We are still settling into our little house. We FINALLY acquired an oven last week and I've been baking a LOT of muffins. I made some tasty carrot-raisin muffins, but then began to perfect my banana-orange zest-cardamom-pecan muffins. Nathan is enjoying the process. We've found places to buy fruit and discovered that Kenya has gigantic papaya and avocado. See above. Gigantic!
I've also been making a TON of pasta. Yes- I brought my 10+ lb pasta making machine to Kenya. We made a massive batch of ravioli a few days ago- made with homemade ricotta cheese! (Pictured above top right.) I'll post more about cheese-making in Africa, but for now admire the butternut squash/sage/ricotta filling (orange) and sun-dried tomato/herb/ricotta filling. Yum!
(Sorry- it's hard to tell what's going on in this picture.)
I discovered bi bim bap through my friend Jen G. and have since been making all sorts of random homemade versions. Bi bim bap is a Korean dish, usually with assorted veggies and tofu (or meat) on rice, with an egg perched on the top. There is a ridiculous variety of vegetables to be found in Narok- green beans, collard greens (sukuma wiki), shelled peas, carrots, zucchini, sugar snap peas, eggplant, sweet potato, squashes....
In this dish, I sauteed carrots with ginger and lemon (and a dash of honey), collared greens with lemon and garlic, dry-roasted green beans with hoisin sauce and sesame seeds, and marinated steamed potato with chili, garlic, lime, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, and salt. Add some steamed broccoli, arrange all the toppings neatly on brown rice, and top with a fried egg. Perfect!
We've gone to Nairobi a few times for work-related things (and to find the afore-mentioned oven!) and discovered Habesha- an incredibly delicious (and I presume authentic) Ethiopian restaurant. The restaurant has a neat ambience- a lot of private tables and eating nooks scattered around a large garden-y area, complete with some sort of sweet-scented incense-emitting fire. We order the 'mixed vegetables' and 'cheese' dishes, and it arrives looking like this!
The white stuff (including the white stuff that lines the large tray) is injera bread, which I had hoped to learn how to make for the blog. Unfortunately, I learned that it takes 4 weeks (and dozens of cups of flour) to make the starter. Given my natural inclinations against being patient, I don't think this will happen. Does it count if I eat a lot of injera bread?
I also love Ethiopian food because you are supposed to eat with your hands by tearing off pieces of the bread and grabbing the foods with it. Any meal eaten with the hands is spectacular in my book! This restaurant was a great find- I'm sure we'll be back there many times.
Finally, we ate at the Chips n' Sticks kiosk at a mall. (There are a lot of malls in Nairobi.) I'm not sure how to explain this one. It would fit in very well with typical American 'fair food' though.
They take a peeled raw potato, then insert it in a little contraption which somehow slices/spirals the potato. Then, the spiraled potato is stretched out on the stick and plunked in a fryer. After a good solid fry, the stick is removed and sprinkled with your choice of flavors. There were the traditional chip seasonings like sour cream and onion (which is what we had) and salt and vinegar, but also some more unusual ones- assorted seafoods, worcester sauce, fruit chutney, chicken...
You eat it by peeling potato chip pieces from the spiral. I have to say- it was more enjoyable to watch it being made than to eat it. The flavorings were not very zesty, and the chip wasn't crunchy enough. (Maybe it needed to be fried longer?)
I'll post soon about my adventures with cheese-making, and our trip to the animal orphanage. (Which does not involve food but does involve charismatic megafauna.)
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