Let's Eat!

May 16, 2012

Alright, anyone who knows me has probably been shocked that this post hasn’t come even sooner.  I hope you’re all ready for a brief overview of Ugandan cuisine.  A typical menu includes a list of what I would probably call sauces.  Things on this list include meat, fish, chicken, beans, g-nuts (pronounced guh-ee-nuts, kind of…), etc.  From this list, you choose one thing.  Then there are sides, which include things like matooke, rice, posho, kalo, sweet potatoes, yams, and pumpkins.  I’m not quite sure of how many of these things you order.  At one restaurant, Divine Mercy’s, we’ve stuck to two.  However, at the new restaurant we tried tonight, Chris’ Guest House and Restaurant; you can just pick a sauce thing, and say “with everything.”  I’ll go over some of the unfamiliar food. 

Matooke is definitely a Ugandan favorite.  Matooke is a banana-like plant which occupies approximately half of each plate of food.  It is mashed up to varying degrees; some servings of matooke have large chunks, identifiable as banana like parts, while some are more fully pureed.  While it looks like a banana, it does not taste like a banana.  I’m not actually sure what it tastes like pure, but it is somewhat tasty, salty mush.  It is a quite heavy dish, and I can never finish mine.  For breakfast, I like to spread the matooke on my buttered bread when the hotel runs out of jam, because I don’t really like to eat it plain, even though the taste is fine.  It’s not really my favorite. 

Posho is something that I do like…however, I am completely unsure of what it is.  It is pure white, and served in the shape of a slab on your plate.  It is relatively firm, but cuts about as easily as cold butter.  In your mouth, its’ texture is slightly grainy, but not significantly so.  I wouldn’t say it has much of a flavor, but it is an excellent vehicle for the sauces. 

Kalo.  Kalo is not good.  First of all, it is quite unsightly.  It is blob shaped, would be considered brown, but with a greyish hue.  It is soft-ish, but to eat, you must penetrate its slightly congealed exterior.  Once in your mouth, you have something that is the texture of overcooked oatmeal.  You can stick a fork in it, and pick up the entire portion.  Its appearance does not lead you to believe that would happen.  I will not be ordering that again.

G-nuts, in my opinion, are peanuts, they make some sauce out of them that is actually quite tasty, not to mention purple.  We assume that the purple comes from cassava root, although I’m not quite sure what that is. 

The rest of the items should at least be somewhat familiar sounding. 

Alright, so they bring all your sides on a single plate, with a bowl full of sauce.  I like to dump my bowl of sauce over my entire plate (except I don’t like it on matooke). 

Accompanied by clean bottle of water, it makes for a pretty good meal.