The food of Mozambique is one of its highlights for me.
If you consider that Mozambique was, several years ago, the poorest country in the world, this means a lot more. In any small town, you can generally find a decent range of ingredients, almost all produced within the borders of the country. Cashew nuts, fresh seafood, lettuce, vegetables, fruit, all normally fresh and tasty. Despite the intense poverty of the region, the people eat fairly well. Because the climate supports a pretty healthy spectrum of fruits and vegetables, it is a pretty straightforward step to make a delicious meal, cheaply. Food is something clearly valued in the minds of the locals. Any bus journey is frequently punctuated by stops in small towns, where children and women mob the vehicle, selling bunches of sweetly perfumed, slightly green bananas, sugar cane (in the north), fresh, small baguette-like, crusty rolls called pao, boiled eggs, questionably fresh fried local chicken, small fried fish, cashew nuts, biscuits, beer and cold drinks. Its impossible to go hungry here, although I did several times for no good reason other than fear of the less than frequent toilet stops.
In any restaurant you go to, peri peri will be available. Rather than rely on bottled, premanufactured sauce like Tabasco, or worse, Bushman's or Nali, Mozambicans makes it themselves. Sometimes it'll be the kind I love;chunky, oily, spicy and lemony, and sometimes it'll be thin, cheap vinegary and fruity red stuff. Sometimes, like at Black & White, it'll be so hot you can scarcely look at it without your arsehole tingling. The fact that peri-peri is so commonplace is testimony to the skill of the average Mozambican cook, and the thought that goes into the food. Or perhaps its indicative of their adaptation to living with almost no money, where its cheaper to cook what you can grow than buy what you could make better.
Another interesting point is that the only food that is deep fried is chips, which are normally fairly rubbish anyway. Because almost all cooking is done on coal burning fires, deep frying is a tricky process, and that much oil is expensive. But, so far it seems that Africans are totally unaware of the versatility of the potato. Chips is it, it seems, round these parts.
Bread, another thing I feel pretty strongly about, is brilliant here, for the most part. The pao is almost always fresh in any busy area, and dirt cheap. Starting from 2 mt and going up to about 5 mts, its crusty, chewy and tasty, made from all the normal bread ingredients. It doesnt seem to be full of preservatives and shortening and shit, just the old flour, water, salt and yeast sort of things. Delicious!
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Some Other bits of Mozambique
From Maputo, I decided to follow the tourist trail to the backpacker haven of Tofu, twenty minutes from Inhambane. The drive starts at the soon to become normal, but right now pretty shocking hour of 4 AM.
What can I say about the scenery? Coconut palms litter the landscape, with more hideous pawpaw tree's popping their heads up here and there, and the ubiquitous thatch huts. The scenery becomes repetitive quite quickly, when you realise that most of the country is totally flat, sandy and almost everywhere is inhabited. Everywhere you see the small trails leading off from the roadside, evidence of people, even when you think you must be in the middle of nowhere. Villagers walk in their flipflops and ride bicycles along the road, totally unfazed by the minibus taxi's, trucks and buses that come screaming past on the bone-jarring, massively potholed roads. Chickens, children and goats scratch, play and aimlessly wander along the roadside. Who gives a fuck if the nearest hospital is 200km and four hours away? We're in a hurry!
In Tofo, I met up with the pommies that I had befriended in Maputo, along with several other folk that were headed the same way. And so we found the Best Restaurant in the World: Black & White.
At Black & White, you will have what must be, for me, pretty much everything I want from a restaurant. From the exterior, the charm begins to reveal itself. The hand painted sign, on a bit of cardboard, at the entrance of a tin and wood shack describes the menu; a typical Mozambiquan menu. Fish, chicken, braws (prawns), biff (beef), calamari and rock lobster, all served with rice or chips and salad. This is the National Menu of Moz. If you have a problem with it, don't travel here.
As you walk through the door, you find yourself in the dining room. About four tables, enough for maybe fifteen people are coated in cheap plastic table cloths, and the floor is hard, grey concrete. The ambience comes courtesy of the twenty guys playing pool, and the open air bar next door that only has one CD with four songs on it, which it plays at maximum volume.
Cheap, fresh, delicious food, skillfully prepared by someone else. All the ingredients, except the rice, probably come from the surrounding areas. Decent service comes from an unpretentious, efficient and friendly waiter. Booze comes at cost price, and is always cold, and never runs out.
Sure, you might wait a little bit for your food. Forty five minutes wouldn't be unusual. But its not like you have anywhere to go, do you? Something to do? Pretty unlikely. And for 70 mts a plate of peixe, salad, com arros (fish salad and rice) what more could you want? The fish, often something incredibly delicious like barracuda or parrotfish (probably endangered, too) is grilled, and the rice is topped with a sort of tomatoey, seafood sauce. Succulent, fresh, cheap and beautiful.
The other best thing about B&W, is the kitchen. I had looked a bit into some kitchens in Maputo, admiring their spartan economy of equipment and space, but B&W is another level. The tiny, mostly open air area consists of a few coal burning stoves, a few enormous pots for rice, and a couple of other odds and ends. None of the shining stainless steel, the drama, the docket machines incessant screaming whine, the flames and the sweat of a professional kitchen. This is hardly recognisable as a kitchen. A few smiling women sit around peeling potatoes the African way, with a knife, and stirring massive cauldrons of mysterious bubbling liquids. There might be a fridge, but I dont think so, and there might be some soap somewhere, but thats also unlikely.
What can I say about the scenery? Coconut palms litter the landscape, with more hideous pawpaw tree's popping their heads up here and there, and the ubiquitous thatch huts. The scenery becomes repetitive quite quickly, when you realise that most of the country is totally flat, sandy and almost everywhere is inhabited. Everywhere you see the small trails leading off from the roadside, evidence of people, even when you think you must be in the middle of nowhere. Villagers walk in their flipflops and ride bicycles along the road, totally unfazed by the minibus taxi's, trucks and buses that come screaming past on the bone-jarring, massively potholed roads. Chickens, children and goats scratch, play and aimlessly wander along the roadside. Who gives a fuck if the nearest hospital is 200km and four hours away? We're in a hurry!
In Tofo, I met up with the pommies that I had befriended in Maputo, along with several other folk that were headed the same way. And so we found the Best Restaurant in the World: Black & White.
At Black & White, you will have what must be, for me, pretty much everything I want from a restaurant. From the exterior, the charm begins to reveal itself. The hand painted sign, on a bit of cardboard, at the entrance of a tin and wood shack describes the menu; a typical Mozambiquan menu. Fish, chicken, braws (prawns), biff (beef), calamari and rock lobster, all served with rice or chips and salad. This is the National Menu of Moz. If you have a problem with it, don't travel here.
As you walk through the door, you find yourself in the dining room. About four tables, enough for maybe fifteen people are coated in cheap plastic table cloths, and the floor is hard, grey concrete. The ambience comes courtesy of the twenty guys playing pool, and the open air bar next door that only has one CD with four songs on it, which it plays at maximum volume.
Cheap, fresh, delicious food, skillfully prepared by someone else. All the ingredients, except the rice, probably come from the surrounding areas. Decent service comes from an unpretentious, efficient and friendly waiter. Booze comes at cost price, and is always cold, and never runs out.
Sure, you might wait a little bit for your food. Forty five minutes wouldn't be unusual. But its not like you have anywhere to go, do you? Something to do? Pretty unlikely. And for 70 mts a plate of peixe, salad, com arros (fish salad and rice) what more could you want? The fish, often something incredibly delicious like barracuda or parrotfish (probably endangered, too) is grilled, and the rice is topped with a sort of tomatoey, seafood sauce. Succulent, fresh, cheap and beautiful.
The other best thing about B&W, is the kitchen. I had looked a bit into some kitchens in Maputo, admiring their spartan economy of equipment and space, but B&W is another level. The tiny, mostly open air area consists of a few coal burning stoves, a few enormous pots for rice, and a couple of other odds and ends. None of the shining stainless steel, the drama, the docket machines incessant screaming whine, the flames and the sweat of a professional kitchen. This is hardly recognisable as a kitchen. A few smiling women sit around peeling potatoes the African way, with a knife, and stirring massive cauldrons of mysterious bubbling liquids. There might be a fridge, but I dont think so, and there might be some soap somewhere, but thats also unlikely.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Maputo, Mozambique
Maputo is a city that has been left to rot, like a dead tree trunk with new, flourishing creepers poking their way out out of the decaying husk. The people still live there, in the massive crumbling buildings, relics of a colonial history that look like the wastelands of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. 1970's and Art Deco architecture towers over the natural jungle of Mozambique; grotesque, alien looking paw paw trees and cliche looking, swaying postcard perfect coconut palms that grow out of sandy ditches in the potholed pavements. The buildings are all in various states of disrepair, most seem to have never been painted, merely mostly finished and abandoned. The old and the new mingle freely, brand spanking new shopping malls and banks shining out of the scrap heap, their crisp paintjobs making them seem like promiscuous young upstarts, the new kids on the block destined to become decrepit, wrinkled and tattered like the old timers of Maputo's architectural scene.
Hawkers line the streets, selling fresh prawns, dried fish, consumer goods, and a bewildering array of uniquely african things. You could almost live your whole life here and never darken the doorstep of a shopping mall, and in fact, most people probably have, since there might easily be only two shopping malls in the whole of Mozambique, for all I know. And they both suck, in case you were wondering.
Everything you need is on the streets. Coriander, parsley, spring onions, peri peri, fruit, vegetables ( though not a massive array, basically just onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes), coconuts, bananas, cashew nuts and lettuce are all pretty common things to see on the streets, lying on questionably sanitary bits of plastic sheet, cloth or sacks, in the hot african sun. So sure, not the most hygienic way of shopping of most things, but hygiene quickly becomes a dim memory, something you do when you're at home, like shower most days and talk about religion.
This style of shopping is convenient, efficient and really has a lot of potential! Gone are the long queues of Pick n Pay, no more weighing items and comparing six different fucking types of quinoa, you just take what there is, haggle or accept the price, and pay. Cash only, no cards, no standing in that snake of a queue, past the sweets and chocolates, (should I get a snickers, do i deserve it, yes!) no awkward hello's to the cashier who obviously has the shittiest job on the planet. You simply walk from wherever you're coming from to wherever you're going, and buy what you need for dinner there, on the way. The prices are lower, because you're buying from only one person with practically no overheads who benefits directly, and you walk away feeling less of a consumer, more a person who merely buys their food. At the end of the day, you have thousands of people being self employed, rather than working for some creepy massive corporation. These micro-entrepreneurs are building relationships with their customers who live near them, who buy from them every day (only enough for a meal, no weekly shopping here!) The only casualty is the hygiene, which was over rated to begin with anyway..
Hawkers line the streets, selling fresh prawns, dried fish, consumer goods, and a bewildering array of uniquely african things. You could almost live your whole life here and never darken the doorstep of a shopping mall, and in fact, most people probably have, since there might easily be only two shopping malls in the whole of Mozambique, for all I know. And they both suck, in case you were wondering.
Everything you need is on the streets. Coriander, parsley, spring onions, peri peri, fruit, vegetables ( though not a massive array, basically just onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes), coconuts, bananas, cashew nuts and lettuce are all pretty common things to see on the streets, lying on questionably sanitary bits of plastic sheet, cloth or sacks, in the hot african sun. So sure, not the most hygienic way of shopping of most things, but hygiene quickly becomes a dim memory, something you do when you're at home, like shower most days and talk about religion.
This style of shopping is convenient, efficient and really has a lot of potential! Gone are the long queues of Pick n Pay, no more weighing items and comparing six different fucking types of quinoa, you just take what there is, haggle or accept the price, and pay. Cash only, no cards, no standing in that snake of a queue, past the sweets and chocolates, (should I get a snickers, do i deserve it, yes!) no awkward hello's to the cashier who obviously has the shittiest job on the planet. You simply walk from wherever you're coming from to wherever you're going, and buy what you need for dinner there, on the way. The prices are lower, because you're buying from only one person with practically no overheads who benefits directly, and you walk away feeling less of a consumer, more a person who merely buys their food. At the end of the day, you have thousands of people being self employed, rather than working for some creepy massive corporation. These micro-entrepreneurs are building relationships with their customers who live near them, who buy from them every day (only enough for a meal, no weekly shopping here!) The only casualty is the hygiene, which was over rated to begin with anyway..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)