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.

Curried Kidney Beans, and the Mobile Food Chain

I didn’t study science in school and do not work in a scientific field – maybe that’s why I so admire books that make science accessible to us commoners. Jared Diamond can work this magic, as can Natalie Angier. I am currently reading Feast: Why Humans Share Food by Martin Jones, a bio-archaeologist. Jones’ prose isn’t as approachable as Diamond’s or Angier’s, but his topic – the history of the meal – is so fascinating that I am willing to read, and then re-read, as many paragraphs as necessary.

In each chapter of Feast, Jones describes a particular archaeological dig and, drawing upon the dig’s findings, envisions and narrates a typical meal-time scene. I just finished reading his exploration of a meal near a lake in Israel 23,000 years ago and a feast 11,000 years ago in the Euphrates Valley of Syria.

There are signs of weaving at the site in Israel – a new invention that allowed us humans to capture fish, small mammals and birds and to gather seeds, grains, legumes and nuts more effectively. As a result, we became much less dependent on men hunting large animals for our survival. By the time the scene in Syria happened, there were basically no men left whose main occupation was hunter.

(I promise all of this background will get to a recipe, eventually!)

Many things struck me about the meal Jones describes in Syria – the huge variety of grains, legumes and nuts consumed, including a cake flavored with ground mustard seeds, and the fact that the seeds had been cracked and soaked – similar to the preparation of tabouleh in the Middle East today. The meal takes place in a permanent settlement, something novel for us humans at this point in our history.

The climate was changing like crazy 11,000 years ago at the time of the meal in Syria, forcing plants and animals to continually chase their preferred habitats. In the past, people would have moved with them. But now, after constructing their permanent settlements, they didn’t want to move. Nor did they want to give up eating their favorite things. So, humans began modifying the environment around their favorite plants in order to mimic the places where these plants thrived – an early step towards agriculture.

(Really – a recipe is on its way….)

Another interesting feature of that meal 11,000 years ago is that it was prepared in a new physical human space – the kitchen. Instead of food being cooked and eaten around a fire, the meal in Syria was prepared in an area separate from the dining location. And there is evidence that all of this cooking – grinding, pounding, soaking, washing – was done by women.

Says Jones: “The meticulous study of the bones…indicates that in the ancient Euphrates at least, a very significant role in food preparation was played by women. All this evidence of back-breaking women’s work raises the question of what the men were up to.”

So, what were the men up to, especially since their hunting skills were not being called into action? Jones argues that the “surplus” men in the community became travelers, visiting settlements near and far. There emerged a tradition of welcoming these visitors into settlements with food and shelter, and of the visitor himself offering gifts of thanks, which included cultural artifacts, plants and animals. Soon, the number of migrants, and the number of new permanent settlements, began to grow.

(I know you don’t believe me, but a recipe is coming!)

Jones describes this movement of people as creating a “mobile food chain.” “It [the mobile food chain] did not spread by bulldozing flat the competition, but by leapfrogging from favored site to favored site…each new settlement taking with it many elements of the food chain, the styles and the beliefs of its parent communities.”

It would seem, then, that for many thousands of years we have had a tendency to prefer the foods and preparations we are accustomed to, and to take these customs with us wherever we go. I know I do this. Every time I travel to the States, I bring back with me black beans, pine nuts, granola bars, and walnuts. I can live without these items, of course, but I don’t want to. On the weekend before Christmas, I made minestrone soup, just like my mom does, even though I had to make a couple substitutions. With these actions, I am mimicking a human tendency that has spanned millennia – migrants bringing their favorite foods with them, and modifying their cooking to fit their new environments.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are many people of Indian descent in South Africa, and they’ve brought with them styles and ingredients of cooking that have, over time, become just as South African as they are Indian. It is this combination of people developing cuisines in their “permanent” settlements and migrants sharing their favorite foods with new neighbors that has contributed to the amazing variety of dishes we humans have created.

One of these dishes is Natal Red Kidney Bean Curry. The red kidney bean comes from South America, but is now quite common in South African cuisine. Take this traveling bean, combine it with Indian migrants, and you have a curry prepared in a Gujarati style, with a South America bean, in a southern African country.

Do like your ancestors would and share this meal with friends and family. Feast!

(And, finally, the recipe!)

Natal Red Kidney Bean Curry
From From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail
Serves 6

1½ cups / 300 grams dried red kidney beans
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters vegetable oil
3 whole dried hot red chilies
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters whole brown mustard seeds
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters whole cumin seeds
Generous pinch of ground asafetida
10-15 fresh curry leaves, if available
3 medium tomatoes, grated
¼ teaspoon / 1.25 milliliters turmeric
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1-2 fresh hot green chilies, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters sugar
1½ teaspoons / 7.5 milliliters salt

Cover the beans generously in water and leave to soak overnight. Drain the next day, put in a medium-size pan, add 6 cups of water, and bring to a boil. Partially cover with a lid, reduce the heat to low, and cook gently for 2-2 ½ hours, or until the beans are tender.

Meanwhile, pour the oil into a medium pan and set over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in the red chilies, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and asafetida. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the curry leaves and tomatoes. Stir once, and then add the turmeric, coriander, cumin, green chilies, garlic, ginger, sugar, and salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

When the beans are tender, pour the spiced tomato mixture into the pan with the beans. Bring to a simmer, and cook, uncovered, on a very low heat, for 20 minutes.

The Red and Green Gimmick

When my husband and I first moved into our furnished rental house in Harare, we discovered a heart-shaped plaque on the wall that featured two kissing mice and the slogan "mouse-to-mouse resuscitation." We took it down. Immediately. And hid it in the farthest corner of the closet. I am not a fan of the tacky or the twee.

I do, however, take pleasure in the occasional gimmick. Gimmicky is at the seedier end of the tacky-classy spectrum, I’ll admit; although I hope you’ll agree that it doesn’t quite approach the excess of plastic mice attempting to cutely feign a life-saving procedure. Predictably, my gimmicks typically enlist the assistance of food and drink. I’ve dyed cookies all colors of the rainbow to match holiday hues. In college, my roommate and I turned our apartment’s thermometer up to 80 and held a July in Winter party, complete with umbrella-ed margaritas. A year-and-a-half ago, when the Zimbabwean government dropped three zeros from the currency, my husband and I hosted a “zeroes” fiesta featuring zero-shaped food, including bagel pizzas. And, over the past two weeks, I have been obsessed with preparing red and green food. Roasted red pepper soup with a dollop of avocado cream for garnish? Made it. Spinach lasagna? Check. Watermelon and feta salad with mint? Yep. And, for breakfast on Christmas morning, testira (sometimes written tastira) – a Tunisian egg and pepper dish. Red and green peppers, of course.

Although some recipes call for the egg in testira to be poached, the egg is scrambled in the recipe I use from Kitty Morse’s The Vegetarian Table: North Africa. In any case, the egg is really beside the point because what makes this dish a standout are the peppers – roasted until sweet and spiked with harissa (also spelled harisa), a traditional Tunisian condiment of chilies, garlic, spices and olive oil that makes you breathe like a dragon.

Testira is typically served as an accompaniment to fish. My taste buds have a difficult time imagining how this combination works, although I certainly don’t doubt the flavor amalgamation skills of the people who brought us tabil and chakchouka. Fish and testira might be one of those things I’ll just need to try someday in Tunisia. In the meantime (and this could be a very long meantime), I think testira stands up for itself quite well as a breakfast centerpiece.

Hmm….maybe I could have a party where the gimmick is that everyone brings a food combination that they like, but that other people think is strange; or maybe the gimmick could be egg dishes from around the world, or maybe…

Testira
Adapted from The Vegetarian Table: North Africa
Serves 3 as a main dish

2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
1 red or green chili pepper
4 large tomatoes
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters ground coriander
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters harissa (See note below)

Roast the peppers and the tomatoes, using the roasting method you prefer. Here’s what I do: I preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F) and put the vegetables on one tray, with the tomatoes on a piece of aluminum foil with the edges rolled up so that the juices they emit during roasting don’t spread. Place the tray on an oven rack near the top. Turn the peppers every 5-10 minutes. The chili pepper will only take about 20-25 minutes to roast. The tomatoes and peppers will take about 35-40 minutes. The peppers are done when their skins have blackened and separated from their flesh.

Set aside the tomatoes to cool. Place the peppers in a glass or ceramic bowl and cover with a plate. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel and seed them, and cut them into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel, seed and chop them.

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and thicken a bit – about 5-6 minutes. Add the peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-12 minutes. Stir in the coriander, salt, pepper and harissa. Add the eggs and stir gently until they are cooked. Serve immediately with toast and some extra harissa on the side for those who like spice!

Note: I’ll write about harissa in a future post. In the meantime, in some countries you can find prepared harissa in a jar at the store. These two recipes also look quite good, and are similar to the Madhur Jaffrey recipe that I use. If you don’t have harissa, you can add a teaspoon of chili powder when you add the ground coriander, although it won’t pack the same punch.

P.S. Happy 2008!

Va-Voom

Some Americans spend their childhood in suburbs – backyards, front yards, bike-riding in the street. Some are raised in cities – hubbub, playgrounds, concrete, culture. Some sprout in rural areas – porches, animals, tall grass, big sky. Others grow up in central Zaire.

Or maybe that’s just Ruth.*

Two weeks ago, in a transaction that looked suspiciously like a drug deal, my friend Ruth handed me an expired prescription pill container half-filled with brown-grey powder. I opened the child-proof lid, took a sniff – woodsy, with a peppery bite – and placed the goods in my purse. Buamba, she called it, a spice mixture from central Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) that goes with everything. Her family no longer lives in Congo, but they always keep some buamba close at hand.

I can’t decide if I should describe buamba as African MSG or fairy dust. Sprinkle it on slow-roasted tomato, a fried egg, a green salad, some soft cheese and va-voom, every taste is amplified. I am tempted to become a buamba evangelist, plying the streets of Harare trying to convince people to stop using so much salt and convert to buamba.

First, however, I need to figure out what goes into the stuff. Black pepper – that’s for sure. What else? Ruth herself is uncertain. All she knows is that buamba does not contain salt (sodium chloride), but potassium chloride instead. A Google search for buamba turns up nothing, nothing at all. If any reader has the secret recipe, please let me know!

In the meantime, I will begin toting some buamba in my purse. Watch out unpalatable overcooked veg at the hotel buffet. Pay heed lifeless leftover. Here comes buamba. Va-voom!

*And, speaking of growing up, I should mention that Ruth is one of those women you want to be when you grow up. Even when you are already grown up.