A Southern African Feast

As I'm preparing for my Zambian/Botswanan feast, I'm amazed at how simple the ingredients are for my three dishes:

- Nshima, a.k.a. Pap:  water and corn meal
- Ifisashi:  ground raw peanuts, tomatoes, onions, collard greens

- Seswaa:  beef chuck, onion, garlic

Not only were the ingredients simple, they were also inexpensive.  The beef chuck, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and corn meal were obviously easy to find.  I used swiss chard instead of collard greens because it was readily available.  Believe it or not, the most difficult ingredient to find were the raw peanuts.  Think about it:  at the grocery store you usually see dry roasted peanuts, not raw. 

I ended up taking a trip to Kalustyan's on Lexington between 28th and 29th http://www.kalustyans.com/default.asp to find the raw peanuts and also because I needed an ingredient for another recipe (the ingredient was pomegranate molasses, but that is a different story).  While I was there I also purchased some fancy stone ground corn meal, to see if it was any different from the ordinary corn meal I'd found at the grocery store.  Here are the photos of the dueling corn meals - more about that later:

When I got back home I started on the beef dish because it took the longest to cook.  The beef chuck was already cut into pieces for stew so all I needed to do was put it into a pot with water and let it simmer.

As the meat was cooking I began the ifisashi, the vegetable dish.  The first step was to grind up the raw peanuts in my coffee/spice grinder.  I have to say, after tasting the raw peanuts I understand why they are normally sold already roasted.  Peanuts have an unpleasant "green" taste in their raw form.  Once ground into a powder, I added the peanuts to a pot of boiling water along with some chopped up tomato and onion.  

As the mixture cooked it became white and thickened up almost like a cream sauce: 

At this point I reduced the heat and added the greens, already chopped into bit-sized pieces, and let the mixture cook down to a sauce-like consistency.

Meanwhile, the meat was cooked and nicely tender, ready for the next step.  Now for the fun part:  I put the meat in a plastic ziploc bag, added some kosher salt, and pounded it into shreds with a meat tenderizer:

How's that for releasing agressions?

The shredded meat went back in the pan to sautee along with some onion and garlic, becoming beautifully browned and carmelized.  My dog Daphne thought it smelled good at any rate - here's a picture of her trying to climb up onto the stove to get a taste:

Last but not least I started on the corn meal.  The recipe was simple but labor-intensive (basically, you keep adding corn meal to hot water a little at a time while bringing the water to a boil, stirring continuously).  Everything I'd read about Nshima indicated that it was bland to Western tastes but that Zambians could detect minute variations from using different varieties of corn meal.  As an experiment I made two different batches, one with the grocery store corn meal and one with the stone ground white corn meal from Kalustyan's.  Although skeptical at first,  I had to admit that the Kalustyan's corn meal was more flavorful and had an unbelievable, almost floral aroma.

Here are some pictures of the final results - a tasty Southern African feast!



Seswaa



Ifisashi and Nshima