A new year

This is going to be a bumper year- for starters and most importantly – we’ve got a publisher! 

Kosmos Netherlands has taken our project on board and together with Oxfam Novib we embark upon very exciting African food collaboration. So, this month has already had us scrabbling to keep up with deadlines – planning’s, recipes, meetings- Carole, Sean, Peninah and I have a few busy months ahead of us- but boy are we up to it. 

In January I took a short trip to Angola and South Africa and got a good dose of  what was hip and happening down south. Saw fashionable Jo’burgers nibbling injera and designer bunny chows  at Arts on Main in downtown Joburg.

And everything from scarlet eggplants (next post), avocado “batida” milkshake, traditional palm oil beans (yum) funge –cassava porridge(acquired taste) to the just about the best sushi outside of Tokyo..  at Oondah

in the craziest city in the world- Luanda.

 Oh yes, in Angola we got ourselves on national TV..

A good start to very busy food year!   

Oysters Africana

Mombasa oysters

Oyster recipes are not the first thing that springs to mind in a repertoire of African recipes.  But actually they are used quite a lot- smoked oysters are a favorite in West African dishes. Here are 2 really interesting recipes for oysters prepared in a very African way.

Huitres Azi Dessi

Who’d ever think to combine oysters ‘n peanut butter? In this dish from Togo, a former French colony, crispy, fried oysters are served with a spicy, unusual sauce with tomatoes, onions, a little smoked shrimp, and peanut.

Mussels, shrimp or langoustines pieces prepared in this manner also go well with the sauce. Kenyan Mombasa oysters are also though to find their origin in a colonial past. The Oysters are shucked on the half shell, and then quickly baked with a drizzling of fragrant garlic wine reduction spiced with chilli and chopped coriander. ..mmmm.

Huitres Azi Dessi

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon palm oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small red chilli

½ teaspoon minced fresh ginger

2 large ripe tomatoes, chopped

1½ tablespoon chunky peanut butter

1 teaspoon ground smoked shrimp

24 plump fresh oysters in the shell

Vegetable oil for frying

50 g whole wheat flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

lemon wedges to serve

Method: First make the sauce. Heat the palm oil in a pan and cook the onion, garlic, chilli and ginger over medium heat for a few minutes. Add the tomato and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the peanut butter. And cook for a minute or two. Sir in a few tablespoons of water if too thick.  Stir in the ground smoked shrimp just before serving and season to taste.

For the oysters- Shuck the oysters, remove them from the shell and drain in a sieve.  Heat the oil to fry the oysters. Season the flour with salt, pepper and cayenne and toss the oysters in the flour to coat completely. Fry the oysters until they are golden brown and crisp. Drain on paper towels. Serve the azi dessi sauce in a cleaned oyster shell with the fried oysters and wedges of lemon.

Huites Azi Dessi

Possibilities of pap..

Hennie Fisher a food lover and chef in South Africa has this rather outspoken view that ends on a very tasty note..

pap croutons on swiss chard salad

"The one thing that makes me a real outcast in our country is that I do not like pap at all. Those that do not know what pap is, in a South African context, need to understand, that it is to South Africans what rice is to the East or pasta in Italy. In our country (and not necessarily so in other African countries) pap is a rather heavy startch cooked from predominantly white maize meal. Maize meal refers to maize (or as it is called to in our country, mielies) that is ground to a not too fine flour. It does not look like normal cake flour. If you do grind maize until it becomes a complete white powder, you get corn starch or corn flour. But the stage where it still has some texture is referred to as maize meal. And in South Africa that is what we make mielie-pap from. At one stage in the 70’s we had a huge shortage of white mielies, and people had to make pap from yellow maize flour – like Italian polenta – not a period favoured in the minds of people who see the white stuff as Italians see pasta – that the pasta is important and the sauce or accompaniment is just there to flavour the starch filler.

The range and possibilities of cooking pap in our country is endless. People have it quite stiff most of the time, when it is eaten by hand in little balls and dunked into the accompanying sauce or vegetable or meat dish. Big volumes are consumed and one can see a grown man eat 750ml of stiff pap in one go without blinking. Pap of course is also made quite dry, when the clump of pap does not end in one big stiff ball, but starts separating into little smaller clumps or balls of pap. It is achieved through a large ratio of maize meal to water, but also in the cooking technique and duration of cooking. Krummelpap is what it is called and literally means crumbly pap. It is most often eaten either as a breakfast item with milk and sugar or with our countries other biggest food pastime – the braai, when it is served with a tomato sauce. Krummelpap is something that I can still cope with as it had texture. Which brings me to my affliction- I have no problem with the actual product – maize meal – it has to do with the preparation and seasoning.


 Soft polenta is a national staple in most Italian homes, and various cultures all over the world make similar variations from maize meal. Soft Italian polenta is very similar to a soft version of pap – other than the fact that it is mostly made from yellow maize meal. But the big thing here is that it is made with stock, and/or cream and milk and always with lots of salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. It is therefore and extremely pleasant tasty addition, and not a huge plate of tasteless flavourless pap. Most pap in South Africa is made with very little seasoning other than a small bit of salt. I understand the reasoning as a carrier of flavour coming from the sauce or meat or vegetables. But it is just such a bland unimaginative product that it is not one of my favourite items. Even stiff pap has very little appeal. Stiff polenta on the other hand (again made with all the seasonings and flavourings) cooled and cut into slices and fried has a total different textural appeal. 


 If maize meal is treated in the polenta way, of course it is really nice. Some special millers in SA sell maize flour that are really course and has all the fibres left in the flour. It makes wonderful polenta inspired dishes and very tasty. With braai I is completely wonderful to therefore make such a loaf of stiff cold pap that was made with milk/cream/stock (or any combination thereof) and lots of salt and pepper and copious hands of grated parmesan cheese. Then cut into thick wedges and grilled on the braai – delicious, a little unhealthy( don’t eat too much), and a lovely alternative to normal braai pap.
 I have too on another occasion create a similar dish, and spread the same mixture on a lined baking sheet and then layered thinly sliced grilled vegetables thereon, and rolled it up like s Swiss-roll. admittedly a bit of work, I must say that was delicious. 
So you see there are possibilities with pap…"

Hennie with collegue, preparing for a catering function

 

Eco Cooking on African Tables

Two South Africans have blown new life into an old-fashioned, fuel saving cooking technique. The massive reduction in fuel that the “Wonderbag” uses, is especially welcome those who can ill- afford to spend their income on energy bills. The design is simple, a padded, insulated bag covered in sassy African textiles. Start the cooking process by heating a pot of food in the conventional way, then place the pot with food in the Wonderbag to slow cook to tasty perfection. Healthy cooking, less energy, less pollution and easy to use- brilliant. Get the whole story on the website: http://nb-wonderbag.com

Poorman's breakfast- African way

Pastels is an African food my partner should have told me a long time ago, considering my vested interest in African food. But for some reason he didn’t.

His story just popped out this last week.. As we were passing a mill, which sells stone ground flour, he piped up ” I need to get some good flour and make pastels… my mom used to make them. 

I thought he ‘meant pasteis de Bacalhau -but what he described was a type of bread fritter similar to Mandazi found in east Africa, Kenya and Tanzania or Vetkoek in South Africa. He also mentioned that they were similar to “mikates” a Congolese fritter sold on the streets in the eastern province of Uige in Angola.

In the batter one can include small pieces of soaked bacalhau, which cook as you fry the fritter. His family would have them for breakfast; their mum would make them when there was no bread in the house. We had them as bite with an ice- cold beer- delicious! 

A Pint of cassava

A new beer called Impala Cerveja has been launched in Mozambique. It is brewed in Mozambique by SABMiller's local subsidiary, Cervejas de Moçambique (CDM). Cassava beer is a popular traditional home brewed drink in rural Mozambique. Impala Cerverja is the world’s first commercially produced cassava beer, and has a refreshingly sour taste compared to other beers. This organic beer, a blend of cassava and barley has a stronger taste than conventional beers. Cassava is a root vegetable similar to potato and is highly perishable. The brewery uses a mobile processing plant, which roams local farms to source and harvest and process the cassava within a few hours buying from about 2000 local farms. This support of local communities will hopefully help Mozambique farmers put food on the table. 

Stylish duo

Fellow foodie, Martine Steenstra, took her fist trip to Africa recently…she came back with some good tales, recipes and a plan to return.

Here’s what she’s sharing-

Fishing bike on the beach in Zanzibar

Octopus is a staple on Zanzibar, it’s hard to find a dish without octopus when eating at local restaurants. But who cares? They also like to dress their salads with the pulp of passion fruits. Octopus and the passion fruit happen to be adventurous African couple in this salad.

Zanzibari salad with octopus and passion fruit

starter – serves 4 – 30 min. prep. time

4 baby octopuses

 red wine vinegar

4 tomatoes

1 cucumber, thinly sliced

2 red onions, sliced in thin rings

1 red chilli pepper, sliced in thin rings

pulp of  6 passion fruits

juice of 2 limes

groundnut oil

sea salt and pepper

Clean the octopus (or if you’re a lazy girl like me; have your fishmonger do it for you). Then poach it in boiling salted water, with a large glug of vinegar, for 10 to 15 minutes or until tender. Dunk in ice cold water and cut the tentacles into small pieces.

Remove and tomatoes pith and seeds, and cut  the remaining flesh in strips.

Arrange the tomatoes, cucumber, onion and chilli pepper on four plates. Place the octopus on top. Dollop the passion fruit pulp on the octopus. Make a dressing with the lime juice, vinegar and oil just as you like it. Zanzibari’s like it tart. Season with salt and pepper.