What's Cooking (1/6/2006)

So it is a new year and for the first time in a while I made some resolutions. Not only did I make some resolutions so far I have kept them. It helps that I have set out I time schedule but already that schedule is starting to slide so we will see how long things hold up.This week I made major strides in cooking Tanzanian food and was feeling like a decent cook, until I hit a rough spot last night continued into this morning.

So by cooking Tanzanian food I mean eating rice, beans, chapatti and ugi. Beans take forever to cook but I have yet to have a bad batch, rice was slightly undercooked on my first try but now is always cooked to perfection. Rice and beans sounds like an easy meal until you consider that I only have one burner and which to slow cook first? I pick the beans and soon (hopefully) I will have another stove and my cooking time will decrease dramatically. But now for chapatti and ugi.Chapati is like naan only with a different consistency. It is somehow thicker, oilier, and denser but still a little fluffy. Ugi is the tanzanian version of grits only it is a bit smoother. It is odd how I have cooked both Ugi and chapatti 3 times and it was the third batch for each that went astray. I must confess that I was proud that my first two times were successes, and maybe I got a little to carried away in my experimentations or maybe my beginners luck is starting to fade. To cook chapatti it is flour water a little salt a little sugar and a bit of oil. I read a recipe at a friend's house and remembered that the proportion is about 4 to 1 of flour to water and all the rest are small. Since I have no measuring cups I am doing things by feel the first time I used a cup and guessestimated the right amounts. Second time I did away with the cup and things still went well I thought I was invincible, soon to be bit in the heel by chapatti that was the mutt of naan and a tortilla.

Ugi is even easier. It comes in a powder you add to water, boil and mix. At first I was afraid that I would not add the right amount of ugi or that there is some trick that magically thickens the ugi. Nope just and stir this morning it did not mix. (AN: sorry short on time = shorter story) I ended up with something that resembled tapioca.
Enjoy your food kitchen,
T.