The insistence on traditional meals without the creativity of fusing in imported culinary delights has sometimes led to our East African meals to be initially appealing but quickly boring and monotous.
This also explains why our unique traditional meals are limited in variety. Uganda is well known for luwombo and matooke, Kenya for ugali (posho) and nyama choma (roasted meat), and Tanzania for dishes ranging from ugali to rice and meat stew.
Even coastal meals quickly lose their appeal due to lack of culinary creativity. Yet, with local ingredients, our dishes can achieve a new, redolent appeal. Consider how South African and Indian gourmets have fused their foods, resulting in delightful dishes like sugar bean curry with lamb knuckles bredie and rice, sweet cinnamon pumpkin, and cauliflower and broccoli gratin. Complex meal? Not really.
These are home-cooked meals that can also be paired with roti bread. These are your everyday food supplies and ingredients just cooked with a tinge of Indian and South African touches.
The sugar beans are simply your supplier’s “Nambale” variety. Even for lamb that apparently many Ugandans wrongly think they have never tasted, is your everyday goat meat supply – only that this time be deliberate and specifically ask for the lamb knuckles from your goat meat butchery.
You can make your own homemade gratin from breadcrumbs or melted cheese. The whole meal taste is so warm with a strong foundational base and earthiness created by the beans and gamy savouriness from the lamb.
Who knew a simple blanched pumpkin could have a wild exotic taste? This is all spruced up by the crunchy and mild sweet and subtle bitter taste of the cauliflower and the broccoli. This homemade meal was simply priceless and a refreshing break from the usual.
Source: The Observer
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