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African Cooking |
Generally, it is the women in Africa who do most of the work related to food. This starts with the effort to keep the "plantations" or G"shambas" (as cultivated fields are called) as neat and productive as possible.
This goes without mentioning that while busy while the women are busy these duties, their male counterparts are trying to ensure that the cattle have had enough grazing and water so that they can take them home for the women to milk them as they go to join the 'elders' in the traditional beer drinking.
When the crops have ripened and are mudready for cooking, again it is the African 'Mama' who makes sure that her family enjoys the 'sweat of her labour'. But first she has to ensure that the food is kept safely so that it does not rot or even attract pests.
There have been various way of preserving food the African way and these have stood the test of time. Most of these methods are aimed maintaining a moisture-free environment and making sure that the food they are very dry to avoid poisoning due to dampness. These methods include smoking and sun drying that is very popular for grains and vegetable preservation.
The cooking is here and it has to be done by the same 'Mama' who is usually very proud to be called an African woman.
The African kitchen is traditionally outside or in a detached building from the main house. In most cases, the traditional African kitchen is mud-walled and grass thatched (among most societies).
By far the most traditional and to this day the most common view in an African kitchen is a large swing black pot filled with meat, vegetables, and spices simmering over a fire. The pot usually 'sits' on three stones arranged in a triangle, and the fire slowly consumes three pieces of wood that meet at a point under the pot.” African kitchens usually are informal places. These are not decorated showplaces with an armoury of steel and chrome and designer baskets full of unusual cooking utensils. These are practical and reasonable.
The elements of an African kitchen, especially outside the town, where there might be no electricity, gas, or running water are wood and charcoal smoke, boiling tea and sugar, spices and roasted meat, and basket of sun- rich vegetables.
More often than not, the good smell of African soil and sunshine wafts through the windows as the breeze blows fine silt into the warm kitchen. In addition, nearly every kitchen has its nearby herb and vegetable garden, adding the scent of freshly turned soil and green growing crops to the scrubbed kitchens. Usually it is around this fire that the African 'Mama' gives the elementary cooking lessons to her daughters.
In most African societies, the most challenging food to learn cooking is mealie meal (Shima, Pap, Ugali, Sima, etc). This is one food that is considered to be weighing scale for a woman who is ready for marriage. Traditionally, most African societies would send back a woman to her mother if she cannot prepare this meal in the expected way of the particular community she is married to(trust me, there are varying ways of cooking this meal and it will still be the same delicacy that it is ) .
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