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Uganda on
a plate: yummy banana
dishes, stews, pastes and juicy fruits and drinks
Uganda's culture weaves a thread of variety not only through
the manner of dress, language and other characteristics but
also in its variety of dishes. Nearly every tribe or region
has a delicacy or specialty and when you get to Uganda try out
the local restaurants or the homes of residents who should be
able to prepare or treat you to some of the relishes and foods
made from the numerous vegetables, yams, potatoes, bananas and
fruits. Many highly rated hotels and restaurants try out the
traditional dishes in form of buffets but often come within
a short distance of really preparing authentic traditional dishes,
because cooking traditional food requires some tact, secrets
and traditional processes which big hotels don't either have
the time, patience or knack for.
One popular local dish is matooke (bananas of the plantain type)
which are cooked boiled in a sauce of peanuts, fresh fish, meat
or entrails. Matooke really goes with any relish, except that
the best and most respectable way the Baganda cook it is to
tie up the peeled fingers into a bundle of banana leaves which
is then put in a cooking pan with just enough water to steam
the leaves. When properly ready and tender, the bundle is removed
and squeezed to get a smooth soft and golden yellow mash, served
hot with all the banana leaves around to keep it hot. In Buganda,
the food production process revolves around the banana tree.
Tender banana tree shoots are removed from the plant and singed
over fire to make a fine foil into which chunks of pork or beef
are tied up and steamed on top of a bundle of bananas. This
style of cooking preserves all the flavours and cooks up food
like a pressure cooker, if not better. Dry banana leaves are
used like bandages when bundles of matooke are being wrapped
up for steaming. Strips and chunks cut from the banana tree
stem can be used as a foundation at the bottom of the cooking
pan so as to avoid the boiling water touching the bundle of
the matooke being steamed.
Many tribes in Uganda eat their fish smoked or fresh, while
others dry it after washing it in a salt solution and drying
it in the sun for days. Sun-dried fish is a delicacy in the
eastern region. There are varieties of small fry which are highly
nutritious (nkejje and mukene) which are sun-dried and cooked
in a sauce of peanut or pre-soaked and fried. Their high flavour
and nutritional value is highly prized. Lake Victoria is home
to the Nile Perch, which is now the favoured and easily available
fish dish. Perch has cannibalised many other indigenous species
in the lake and for many years there has been little else to
eat. Some Ugandans shun, even ridicule it, but it is a big foreign
exchange earner in Europe where fresh fish and organic food
are popular. A number of indigenous fish types fortunately seem
to be on the rebound in the lake to the happiness of many Ugandans
thanks to the falling numbers of Perch brought on by its own
prolific breeding and feeding habits which have seen its increase
go down. Another common type of fish is tilapia which is often
fried and served with chips in restaurants. Also, various types
of vegetables, salty and bitter, are better tied up in a separate
bundle of banana leaves and steamed together with the matooke.
There are varieties of mushrooms which are eaten fresh or sun-dried.
One type called Kabaala, is pricey even in markets and is also
used for various rituals. Among the Bagishu of eastern Uganda
tender bamboo shoots (amaleewa) are a delicacy. After harvest,
they are parboiled and sun-dried before cooking.
In western Uganda and most of the north and east, millet bread
is the favoured dish. The milled flour is mixed among various
tribes in different proportions with cassava to be cooked in
a heavy paste which is served hot. Up north, little or no cassava
at all is added while in the western region a proportion of
fifty-fifty, or eighty-twenty (more cassava to the millet flour)
is the ratio of mixture. The best relish to go with it would
be smoked meat. In the north, the smoked meat would be prized
booty from hunting trips which men bring home. After lighting
fires in the bushes during the dry season, the men chase edible
rats which scuttle off into the safety of anthills. The anthill
holes are plugged except one.
There the hunters wait patiently after smoking out the unlucky
rats, some the size of small rabbits, which are clubbed on the
head and collected in their dozens. In the north, smoked beef
is skillfully seasoned with a rich sauce of milled sim sim (sesame)
paste and dark green bitter vegetables. In the eastern region,
the people of Teso would add a light sauce of tamarind fruit
which is plenty in those dry areas. A variety of edible sorghum
is often used by some tribes in the east and northeast where
the climate makes it impossible to afford the luxury of growing
millet. In western Uganda, equally tasty sauces are scraped
out of cow butter and unclarified salt for a slurp millet meal.
One tribe called the Nubians is great cooks. Thick sauces made
from slippery okra and other green vegetables are always fried
in a lot of oil and added to meat. Chili sauce is often made
from green mangoes and red hot pepper. Meat is stewed in thick
sauces and served with thin fermented flat rolls of bread made
from cassava and burnt over a light fire. This chapatti-like
bread has a tangy taste like the njera of Ethiopia goes well
with thick highly seasoned sauces cooked with a high bite of
pepper. |
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Surprisingly the
Bahima of western Uganda are not a particularly meat-eating tribe
like the Karamojong of the northeast - who enjoy it by the chunk -
although they keep cows in their thousands. Instead, they prefer a
diet of milk, beans, matooke and some millet bread. Meanwhile the
Batooro of western Uganda peel the skins off beans and mash them into
a thick paste (firinda) to which they add cow butter and unclarified
salt to make a really tasty relish that goes well with millet.
In Uganda there are lots of tropical fruits to eat which
include mangoes, paw paws, oranges, tangerines, avocados, jack fruits,
lemons, sweet banana (some types of which are used to brew banana
wine laced with sorghum for yeast), sugar cane, varies types of
berries both localised and wild, guava, pineapples. If you are in
the city, try Nakasero for most of Uganda's fruits which are also
exported overseas. Uganda's fruit industry has not been well developed
like that of Kenya so there is not a heavy production of hybridised
fruits although some apples are now being grown on a small scale
in Kabale in western Uganda. Some temperate fruits from South Africa
and Kenya find their way into Uganda. Instead you will pleasantly
be surprised to eat some wild mangoes and other fruits which although
not having striking eye appeal have the juiciest taste you will
ever dream of in the world. There are varieties of fruits always
in season and being sold on stalls all over the country especially
on the roadside. Please remember to wash your fruit before eating
it.
Drinks
Light and heavy lager beers are on sale in many joints. Bell Beer
which has been brewed at Luzira for over 50 years is the more popular
light beer. Heavy lagers such as Nile Special and Club are brewed
at the source of the Nile. In fact one brewer has now started making
industrial beer using locally grown sorghum instead of the imported
hops and malt. Whatever your brand and taste, you will enjoy your
beer in Uganda. Many visitors comment on its pleasant aftertaste.
Uganda gained an international reputation in the 1960s
for distilling a national gin called Uganda Waragi. The drink became
so popular that stocks run out at various international trade exhibitions
to the embarrassment of organisers. For a while the distillery went
through a rough patch when quality suffered and sales went down
as the economy tottered on the brink of collapse. The gin has made
a good comeback following the purchase of the distillery by a beer
consortium.
The name waragi was coined by Sudanese soldiers from the
Turkish word arrak'h.. Towards the end of the 20th century, when
British explorers were beginning to make inroads into East Africa,
they used brigades Nubian soldiers in their entourage, a hardy type
who concocted the drink from grains to keep up their spirits. Waragi
eventually became a well known distilled drink in Uganda but the
colonial authorities banned it through laws which still exist in
the books. Africans would not drink it openly then since even the
more harmless drinks were off limits for them. People now drink
the crude thing, and the authorities are ignoring the law and not
enforcing it. The distilled Uganda Waragi now being sold in shops,
bars and overseas is safe enough because it is double and triple
distilled from the crude alcohol which village distillers sell to
the factory, where flavours are added and the harmful parts of alcohol
and impurities are filtered out. Many people take it neat. Others
with a tonic or fruit cocktail. Uganda Waragi a smooth gin worth
the name.Click here to back
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