CSA week one - Mchicha

I mentioned a while back, I think, that mchicha is the Swahili word for callaloo. It's also the name of this Tanzanian dish, but all of the versions I found called for spinach. I'm making a, small I'll grant you, logical leap that these are Westernized recipes substituting in spinach for amaranth. Cooking times quite unsuitable for spinach are good supporting evidence that of a late insertion or a clumsy translation. But those cooking times are too long for amaranth too so I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.

Whatever the case, I used the calalloo and it turned out just fine once I cut it in quarter to use the small bunch we got this week and tweaked the cooking times a bit.

Ingredients:
1 small bunch callaloo
1 1/2 Tablespoons natural smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup thin coconut milk
1 Tablespoon butter (or ghee if you've got it)
1 small tomato (I used four cherry tomatoes), peeled (unless you're using cherry tomatoes, then don't bother)
1/4 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon curry powder (a South Indian blend would be most traditional, but whatever you've got is worth a try)
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Trim the woody stems from the callaloo, separate the leaves, roughly chop the remaining stems and roughly tear the leaves. Wash everything somewhere along the way. I got about 1/2 pound after cleaning.

2. Mix the peanut butter and coconut milk. Set aside.

3. Heat the butter over medium heat in a medium frying pan or dutch oven. When it stops foaming add the onion, tomato, curry powder and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion softens and the tomato breaks down, about 5 minutes.

4. Add the callaloo stems. Cook 5 minutes more.

5. Add the callaloo leaves. Cook 3 minutes more to wilt and begin cooking the leaves.

6. Add the peanut butter and coconut milk. Stir well and scrape the bottom of the pan. Cook 5 minutes more to blend the flavors adding water to keep the sauce saucy as necessary.

Serve with an approximation of ugali, a Tanzanian starch dish that is essentially an extra-thick polenta made with more finely ground corn meal.


It looks a mess, but I really like how this turned out. The flavors have blended together in a synergistic way I haven't seen in other African recipes using similar ingredients. There's an earthiness, but I'd be hard pressed to identify peanut butter; a spiciness but I couldn't say it was curry powder; there's a creaminess but no clear coconut. The amaranth, though, is unmistakable. It stands up to the strongly flavored sauce in a way spinach couldn't. I even like the pairing with the ugali, and polenta really isn't something I could have predicted to work with these flavors.

This may be the first fully successful sub-Saharan African dish I've made (although I don't think I've done any Ethiopian cooking. How could I have missed that? That's going right on my to-do list.) If you've still got your amaranth, give it try.

Kuku paka

I've been meaning to try some more recipes from the Congo Cookbook
for a while now. I don't know much about the cuisines of sub-Saharan Africa and there's no better way to learn than actually cooking the dishes. But when I actually started looking around the site, the techniques and flavor combinations were familiar from the African diaspora. I've seen a lot of it before in Southern and Caribbean cooking. So, when choosing what to make first I ended up with Kuku Paka, an Ismaili dish from eastern Africa that mixes in influences from India. It's interesting that some of the same influences that went west into Africa also went east so this recipe actually has a fair bit in common with the Indian-influenced Thai Masaman curry. Well, I think it's interesting.

I didn't want to use the whole chicken the recipe calls for so I cut it (the recipe, not the chicken) in half and used a pound and a half of chicken thighs (which I tried to cut in half too, but my hatchet wasn't sharp enough to get cleanly through the bone. I ended up slicing down the side of the thigh bone to make smaller pieces instead.)

Kuku Paka

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoons cooking oil or butter
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 sweet green peppers, chopped [I used a pile of small red and yellow sweet peppers instead]
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
2 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs, cut into small serving-sized pieces
1/2 cup water
2 to 3 potatoes, cleaned and coarsely chopped
2 small tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 cup coconut milk
2 teaspoons lemon juice
fresh cilantro or parsley [or both], chopped

1. Heat oil in large saucepan over high heat. Add onions and peppers and fry, stirring, for a few minutes until softened and starting to brown. Add garlic and continue to stir for one minute more. Mix in spices and salt and cook briefly until fragrant.

2. Scrape mixture to the side and add chicken to the pot. Brown the chicken on all sides. Remove chicken and set aside.

3. Add water to pot, scrape up browned bits from the bottom, lower heat to medium low and bring to a low simmer. Add potatoes, cover pot, and cook until tender. [This step takes approximately for-flippin'-ever so you may not want to follow my example here. The original recipe offers the alternative of frying the potatoes in a separate pan while the chicken is cooking in the next step. You should probably do that.]

4. Add chicken and cook until done.

5. Stir in tomatoes and cook for several more minutes until they collapse and start to form a sauce. Add coconut milk, reduce heat and gently stir and simmer until sauce thickens to however thick you want it. If you want it particularly cooked down, remove the chicken to keep it from overcooking. If you're using proper boiling potatoes, they can take it and will absorb some flavor so leave them in.

6. Squeeze in lemon and garnish with herbs. Serve with chapati or rice.

The lemon is optional in the original recipe, being a modification from another coconut chicken stew from southeast Africa, but I think the dish definitely needs the acid.



It's...well, it's not bad, as such, but I've had a lot better coconut chicken dishes. Putting the tomatoes and coconut milk in at the end doesn't bring out their best. Even with the lemon and herbs, the flavors are muddy--probably from the onions, peppers and spices that were over high heat for rather a long time. A few dashes of Maggi sauce help and add some African character but I still find that I want to dose it with hot sauce to wake it up and hide its imperfections. I've found another couple recipes for the dish online and both use hot peppers so that's probably OK. They also cook the chicken in the tomatoes and coconut milk so maybe I should be looking over there instead. Too late for this dish, though. I'll have to count on some time in the refrigerator to improve the flavors.