Preparing for the office Christmas party

Thanksgiving in Rwanda

I managed to turn a day of feasting into a full week here, so I think I’ve done pretty well for myself.

On Tuesday I “catered” a party for GACP’s forest research staff: pizza, bean dip and guac, pudding. We (the researcher Rebecca and I) explained that America is a nation of immigrants who’ve brought their food with them, creating a diverse culinary scene including Italian pizza and Mexican bean dip and guac and English (sort of) pudding. In keeping with the Rwandan love affair with beans, the bean dip was the biggest hit. I think they enjoyed beans that had a little more going on than just being boiled to death.

Wednesday we had a little vegetarian Thanksgiving in the village. I taught Rebecca’s house boy how to make garlic mashed potatoes and stuffing in a frying pan, and talked about the origins of Thanksgiving. When we went around the table to say what we're thankful for, he said "for the delicious food Tuesday and Wednesday."

Thursday I got together with my Peace Corps posse in Musanze and we made a delicious instant Thanksgiving from packages - canned cranberry jelly (also good on muffins the next day, FYI), stove top stuffing with instant turkey gravy and canned chicken, and heavenly Betty Crocker sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows. Friday I stuffed myself until I felt sick at an expat Thanksgiving that included turkeys freshly killed on Wednesday! And Saturday my boss, Rebecca and I had a girls’ night at a restaurant in Gisenyi. Topics of conversation included the difficulties of finding and managing housegirls/boys and email identity theft.

There was also shopping - a quick Black Friday trip to the Musanze market (I got the cutest aprons! $.12 each!) and today while waiting for an appointment I found some nice clothes in the Gisenyi market. Bet you can’t get $11 DKNY jeans in the US, even on Black Sunday (alas if I were a different size DKNY could have been Diesel for $11).

So have no fear, I’ve already started working on my holiday weight gain and consumerist binge, even in Rwanda.

I want to say how thankful I am for my amazingly supportive family and friends from home who spoil me rotten, my wonderful friends and colleagues here, and for being born into such incredible privilege in America.

Killing a chicken

During language training, I went with Jenny and a few other friends for a dinner visit. We’d bought eggs, cheese and bread, intending to make egg and cheese sandwiches. They, however, had bigger plans.

When I’d visited the previous week the most noticeable changes from 3 months ago when I left Nyanza were how big Teta has grown and the dozen or so chickens running around the backyard, providing a new subject for Bosco’s antics. They keep the chickens in the room adjoining their kitchen, the window outfitted with chicken wire that is impressively if inexplicably electrified (as if the chickens could get through non-electrified chicken wire?).

In our honor, they decided to kill a chicken. I was the only one excited enough to watch, and in fact I’m planning to adopt the med school axiom of “see one, do one, teach one” next time I get a chance. Here are some pictures, not for the faint of heart or vegetarians.

It was roasted a bit before we butchered and stewed it. Below right, Jenny reacts to below left.

The chicken was delicious, even though we didn’t eat until after 11pm.

If you think this is gruesome, I'm still in the Peace Corps Minor Leagues compared to my high school friend St. John who helped butcher a pig in Paraguay! (This post is backdated so yes, that link is in the "future")

Cooking sambusa!

A few weeks ago I got in a friendly argument with the proprietor of a milk bar near the bus station. 300 francs for a half-liter of milk? Urahenda, you are extorting! Near me it costs 200. However the sambusas LINK, homemade by his wife, were delicious. Well, after discussing the cost of rent near the bus station and how he brings the milk from his own nearby farm, I set up my couchsurfers to go milk his cows and I made a date with his wife to learn how she makes her sambusas.

Mama Jennifer made the mincemeat the night before, grinding it herself and then cooking it with onion, garlic, urusenda and a flavor packet (think bouillon plus spices plus MSG).

When I arrived she was kneading the dough, which is made from flour, water and salt.

Once the dough was ready, she divided it into equal sized balls by pinching off a fistful of dough and smoothing it. Each ball will make 4 sambusa. I tried this step and failed. It’s important that the balls be equally sized so that after they are rolled out they can be stacked with a layer of oil between them. We stacked 5 pieces at a time and rolled them even flatter.

Each stack of 5 is partially cooked on a wok-like pan, using only the small amount of oil spread on them. By doing 5 at once, the dough is strong enough to be rolled thin and multiple layers at a time can cook. When one layer was cooked, it was peeled off and the stack was flipped to cook the next. The middle piece needed very little time.

These partly-cooked sambusa wrappers are re-stacked, halved and then quartered, and folded into pockets. These are then stuffed, sealed with a paste of water and flour, and deep-fried in oil. It’s important to make sure the corners are folded tightly to keep excess oil out.

At this point we were in a big rush because, for the first time ever, someone had come to the house to make an order - 20 sambusas to serve at teatime at his guesthouse. I joined the assembly line: as Mama J. folded and stuffed, I sealed them and handed them off to a niece (?) who fried them

Mama J. makes 80 sambusa a day. At 200 RWF each, that’s 16,000 RWF, at least 8,000 of which I estimate to be profit. She doesn’t work every day, but it’s still quite a middle class living, and one funded not at all by NGOs or foreign aid.

Fried Rwandan cheese sticks

More fried food.

They were pretty epic, as was my subsequent stomach ache.

A recipe: Crepes with Mango Topping

This morning I made crepes with mango chutney topping – a gourmet breakfast in Rwanda!

For the mango topping, I took inspiration from a recipe in the Peace Corps Madagascar cookbook and several online chutney recipes. I like things spicy, so I added some hot-pepper vinegar that I’d used to pickle urusenda (the local pepper).

The crepe recipe comes from the PC Rwanda cookbook; I made a half recipe and it was a huge breakfast for 1. So I’d guess the recipes below will feed 3-4.  Serve with yogurt or a cream sauce, if you have it.

Quick Chutney-style Mango Topping
1 lb mangoes, peeled and cubed
1/4 cup honey
additional sugar to taste
juice from 1 lemon
1 Tbs minced onion
1 Tbs peeled mince ginger
1/4 tsp cumin
pinch cloves
pinch ground corriander (optional)
dash of hot-pepper vinegar or red chili flakes (optional)
raisins or dried cherries (optional)

In a saucepan, combine all of the ingredients except the mangoes and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the mangoes and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add raisins, heat through. Serve over crepes, waffles, chapati, etc.

After you’ve added the mangoes, start on the crepe batter.

Crepes
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups milk (or that much water and 4 spoons Nido Milk Powder)
2 tablespoons butter, melted (or margarine)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Whisk together eggs, milk, melted butter, flour, sugar, and salt until it's smooth. Heat a medium-sized nonstick skillet over medium heat. Spoon about 1/4 cup of crepe batter into the hot pan, tilting the pan so that bottom surface is evenly coated. Cook over medium heat, 2 minutes on a side.

Tastes of home: experimenting in the kitchen

Last night I wanted to make an adaptation of jalepeno poppers with urusenda, the spicy pepper here. To make the cheese stuffing, I needed milk. This led to perhaps my favorite discovery so far in Gisenyi.

I went into one of the many stores that advertises Amata meza, “good milk,” and asked if they had amata konje, cold milk. She showed me the jug in the fridge, so I produced my empty half-liter water bottle and she filled it up for 200 francs ($0.30). It looked very thick and I was afraid I’d gotten the infamous “chunky milk,” but when I tasted it at home it was delightful, drinkable, tasty yogurt! It’s called ikivuguto, as opposed to ishyushyu, regular milk.

I boiled some of the yogurt and added lemon juice to separate the curd. Following the Peace Corps cookbook’s instructions, I strained this through a cloth and let it sit with a weight on it for a bit. It turned into soft cheese – somewhere between ricotta and paneer. I stuffed it into the urusenda, breaded them, battered some onions, and made a fried appetizer feast!

Yogurt – oh the possibilities! I can make curries, top lentil soup with it, or put it on the granola I made Saturday morning:

Cooking fish! (with recipe)

Fresh fish in the market meant a last minute menu change for “Cooking with Muzungus” today. I learned how to gut and scale fish and to make a peanut broth for the fish and ubugari, and I present it here as my first Rwandan recipe.

Ingredients (amounts are my estimates, feel free to adjust):

Fish (ours were whole with bones, 2 per person, so I leave the specifics up to you)

1.5 medium red onions, sliced

1 green pepper, sliced

1 stick celery, diced (use leaves, too)

Tomatoes, peeled and cut up (1 can diced tomatoes would work)

Peanut powder (Peanut butter would work) – a lot, to taste

Water for broth

Oil (a bit more than you’d normally use is probably the right amount)

“fish masala” (cumin, coriander, tumeric, msg)

Red beans (Kidney beans?) – one can would do

Note that flavor will be enhanced by cooking over charcoal.

Cook the fish (we lightly powdered them with cassava flour and deep fried them in oil but you may choose a healthier and more headless method) and set aside (covered, to keep flies off).

Saute 1 onion with the pepper and celery. If you fried the fish, use the same oil for this. Add the tomatoes and cook a few minutes more. Add seasoning, water and peanut powder, cook until flavors are blended. Add fish and heat through.

While heating, saute ½ an onion in oil and add beans. Cook for 5-10 minutes to develop flavor.

Serve with Ubugari or over rice. Add beans as desired to individual bowls.

Iron chef Rwanda

Task: feed twelve people.

Challenge one: shopping in the market in only thirty minutes. Because of genocide week, the market closed shortly after we finished lunch. I rushed down with Zilpa and Assinath, two wonderful trainers who live in my house, and we rushed around. Zilpa bought sweet potatoes and oil. Assinath and I bought beans and veggies before we split up: she went to find our a leafy green, little eggplant, and peanut powder, while I grabbed as much fruit as I could for desert. I ended up frantically haggling with two women as they packed up their fruit, trying not to pay the muzungu price. Still arguing, we were pushed out by the police, and settled up outside the market walls. The frantic shopping amidst the bustle of the closing market was exhilarating. All told, I didn’t do too badly: I was shorted on the passion fruit and tree tomatoes, but including the cheese and corn bread I bought earlier, the entire meal cost about $17 for 12 people.

Challenge two: cooking 3 dishes on two charcoal stoves. We (er, Assinath) immediately lit one stove and started the dried beans cooking. With help from some of our house mates and dinner guests, we peeled and sliced several kilos of knobby white sweet potatoes, which Zilpa then spent hours double-frying on the second charcoal stove. I soaked the fruit in bleach-water to make it safe to eat. We chopped the eggplant, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, celery, onion, garlic (sold pre-peeled in the market, awesome), and urusenda chili pepper for our “American beans,” or chili. We washed the renga-renga greens and shredded them (Assinath with just a knife, me with kitchen scissors). When the beans were cooked, I fried the veggies and urusenda with some Indian-style “chicken masala” (clove, cumin, coriander, tumeric, etc) and then added the beans. Finally, we watched as Assinath prepared the greens with toasted peanut powder, a recipe I’ll share later.

The meal was a great hit, and our three trainers as well as our night guard loved “American beans.” Our desert was a heavenly fruit salad of mango, pineapple, passion fruit, tree tomato, and banana. Everybody ate too much, and we still had leftovers.

Rwandan Cooking: onion salad with a dressing of giardia and salmonella, anyone?

This morning I went with Jenny to her resource family’s house, centrally located near the market. Her mom had invited us for a cooking lesson. We headed to the market for produce and then set about preparing the meal.

With an audience of 6 (the mom, dad, 15-month-old Teta, 9-year-old Mami, houseboy, and grandmother) in hysterics, I attempted to peel filthy potatoes with a dull knife. I was actually pretty glad it was dull, because I could have cut off a finger with a sharp one. By the time each potato was peeled it was filthy from the dirt that had been on the skin, but Jenny and I just rolled with it.

I believe the picture speaks for itself: knife sharpening on the back stoop in full America-loving regalia.

We also helped pick over the rice, chopped carrots, removed skins from boiled tomatoes, cut up the potatoes and threw them in oil to make ifiriti, and got smoke in our eyes. When the delicious looking carrot-bean dish was almost finished, we watched in horror as Jenny’s host mother chopped up an onion for salad and then plunged it into a dish of unboiled, very unsafe water before returning it to the salad plate. With the meal of rice, fries, and carrot-bean-deliciousness on the table, they heaped some unrefridgerated mayonnaise onto the giardia-infested onions. We both turned the salad down, but the rest of the meal was delicious.