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African cooking show

10th March 2017

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy

     

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The other day I realised that I had eaten food in many African countries outside South Africa and had never passed on my experiences. So, here, in no particular order, beginning with Swaziland, are my experiences.

I know that in Swaziland there is a restaurant that serves fine food. I have just never found it. Swaziland chicken and Swaziland beef are the toughest in the world. The stuff in the supermarket is not too bad but, otherwise, oh boy. It may be the way they cook it: when the fire is going and the flames are high, they put the beef and chicken on the grill, where they sit until they are black.

In Botswana, the food is generally not bad. In fact, Botswana beef is wonderful stuff. In the hotel I stay in, they have tripe and onions, liver and a mountain of mealie pap. When I was last there with our lead engineer, Rachel, I discovered that they had some very nice lamb chops. Small but very tasty. The bone was triangular, something never seen before as being a chop bone. It was not a chop bone; it was crocodile tail, crumbed and fried. When I told our waiter, with a wry laugh, that we did not get crocodile in South Africa, he pointed out that the fish I had eaten was not, in fact, kingklip but was barbel (cat fish). Yum.

Kenya . . . oh Kenya. At every meal, you will get a hockey puck size of compressed mealie pap. It is called ugali. You can use it to block leaking radiators. Always on the menu is Great Lakes tilapia. This is a small bony fish which does have a great taste if you can get the meat off the bones. The hero of Kenyan cooking has an interesting history. Back in the day, when the Memsaabs were still around, they used to make beef stew by cutting the meat off the bones and stewing it with carrots, onions and potatoes. The rich oral tradition of passing down recipes now results in a beef stew which is mostly boiled bones in a thin soup with boiled carrots, onions and potatoes.

Zambia . . . Let me put it this way: when we were in Zambia, we stayed at a mining camp and the food was just as good as the food at any mining camp. Our liaison officer, Kennedy Fula, offered to take us to the local market so that we could see what was sold. It is no exaggeration to say that they sold nothing that I had ever bought before, save possibly tomatoes. We bought some cassava flour and peppers. When I got into the truck, I asked Kennedy what he had bought. He opened his packet to show a couple of handfuls of still wriggling worms. He smiled at me and said: “It’s good to get away from the mine canteen and we need some proper food for a change.” Fortunately, we were leaving in an hour.

In the Republic of Congo, the mining camp was run by the French. As a consequence, the food was good, as was the coffee. I managed to provide entertainment for the entire staff as follows: driving towards the site, I saw people selling bowls of beautiful plum-size red fruit. So we stopped and I bought some. Back at the camp, I asked the chef to put them in the fridge and bring out a few for dessert. He looked puzzled. After dinner, he brought out a bowl with five of the fruit. I destoned it and ate the flesh. It was amazingly bitter. The following night, the chef brought another bowl but this time he hung around with two of the kitchen staff and watched me eat. This went on for a few days until the fruit was finished.

Driving back to the airport I told the Congolese engineer the story. He laughed so much he nearly drove off the road. He explained to me that the fruit had to be boiled – else it was very bitter – and the best part was the pip, which I had religiously discarded. Ah, the good food of Africa.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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