situated along the border with Mozambique. Although we packed some snacks (macadamia nuts, peeled carrots, apples and cereal bars made with baobab pulp), we also knew we could acquire more treats along the way, since, no matter how rural the area, in Zimbabwe you can always find people selling fruits and veggies by the roadside. That’s how we ended up with this sugar cane.

Sugar cane is, of course, used to make sugar. It can also be eaten fresh by peeling off the tough skin, tearing out the fibrous inside with your teeth, chewing it, and sucking out all the sweet juice. Then, in a move that is hard to accomplish gracefully, you must spit out the well-masticated pulp and throw it out the window. My husband does all this much better than me, which is why he is in the photo. Sugar cane fills many road trip snacking needs, as it provides a quick sugar burst and the chewing keeps your jaw busy for a while. And, if you ask the nice woman who sells you the sugar cane to break it into smaller pieces, you won’t even make much of a mess in your car.

Our road trip didn’t give us the option of junk food, exits or a variety of roadside eating establishments. It did however, give us sugar cane. Which means that, all in all, sugar cane helped make our road trip what it should be – a snack trip.

The top photo in this post was named "Best in Originality" in the October 2006 edition of "Does My Blog Look Good in This," a food blog event hosted by Spittoon Extra.

Tags: Zimbabwe, travel, sugar cane, food blog event, Does My Blog Look Good In This, DMBLGIT, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Muddy Sadza, Smelly Fish

Last Saturday, Mark, Dorothy and I had a memorable visit to Mbare Musika. This Saturday, Dorothy and I began cooking with our market bounty. Today’s lunch? Sadza rauzviyo, served with kapenta relish. Before we get to these recipes, a here’s little background on sadza, kapenta and relish.

Sadza is the cornerstone of traditional Zimbabwean food, and it can be made with several different types of refined meals. Maize meal is the most popular meal used to make sadza, and it is the meal you typically find for sale in supermarkets. At Mbare market, we were able to buy both sorghum meal and rapoko (finger millet meal, also called zviyo). These meals are rarely stocked in the shops, and are more often eaten in rural areas. Sadza made from maize meal is a light cream color, sadza made from sorghum is light brown, and sadza made from rapoko is a deep, almost purple-brown. A colleague of mine told me that his young daughter calls sadza made from sorghum or rapoko “mud sadza.”

Kapenta, meanwhile, is a type of sardine, originally from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, which has been introduced to other African lakes, including Lake Kariba. Lake Kariba is a mammoth, manmade lake in northwest Zimbabwe, along the country’s border with Zambia. It was formed in the late 1950s through construction of a dam which provides hydroelectric power to the two countries. In the late 1960s, hundreds of thousands of kapenta were air-lifted from Lake Tanganyika to Lake Kariba. Kapenta fishing is now an important industry. Kapenta are attracted to lights, so the fish are caught at night, sun-dried the next day and distributed throughout the country.

As for relish, well, in Zimbabwe, a relish is the term for just about everything on a person’s plate other than sadza. Sadza is the focus on the meal, and all other components – meat, chicken, greens, kapenta: that’s relish. So, for the moment, forget about the sweet green stuff you dot (or slather) on a hot dog and think small, smelly fish.

Kapenta Relish
Serves 2-3

½ cup dried kapenta
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 small tomatoes, chopped
Pinch of salt

Soak the kapenta in warm water for about 10 minutes. They will, in a very unsettling way, look as if they are returning to life. In order to avoid staring at the rejuvenating kapenta, begin heating the oil in a small frypan over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and sauté for five minutes, or until the onion is translucent. Then, add the tomatoes and the salt. Continue frying, stirring occasionally, for another 5 minutes, or until all the liquid from the tomatoes has been absorbed. Drain the kapenta, and add them to the frypan. Cook for another 5 minutes, and serve with sadza.

Sadza Rauzviyo
Serves 2-3

2 cups water
2 cups zviyo (a.k.a. rapoko)

Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Turn heat down to medium-high and sprinkle ¾ cup of the meal (a big wooden-spoonful) over the top of the boiling water. Stir briskly, pressing the wooden spoon against the side of the pot to remove any lumps. Keep stirring for about five minutes.

When the mixture is smooth and is beginning to puff and bubble like lava (or, to my eye, the hot mud pools in Rotorua), stop stirring and keep a safe distance from the pot so you will not get hit by a lava burst. After 10 minutes, add another ½ cup of the meal and stir, stir, stir. Once it has been absorbed, add another ½ cup of meal. Stir, stir, stir. Add the remaining ¼ cup, and stir again. The sadza should be thick and smooth, and your arm will be tired. Spoon the sadza onto a plate and let it cool for a few minutes.

Sadza is traditionally eaten with your right hand. Collect some sadza in your right hand, and use it to scoop up your relish – in this case, the kapenta relish. I like sadza rauzviyo much better than the more popular maize-meal sadza; it has a rich, earthy, slightly nutty taste that is very comforting. The kapenta relish is a little too fishy tasting (and smelling) for me, but if you like anchovies and sardines, you will enjoy this relish.

Muddy sadza, smelly fish, tasty lunch.

Tags: recipe, sadza, Zimbabwe, rapoko, rauzviyo, kapenta, relish, main meal, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa