Shitto

Shitto (a Gharaian chilli and fish paste) with rice, chopped basil, orange zest, ground cardamom and raisins.

I bought this shitto pre-made from an African food store last week. I was very lucky to get my hands on a small jar, packed personally by the woman at Mokola African Market. It smells of fishy, oily and richly spicy goodness and the taste is beautifully intense. I would liken it to belachan (a South-East Asian shrimp paste) or tom yum without the sour. Making shitto involves a long process of drying and grounding fish and cooking slowly in oil with ingredients such as cayenne pepper, tomato and garlic. Make it incorrectly and the fish rots, but make it with care and it keeps for months in an airtight container in the fridge. For this, I admire that Ghanaians eat this every day as a household condiment.

I wanted to learn about African food and what a fascinating way to experience it.

African Food Safari: Mahindi Ya Naz

Translating to mean 'corn in coconut sauce', this Swahili Coast dish is made of up three parts: mahamri, a deep-fried coconut and cardamom bread; corn slowly cooked in coconut milk, onion, tomato puree and turmeric; and suqaar, a stir-fry of lamb, onion, capsicum and tomato puree.

The first thing I noticed while looking at this recipe is that it's easy on the spices and cooking time. Nonetheless, it took quite a bit of labour to make (around 2 hours).

The mahamri was the most fun to make. Making the dough was simple enough (combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients) but because of the coconut and cardamom, it instantly smelt like no bread I've ever tasted. I'm just a little disappointed that I used desiccated coconut instead of coconut milk powder and my mahamri didn't rise as much. In any case though, it turned out fragrant and delicious.

The corn and suqaar were surprisingly mild in taste. The corn and onion were juicy and sweet, complemented nicely with the smooth and creamy coconut sauce. The natural flavour of the lamb is the focus of the suqaar, slightly sweetened by the onion, capsicum and tomato. When combined with the corn and mahamri, each mouthful was strangely delightful - sweet, mildly spicy, meaty. In other words, exotic yum!

Recipe by Shukri Abdi in the Food Safari cookbook.