Ugandan delicaciesdelicias ugandesas
Hello all!
Our stay in Uganda is an awesome experience in many ways – also culinary. We want to share this with you by introducing some food ‘made in Uganda’. Have you ever heard of Chapattis, Rolex, and Matooke, G-Nuts sauce or Posho? Well, in the past four months we have enjoyed many Ugandan meals and learned how to prepare them ourselves.
Matooke is a meal consisting of steamed green banana and is one of the national dishes of Uganda. The medium-sized green fruits, locally known as Matooke, are peeled, wrapped in the plant’s leaves and set in a cooking pot. The pot is then placed on a charcoal or wood fire and the Matooke is steamed for a couple of hours. While uncooked, the Matooke is white and fairly hard; cooking turns it soft and yellow. The Matooke is then mashed while still wrapped in the leaves and often served on a fresh banana leaf. It is typically eaten with a sauce made of vegetables, ground peanut, or some type of meat (goat or beef).
Posho is a dish of maize flour (cornmeal) cooked with water to a porridge- or dough-like consistency. It is the most common staple starch featured in the local cuisines of the eastern African Great Lakes region and Southern Africa.
Peanuts (or G-nuts, short for Groundnuts) are featured in many meals, including a creamy sauce that you order aside your Posho or Matooke.
In Uganda, the motto is “Back to the roots”. We learned how to prepare Coffee, Posho, G-Nuts and Matooke from the original bean, Corn, Ground-Nut or Banana to the actual meal. Not to forget are, of course, the amounts of Avocados, Pineapples, Melons and Mangos we are enjoying. The Jackfruit – unknown to the majority of us before arriving in Uganda – is the largest tree-borne fruit, reaching as much as 36 kg in weight and up to 90 cm in length.
Ugandan Fast food is called Chapatti. It may well be that with our arrival in Uganda, the consumption of Chapatti has experienced a significant rise. Kikomando is a meal of chopped chapatti served with beans. For those of you who are interested in the history and practice of making Kikomando, we recommend this article in Ugandas Sunday monitor. Indeed, it is interesting and amusing how much you can write about a simple meal such as this one.
Last but not least, we want to present to you the legendary Rolex. It can easily happen that you have a Rolex for breakfast, lunch and dinner on a single day. This easy-made snack is prepared on the streets of Uganda, and we like to think that its name stems from its main ingredient – “Rolled eggs”. We can proudly say that we have tasted enough Rolex throughout the past weeks and have successfully identified the best ones in our street. We have also held serious discussions on whether this snack has the potential to become a rival to the Burger, Bratwurst or Crepes on European Streets. Maybe someone among us with enough entrepreneurial drive will try his/her luck!?…
With many culinary greetings from Uganda,
Abi, Nabila, Anna, Sarah, Julian and Isabel
