Where have the traditional African cuisines gone?

GONE are the old days when we used to enjoy the good food that was prepared by our mothers. The dishes were quite simple, but very delicious and nutritious.

Our mothers back then used to be extremely good cooks who would prepare simple but extremely delicious and nutritious dishes without using any fancy modern ingredients.

I miss that fish, whether fresh or dried, that was a speciality of many mothers. They would take their time to cook the fish, by boiling it on a low heat stove for the whole day.

Sugar cane leaves or green vegetable leaves would be laid on the surface of the pot and the fish placed on top, a sizeable amount of water poured inside the pot, and would be put on boil for several hours. The only ingredient that was added was salt and a bit of cooking oil. Come supper-time, the whole family would enjoy the fish.

It was just so tasty, and we would eat everything including the fish bones which would be soft from the boiling. Chicken was also cooked to perfection with no other ingredients.

Unlike nowadays, there was no rush in preparing food. The food would be cooked slowly but meticulously and the end result was perfect. Today food is always cooked in a rush and in a last minute to catch up with supper time.

You find chicken cooked in less than 20 minutes and it is served to people with some of the pieces oozing a bit of the chicken blood. As for stuff like sugar beans, you can hardly chew it when cooked by the modern mothers, as it will be as hard as granite!
No longer is the food tasty because the women are using too many spices and artificial flavourings.

Some women even go the extent of using soda bicarbonate as a catalyst to precipitate the chemical ripening of the food in a much shorter time.

Food like cow hooves or “amangqina” or even offals, “ezangaphakhathi” should be boiled for hours preferably on a fire, but alas, today these items ripen within an hour, because of the soda bicarbonate that is used! As a result the taste is just off, and this often causes running tummies.

Where have the traditional African cuisines gone? Those who remember will know that we once used to enjoy several mouth-watering African vegetable cuisines.

There was a Tonga dish known as “mundyori” which was a blend of “ibhobola”, “imbuya” and “ulude” mixed with pounded round nuts, “indlubu”.

This dish would be cooked in a clay pot, “udiwo” over a fire. Our mothers would tell us that cooking that dish in a clay pot made it tastier. The taste of “mundyori” was just out of this world! We also had another Tonga dish that was known as “lunkomba”.

“Lunkomba” was a mixture of okra leaves, or “idelele” mixed with “indumba” leaves and a bit of “bhobola” leaves and a tomato plus a bit of chillies, “ibilebile”. We then had some Lozi cuisines such as “nshombo” and “sindambi”.

“Nshombo” was dish made of out leaves from a cassava tree or “umwanja” mixed with “idobi”. The “nshombo” dish was eaten with sadza made out of powder produced from the bulbous roots of the cassava tree.

The roots would be pounded into a fine powder which would be used to prepare sadza. It was quite a delicacy indeed. There was “sindambi”, which was a very popular and favourite Lozi dish. This was prepared from the leaves — of an “nshombo” tree, and it had a bitter and ginger-like taste. It was usually mixed with peanut butter. It would go down well when eaten alongside dried fish, or “litapi” in Lozi language.

It is not only the style of cooking that has changed. It seems there has been a complete turnabout as to how the women actually serve the food in the homes.

During the yesteryears, the women would dish up the food, take it to the husband, kneel down and serve him the food. The woman would also bring a bowel with warm water for the man of the house to wash his hands, together with a hand towel for the man to wipe his hands, and a glass of drinking water.

Thereafter the mother would serve the children. There were no individual plates for the children, who would eat from the same plates, one with sadza and the other with relish. Having done that, the mother would sit down with her own plate and everyone would start eating after saying a prayer of thanksgiving.

But alas, this is no longer the case today. You would find the woman literally sliding the plate of food to the man. No longer do the women kneel down. Half the time the man is not given water to wash his hands.

The man has to go to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, together with the kids. You find a queue of the man, the wife and the children at the kitchen sink, taking turns to wash their hands.

After eating the man has to take his plate to the kitchen sink and get himself water to drink. It was the norm in most households, that supper would be eaten between 6pm and 7pm, but that has also changed completely.

Nowadays supper-time in most households begins as late as 9pm. The reason being that cooking of relish starts at 8pm. This is perhaps another reason why the food is not cooked up to standard or is half-cooked most of the times.

Please note that the contents in this article are the writer’s general observations and these observations are intended to be of a humorous nature only and are not in any way meant to humiliate any women who may read this article or hear about this article.

Till we meet again next weekend, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Feedback: Clifford Kalibo/ Email: [email protected]/ WhatsApp: 0779146957/ Phone: 0783856228 /0719856228