There are three things I am certain you will find in all major Ugandan (and East African) townships; Luganda, a rolex kiosk and a restaurant serving local cuisines called Munamasaka.
I’m always left with a sour taste in the mouth whenever I have to volunteer a compliment especially if I am forced to agree that someone or something is beautiful. Well, some people are indeed beautiful when they wear a disarming smile. So are some things; like mildly peppered salty nsenene, beautifully wrapped nyanya mbisi rolex, and a Saturday morning on paycheck weekend.
And we’re up to the “U” countries! And we’re back in Africa, yet again! (And it’s the last time we’ll be here until our final two weeks.)
Yes, we have reached the subject of Week 181 of our alphabetical, international learn-to-cook challenge and ... Uganda!
So, how did I do, cooking food from Africa for the 52nd time? (I mean, Africa does have more countries than any other continent.) Did I discover something new? And did I somehow manage to finally correct an old mistake?
Read on to find out.
The Country
Located in the Great Lakes region of East Africa, Uganda is a landlocked nation which is (for the US oriented) slightly smaller than Oregon. It is bordered by former challenge subjects Democratic Republic of Congo [Congo (Kinshasa) (Week 40)], Rwanda (Week 143), South Sudan (Week 161) and Tanzania (Week 171).
Bantu-speaking people came to the region between 1,700 and 2,300 years ago, displacing the hunter-gatherers that had lived there before. Luo people arrived in the 16th Century and settled in the north. Arab traders came in from the east in the 1830s, and they were followed by British explorers and missionaries.
The territory that is the modern nation of Uganda was cobbled together by the British who, in seeking to control the source of the Nile River, established a protectorate which mashed together many disparate peoples with different languages and traditions.
During this time, the British imported thousands of indentured servants from South Asia, mostly from India, to build the railroads. Once those were built, most of these individuals returned to India, although a critical minority stayed behind and became a driving force of Uganda’s cotton ginning and textile retail industries.
The country achieved independence from Great Britain in 1962. But, since then, things have been decidedly grim.
By 1966, conflict between political/ethnic factions led to a change in the constitution which effectively cut one side out of the leadership and abolished the traditional kingdoms. By 1971, this led to a coup which saw the rise to power of the brutal dictator Idi Amin Dada.
During his eight years of rule, Amin ordered the country’s Indian minority to either leave the country or face execution, as he associated these citizens with his rivals in the nation’s northern regions. This action helped collapse the nation’s economy, driving out a vital part of the nation’s entrepreneurial class.
It is believed that Amin was responsible for some 300,000 deaths during his reign, a rule highlighted (low-lighted?) by the 1976 hijacking of a Tel Aviv-Paris flight by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The passengers, rerouted to Uganda’s Entebbe airport, were rescued in a mission by Israeli commandos with the support of the Kenyan government. (In retaliation, Amin ordered the killing of Kenyans living in Uganda.)
Amin’s tale and the hijacking/hostage drama were featured in the 1977 television drama Raid on Entebbe and the award-winning, semi-fictional 2006 British film, The Last King of Scotland.
Amin was deposed in 1979 and died in bed, in exile, in Saudi Arabia in 2003.
After that, the nation saw more political turmoil, and, in 1986, the present president came to power in yet another coup.
Today, Uganda struggles on just about all fronts, with active wars against the Lords Resistance Army, cross-border conflicts on just about all sides, mass poverty, corruption and human rights abuses.
BONUS TRIVIA:
Uganda is the world’s second most populated landlocked nation, only surpassed by Ethiopia (Week 57).
Overpopulation is a serious concern, with Ugandans having a median age of 15.6, one of the lowest in the world, and the world’s fifth highest fertility rate. As a comparison, while similar-sized Oregon is home to some 4 million people, Uganda has roughly 38 million citizens.
The current president, who was reelected in 2011 in a marginally fair election, is up for reelection in 2016 and faces opposition from, of all people, his own personal physician.
Uganda gained much of the world’s condemnation over the past decade as it pursued a campaign to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. The nation’s existing anti-gay laws, a carryover from its colonial past, have been reinforced by conservative American pastors who have championed the “death to gays” legislation. And although the law was ruled void on a technicality in 2014, life for LGBT Ugandans is rough, to say the least.
Despite war, the fear of death for LGBT people and whatnot, in 2012 the Lonely Planet Guide declared Uganda -- called the “Pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill -- the number one must-see place on Earth for its hospitality, gorgeous vistas and chimpanzee sanctuaries.
The Food
As this is a nation of great geographical and ethnic variety, the foods vary from the lakeside regions where seafood is common to the inland villages where beef and chicken are more routine. In much of the nation, sustenance farming is a primary source of foodstuffs, and food insecurity, while lessening, remains high.
Oh yeah, and a favorite snack and roadside offering throughout the country is pan-fried grasshopper. (No, I’m not making that. Not that I wouldn’t want to try one.)
In deciding on my menu, I figured I would make one seafood dish reflecting the hybrid cuisine that reflects the mixture of Indian and African food traditions. And I’d take my second night to attempt to correct a mistake I made for an earlier nation with a very similar dish.
So, I decided that for Night One, I’d make ...
Gujarati-Inspired Tilapia with Mango Relish using this recipe, served with
Matooke (Mashed Green Bananas) with Groundnut (Peanut) Sauce using a recipe found here.
And for Night Two, I’d whip up ...
Goat Luwombo using a recipe from here merged with one found here, served with
Ugandan Collard Greens using a preparation found here.
The Cook (Night One)
Shameless plug: I live-stream my cook/prep work on Meerkat, now available for iOS and Android and visible on the web. Follow @cliffieland on Twitter or Facebook for times. Also, if you go to meerkatstreams.com, you can now schedule to record live shows, DVR-style, in advance.
Watch a replay of this night here
The Tilapia
For this one, I started out by scoring the fresh tilapia fillets.
And then I got started on the marinade.
Into a bowl, I poured some canola oil. And, into that, I aded some crushed garlic.
Crushed cumin seeds.
Salt.
Black pepper.
Chili powder.
Turmeric.
And the juice of a lemon.
I poured the marinade over the fish, gamely attempting to get it into the cut slits.
Then, I covered the dish with plastic wrap and set the fish to marinate in the fridge for about an hour or so.
Meanwhile, I got to working on the mango relish.
I peeled and cut a green, unripe mango into chunks.
And I grated the chunks into a bowl. To that, I added sugar.
Salt.
Chili powder.
And forgetting to add the lemon juice like I was supposed to, I just mixed that all up.
After the hour was up, I took the fish out of the fridge, and placed the oily fish on the heated cast-iron skillet to cook for about four minutes a side until they were done.
The Green Bananas
For this one, I peeled the green bananas and cut them into one-inch chunks.
Then, I covered them with the juice of a lemon and let them soak while I prepped the rest.
After about 10-15 minutes, I drained the chunks and set them to boil in some water for about 20-30 minutes until they were tender enough to mash.
While that cooked, I placed a cup’s worth of roasted peanuts into the blender and I attempted to puree that until smooth.
After a good deal of effort (and a couple tablespoons of water) I had what appeared to be close enough to a paste.
Come time to fire the dish, I heated up some canola oil in the skillet and added in the diced tomatoes.
The diced onion.
And some water.
Once that came to a boil, I added in the peanuts.
Paprika.
And salt and pepper.
And I let that simmer for about 15 minutes until it thickened into a sauce.
Finally, the bananas were ready, and I drained them.
I mashed them up and plated them. I ladled servings of the groundnut sauce on top and dressed it with cilantro leaves. And beside that, I plated servings of the fish, topped with the mango salsa. In the end, that looked like this.
The Tasting
The Green Bananas with Groundnut sauce: Surprisingly good. Time and again I have been surprised as to how flavorful cooked green bananas are. They have a little more sweetness than your average ripe plantain. And with the addition of the lemon and the creamy peanut sauce, the dish was a winning one.
The Tilapia with Mango Salsa: Holy moly! That was out of this world! The fish was perfectly cooked, and the marinade gave it more flavor than I thought was possible. And with the delicious mango salsa, it went over the top. Phenomenal.
The Cook (Night Two)
Watch a replay of this night here.
The Goat Luwombo
Here’s the thing. Goat scares me. I mean, I’ve enjoyed eating goat from time to time over the years. But making it has been something else altogether.
See, I made a royal mess of things when I first tried cooking a very similar dish to this one years ago when I cooked Congo (Kinshasa) (Week 40) and I made it even worse weeks after that when I mucked things up for Djibouti (Week 48).
But I have passed on goat so many times since then, I figured this could be my last shot at it. So, I did some research on how LONG one has to cook goat for it to come out right. (It takes a long time. This page helped immeasurably.) And then I set out to find someplace to buy goat that didn’t involve a 40 minute trip each way to the Global Market of 1,000,000 Randomly Placed Foodstuffs.
Thankfully, I found a nearby Latin market that had frozen goat. That’ll do, I figured.
So, after defrosting my pound of goat, I took to cutting the meat off the bones. (Yes, I’ve read that picking the meat off the bones is traditional. But I didn’t feel like doing that.)
Once I had my meat dissected into bite-sized pieces, I continued my prep.
In making the peanut butter this time, unlike the previous night, I opted to go with the food processor instead of the blender.
And, departing from the recipes I found, I decided that I would take a tip from the goat master in the linked article and, again in a nod to Uganda’s Indian culinary influences, I made up a fresh batch of garam masala.
So, into a dry skillet I dumped coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, cardamom seeds and cinnamon sticks, and I toasted them for about five minutes.
I ground those up in the spice grinder and I was finally ready to fire the dish.
I heated up some peanut oil in the cast-iron skillet and seared off the goat for a few minutes until it was browned on all sides.
I removed the goat to a bowl, and then, adding more oil, I dropped in the diced onion.
Diced tomatoes.
A chicken boullion cube.
And salt and pepper.
And I sautéed that until the onions had softened. Next, I dropped in the sliced white mushrooms.
Pieces of smoked trout.
Tomato paste.
A teaspoon of the fresh garam masala.
And the ground peanuts.
And once that had reduced to a smooth, creamy sauce, I added the goat back in to coat it thoroughly.
Then, I had to create the packets with the last of my plantain leaves.
It is at this point I realized that, not only did I not have enough of the plantain leaves to use up all the filling, the ones I had left were torn in all the wrong places.
Oops.
I forged ahead, spooning servings of the goat and sauce into the center of the roughly 10″ x 10″ squares and folding them over from the sides into packets.
And I despaired that, when I turned them over, I saw that all the filling was already falling out.
That would simply not do,
While I filled the deep pot with water and placed the steaming attachment at the base ....
I figured I could just wrap the leaky packets with parchment paper so that the insides wouldn’t all fall out into the pot. And using parchment paper would let the steam penetrate the packets, unlike aluminum foil. And, for the extra stuffing, I’d just stick it in a parchment paper packet sans plantain leaves.
I tied the packets with kitchen twine and placed them in the pot.
And, being hurried, I decided I could cook the green bananas for this dish IN the skin, as I have several times before. I cut the ends off the bananas and stuck them on top of the packets.
I covered the pot and I let the entire thing steam for about two hours, adding extra water every 30 minutes or so.
When time was up, I extracted the plantains and the packets from the steamy vessel.
The Collard Greens
I really only did this one since I figured I could use a green vegetable and I wanted to make something using sesame seeds, a common ingredient in Ugandan dishes.
So, into the saucepan, I added some water and mixed in some baking soda (to, allegedly, add some sweetness to the greens).
I dropped in the pound of shredded collard greens (not pictured, sorry).
And while that came to a boil, I took out a bowl and scooped in a little over 3/4 cup of plain, organic, unsweetened peanut butter.
I mixed in ALL of the sesame seeds in the house.
And I poured in a little over 3/4 cup of the now-yellow cooking water.
I mixed that up and then poured it over the greens.
And I let that thicken into a sauce that coated the softened greens.
Come time for dinner, I peeled the green bananas, mashed and plated them. I opened up the goat packets and dumped the contents over the mashed bananas. And I ladled servings of the collard greens alongside. In the end, that looked like this.
The Tasting
The Collard Greens: Curious. I can’t say I’m a fan of collard greens and I know that they tend to need salt to counteract the metallic taste. (I did have the sense to do that this time.) And while the greens did retain some bitterness, the creamy peanut butter did manage to be a nice compliment to it. As a bonus, The Husband said he liked it better than most of the other African greens offerings I’ve made.
The Luwombo: Now THAT’S what goat is supposed to taste like! This was positively incredible. It was the polar opposite of the creation I made years ago when I cooked the DRC [Congo (Kinshasa)]. The goat was tender and juicy. The mushrooms and smoked trout sang. And the flavors of the fresh garam masala did the rest of the work.
See, I told you Uganda like it!
Shameless plug #2 for those that scrolled down: I live-stream my cook/prep work on Meerkat, now available for iOS and Android and visible on the web. Follow @cliffieland on Twitter or Facebook for times. Also, if you go to meerkatstreams.com, you can now schedule to record live shows, DVR-style, in advance.
Next Week: We head back to Europe for the penultimate time as we tackle ... Ukraine!
Whenever i visit my grandmother, she makes me this Ugandan delicacy; luwombo (chicken prepared in a banana leaf). Very tasty. Served with matooke (steamed raw bananas).
