Muryohe Rwe! A Short Field Trip to Rwanda

Field to Feast has never wrote and posted in situ, but here goes - I am writing to you from the shores of Lake Kivu, in western Rwanda, a 10-minute drive from the border with the DRC. Lake Kivu has the unenviable privilege of being considered one of Africa’s “killer lakes” because of the amount of dissolved methane gas and carbon dioxide at the bottom of the lake – gases that could one day burst to the surface, releasing toxic fumes. On the bright side, the methane is being explored as a source of energy – it has even been used to power the nearby Bralirwa brewery.

Today is a little overcast, so the lake and the sky are an almost indistinguishable grey. But, small waves are lapping on the sandy beach and the air is mild, so I am not complaining about the bland view. I had enough spectacular views this morning on the 20-minute drive to some nearby hot springs. The bumpy road wound through hills and valleys of banana grooves, with slices of the lake visible around each bend. Tiny shops lined part of the route – buildings of painted clay, some labeled “café-resto,” others selling phone cards or a small selection of groceries. Homes were scattered on the hillside, some on precarious perches, with tiny dirt paths snaking up to their doorsteps. Men pushed rickety bicycles uphill, loaded down with sugarcane stalks or bananas, and women made steep climbs, carrying huge, gravity-defying baskets of bananas and avocadoes on their heads.

Although I’ve been in Rwanda almost a week, I have not been doing as much food research as I should. Yes, I did eat brochettes (kebabs) and chips, with potent chili sauce. And, yes, I have consumed more bananas this week than I’ve had in the past year – fried plantains, bananas boiled with green split peas (amashaza mu gitoke), bananas as breakfast, and bananas as dessert. Beyond brochettes and bananas, I really liked isombe, a cooked mixture of greens, peanut butter, and chopped, baseball-size white eggplants. I’ve also eaten sambaza (sardines) from Lake Kivu (the same ones that are dried and called kapenta in Zimbabwe), and paid homage to the aforementioned brewery, which makes Mitzig and Primus, the most popular local brews. I’m sure there is much more to Rwandan cooking and drinking, however! To be explored in a future trip…hopefully one I which I see the gorillas and drink homemade banana wine.

Despite the brevity of my trip, I did want to share with you some Kigali restaurant tips. As a complete coincidence, while searching the internet in the hopes of double-checking some spellings, I discovered that I went to all four restaurants listed in this May 2008 article on Kigali’s best-loved restaurants. Clearly, I was getting good dining-out advice from my colleagues! Chez Lando is an open-air, beer garden-esque place, where I had high hopes of ordering the whole grilled tilapia. They were all out, unfortunately, and it was painful watching the last two orders go to a nearby table; the dish looked stunning, and plenty for two people. I ate the fish brochettes instead – they were a little bland for me and needed a good dose of pili-pili hot sauce! Goat brochettes are supposed to be the restaurant's specialty. Khazana’s ambiance may be over-the-top Bollywood, but the food was, without exaggeration, among the best Indian meals I’ve had at any restaurant. The hearty, deeply-spiced chickpea dhal was my favorite. And I’d never taken a liking to injera – this is, until I ate the injera at Lalibela, an Ethiopian restaurant near the stadium. The shiro wot was fabulous. Even me, who has a mushy bread phobia (one reason I have never been too keen on French toast) was devouring the mushy spots of injera where the shiro had soaked right through.

The sun is setting, so I’ll close my post. I’ll be back in Zimbabwe on Monday, learning to cope with the new currency!

Babula Cooking

A few months ago, my friend Ruth (yes, the Ruth of rooibos chocolate cake and buamba fame), handed me a small, square, well-worn booklet, stored in a protective Ziploc bag. “The cookbook I was telling you about – the one compiled by missionaries where I grew up in central Zaire. I think you will like it.”

Like it I do. The recipes in Babula Cooking III (named after the Tshiluba word for a small charcoal stove) come from the kitchens of about two dozen women, and bear cozy, homespun names such as “My Best Gingerbread,” “Crazy Cake”, “Company Pudding,” “2-Minute Mayonnaise,” “Eggplant Supreme,” and “Mother Merle’s Corn Soup.” But Babula Cooking is more than an Africanized Garden Club cookbook – it is also a survival guide for wives and mothers far from supermarkets and reliable refrigeration. It contains handy tips for improving the taste of powdered milk (add vanilla and a pinch of salt), keeping (or getting) bugs out of dry goods like flour, rice and beans, and preserving meat through canning and corning. And the recipes themselves speak to these women’s amazing flexibility to devise substitutions and re-create the smells and tastes of home.

Lack ketchup? Try puréed tomatoes with sugar and vinegar. Don’t have garlic? “From the forest come leaves and bark with a very pungent odor quite like garlic. [The locals] mix crushed leaves or powdered bark with red pepper and salt.” Here, in the jungle of Zaire, missionary women prepare gravy with palm oil, employ dioshe, a common squash, in “pumpkin” bread, and use papayas to make jam “almost like peach jam.” Meri-meri (a local berry) are the sweetly tart secret in muffins, cobblers and jelly, while mangoes fill in for apples in cobbler, pie, sauce and butter. In a display of thrift, leftover oatmeal and rice get transformed into muffins, and eggplant is grated, browed and mixed with ground meat as a “meat stretcher.” “Philadelphia cream cheese” is concocted with drained yogurt.

Babula Cooking is not all Mid-West-cum-central-Africa. The women also incorporate local recipes into their personal repertoires. Aurie Miller, one of the editors, provides this introduction to her recipe for bidia, a stiff porridge made from cornmeal and manioc (cassava) flour:

“African women do not measure but know how many handfuls to put in from long practice. They laugh hilariously when they hear there is a recipe! It would be well for you to watch someone whose bidia you like to figure out your own proportions….” Marcia Murray adds that bidia can then be cubed and fried: “Eaten with salt and catsup,” she notes, “They are like hush puppies.”

This, the third edition of Babula Cooking, was published in 1985. In the foreword, the editors write: “Our hope is that we become less dependent on the expensive imported foods and simplify our lives as we live among those who have so much less than we.” In the era of food miles and food riots, it is a message for us all.

So, instead of having my mom send me a care package of graham crackers, I tried out Janette Fulton’s homemade version. I found it hard to roll the dough thin enough, so they didn’t have the right crunch, and the texture was a bit too crumbly…but the taste? Well, I’ll be darned if they didn’t taste like the real deal.

Honey Graham Crackers
From Babula Cooking III
Makes 24 crackers

2 cups / 240 grams flour
½ cup / 60 grams whole wheat flour
1/3 cup / 57 grams brown sugar
½ cup / 113 grams shortening (I used butter)
¼ cup / 60 milliliters honey
¼ cup / 60 milliliters oil
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters cold water
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters baking soda

Preheat oven to 425°F / 220°C. Stir all ingredients together until well-blended. Roll out on two lightly oiled cookie sheets. Score, prick, and bake for 8-10 minutes. Cut apart while hot. Cool and store in tin with tight top.

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

Make-a-Plan Millet

One expression you learn quickly in Zimbabwe – right up there among “shame” (said, while shaking one’s head, instead of “too bad”) and “howzit?” (“how are things?”) – is “make a plan.” Need to adapt to a new situation or create a Plan “D”? You are making a plan.

But “make a plan” is more than simply an expression; it is also a way of life in a country where every day brings change – new prices, new shortages, new government policies. Making a plan can be time-consuming and can test your patience. It can also force you to be creative and encourage you to try new things. Like millet.

Zimbabwe is primarily a cash economy, which meant that the cash shortage in December caused havoc. The low supply and high demand for cash drove down the exchange rate for cash, while prices at the store continued to rise. As a result, basic items became expensive (think: $10 for a package of spaghetti, $8 for a container of yogurt on the verge of spoiling). At the same time, there was very little cash around to make purchases. So, when I spotted a kilo of millet on the shelves for the equivalent of 50 cents, I snapped it up. I had never cooked with millet before, but thought this was as good a time as any to learn. Lacking pasta, dairy products, and flour, it was time to make a plan.

I toasted the millet grains in a bit of oil, and then set them to simmer in water. My family from Boston called in the midst of my preparations. “What are you cooking?” my brother asked. “Millet,” I said. “Isn’t that bird food?” I suddenly remembered the big bags of millet my dad kept in the garage to feed the birds. “Well, um, I guess so. We couldn’t buy much at the shops and I had to make a plan.”

Millet comes in different types, with different colors (yellow, reddish, and grey-brown, like the kind I bought). Birds like it, but so do humans. In Zimbabwe, millet grains are typically pounded to make flour, which is then cooked with water to make sadza. Instead, I used the cooked whole grains to make a salad. My husband brought the salad to work for lunch. His Zimbabwean co-workers looked at his meal skeptically and asked, only half-jokingly, “What, your wife doesn’t pound your millet for you?”

It might not be typical to eat whole millet in Zimbabwe, but I’d recommend it. The grains are nutty-tasting and a tad chewy, with a distinctive earthy aroma. A kilo goes a long way, so I’ve been trying out a number of different recipes. I prefer millet served at room temperature tossed with sautéed or roasted vegetables, a bit of crumbly soft cheese, and a splash of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar. When a recipe calls for bulgur, quinoa, or couscous, you can always prepare millet as a substitute.

Millet is very nutritious (a good source of fiber, B vitamins, protein, iron…) and is gluten-free.

The recipe below combines Madhur Jaffrey’s basic method of cooking millet with the vegetables and spices from a recipe in a South African cookbook called “Quiet Food.” In the “Quiet Food” recipe, the millet mixture is made into patties and used to create a vegetarian version of frikkadels (South African meatballs). I had trouble getting the patties to stick together, but liked the flavor of the mixture. So I made another plan, changing our meal from frikkadels to a well-textured, brightly-colored millet salad, with some fresh corn and fresh ricotta added in.

Next time you need to make a plan, make this millet!

Millet Salad with Carrot and Spinach
Serves 4-5

2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil, separated
1 cup / 200 grams millet (picked over, rinsed, drained and patted dry)
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters dried oregano
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters dried thyme
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters salt
1 tablespoon / 15 grams butter
1 large onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced or shredded
Kernels from a cob of fresh corn (optional)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1½ cups / 45 grams fresh spinach, chopped
¾ cup crumbled fresh ricotta (you could use feta)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Fresh thyme, for garnish

Have 2 cups / 500 milliliters of boiling water ready. Put 1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters of the oil in a medium saucepan and set over medium-high heat. When hot, add the millet. Fry, stirring frequently, for three minutes. Pour in the boiling water, cover, and set aside for 1 hour.

Uncover and add the oregano, thyme and salt. Stir. Bring to a boil, cover, and turn the heat down to low. Simmer gently for 40 minutes. Check to make sure the grains are now tender, but with some bite. (If not, cook until they are like this.) Turn off the heat and leave covered for 15 minutes. Almost all of the water should be absorbed. If not, you can drain it off.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining olive oil and the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, carrot and optional corn and sauté until they are soft, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the spinach and cook until it has wilted. Remove from heat.

Combine the cooked millet, carrot mixture and cheese in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Toss. Serve at room temperature, garnished with thyme.

Samp and Beans, Enlivened with Lime

Corn has been getting a lot of publicity lately. But even before industrial agriculture dug its claws into this versatile cereal and invented high-fructose corn syrup, cultures around the world had devised myriad techniques for consuming every edible part of the plant. In Zimbabwe, you can buy roasted maize by the side of the road, or bags of popped maize, called maputi. Finely ground white maize (mealie-meal) is used to make the staple dish, sadza, as well as a thin porridge commonly eaten for breakfast. A Zimbabwean could easily eat corn three times a day.

Another corn permutation, common in southern Africa as well as the southern U.S. and Mexico – not to mention a food that kept the colonists alive in New England – is samp. Much has been written in an attempt to explain the difference between samp, hominy and grits, a task complicated by regional usages of these terms within the U.S. Here is how I distinguish between them:

- Hominy is dried, whole kernels of corn whose skins (or hulls) and germs (the little bit inside the kernel) have been removed.
- Samp is the same thing, except the kernels are cracked into a few pieces.
- Grits are ground hominy. Mealie-meal and polenta (typically made from yellow corn, instead of white) both differ from grits in that the hull and germ are not removed before grinding the dried kernels.

Got it?

Samp is typically paired with dried beans in southern Africa. In fact, you can often buy the soulmates packaged together in one bag. In South Africa, samp and beans (umngqusho) is a traditional dish of the Xhosa people, and was supposedly one of Nelson Mandela’s favorite meals growing up. You can serve cooked samp and beans with sautéed or fried onions, with butter, or with any sauce of your choosing.

This refreshing recipe employs lime, honey and mustard to create a light, punchy take on samp and beans that makes a refreshing side for shellfish or a lively addition to a summer salad buffet.

Honey-Lime Samp and Beans Salad
Adapted from Food and Home Entertaining, May 2005
Serves 4 as a side dish

1¼ cups / 200 grams samp (you can substitute hominy)
½ cup / 100 grams sugar beans (you can substitute pinto beans)
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters salt
¼ cup / 60 milliliters olive oil
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters whole-grain mustard
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters honey
Zest of one lime
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters fresh basil leaves, chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Fresh basil leaves, for garnish

Rinse the samp and beans and soak overnight. Drain, put in a medium saucepan, cover generously with water and add the salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until tender, about 1½-2 hours. Drain and set aside.

Whisk together the olive oil, mustard, honey, lime zest and basil leaves and season to taste. Pour over the still-warm samp and beans and leave to cool. Serve at room temperature, or refrigerate and serve cool, garnished with the remaining basil leaves.

Tiny Potatoes, Spicy Salad

The number of vendors has increased over the past few months in Harare – shop-side vendors dangling plastic sleeves of tomatoes, potatoes, onions and okra from sticks like veggie mobiles; street-side vendors displaying their greens, mangoes, avocadoes and maputi (popped maize) on upturned boxes; and, my favorite, the men who defy death itself, standing smack dab in the middle of busy roads (even when the lights aren’t working) hawking the most delicate of commodities – crates of eggs.

Given Zimbabwe’s ever-more-astronomical currency denominations, bargaining for these items sounds absolutely ridiculous. “Tomatoes, imari?” I ask. “Five million.” “And the potatoes?” “Seven point five.” "I’ll give you 10 million for both." “11.” Sold. And so I count out a small pile of bills – one 5 million note and 30 200,000s.

I am picky about my produce. The tomatoes can’t be too ripe or too firm; the mangoes and avocados must be string-less. And the potatoes I seek out from venders are the tiny, spherical ones that you barely need to chop. A quick slice or two and they become bite-size.

These potatoes are ideal for tourchi batata, a spicy potato salad from Tunisia that can be served hot, cold or anywhere in between. This salad is quick to prepare and easy to double – after making it the first time and seeing my husband gobble it up I have vowed never to make a single recipe again. You could peel the potatoes, but I like to keep them on. I served tourchi batata last week as a tapas-like dish with afternoon drinks – beer cuts the spice best. I’ll let my friends make their own comments, but I think the salad was a hit.

Tunisian Potato Salad (Tourchi Batata)
Adapted from Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India
Serves 4 as a side dish

1 pound / 450 grams small boiling potatoes
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
1 teaspoon harissa (more, or less, to taste)
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1 lemon, freshly squeezed

Cook potatoes in boiling water for 15 minutes, or until tender. Cool and cut into cubes (or, with tiny potatoes, just in half). Heat the oil in a skillet, and add the harissa, salt, ground cumin and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and boil for a few seconds. Pour over the potatoes and toss. Let marinate for twenty minutes or so and serve warm, or serve at room temperature, or refrigerate for at least one hour and serve cool.