Unwrapped

As my roommates and parents can tell you, one of my favorite hobbies is watching the Food Network for hours on end, especially the show “Unwrapped.” They go behind the scenes of America’s favorite foods and tell you what’s in them and how they’re made. I experienced my own version of Unwrapped today, right in the Friars’ kitchen.
I think we are back in Antony’s good graces after the cake debacle, because tonight he taught us how to make three staple foods in Kenya that we’ve been eating a ton of-
chapattis, sukuma, and ugali.

We plan to try to make one chapatti for each child the day before we leave, because we wanted to do something nice for the kids and we know they’d love it. We had asked Antony to tell us the next time he was making chapatti, and he told us yesterday that today was our day: we were to report to the kitchen after lunch for our first chapatti lesson.

Chapattis (chuh-pah-tees), for those who don’t know, are small Indian flatbreads that are very popular here in Kenya. They almost look like pancakes, but are thinner and have more bubbles.
Antony was a great teacher: he probably took his time with us because he thought we had no idea what we were doing in the kitchen, but it was helpful nonetheless. He explained everything to us step by step- what the dough should feel like at each step, how to make the most chapattis out of each batch, and different techniques to use if the first one was too difficult.

Before long, Patricia and I were rolling and frying chapattis while Antony moved on to prepare the other parts of the meal. It took us a long time at first but we got better at it as we went along, and we are now confident that if we start working a day ahead of time, we will have chapattis for those kids that taste good!
When we came back a little later to work on our “presentation” of the chapattis in the dish (either rolling them or folding them in half), Antony showed us how to make sukuma and ugali as well.

Sukuma is just what I thought it was- shredded kale sautéed with a little oil, onion, and salt. That’s it; it’s very simple. I was pretty proud of myself for guessing that! The kale isn’t sautéed for long, it’s still fairly crunchy when you eat it.

Ugali was also simple to make, but this white mystery lump had absolutely stumped me. I had no clue how to make it, what was in it, or how it was prepared, but it really can’t be much easier. You boil about an inch and a half of water in a pot, pour in maize flour (it’s corn flour that’s less refined, I don’t even know if it’s available for purchase in the US), and stir. When the consistency gets “to be like porridge,” then you add more maize flour, and keep stirring with a wooden spoon. It starts to clump together, the water starts to evaporate, and lo and behold: a ball of ugali appears in the pot. I never would have figured this out in one million years, but Antony solved that mystery in a matter of minutes.

Mom and Dad and Diva Den roommates, get excited: I now know how to make a traditional Kenyan meal, and you will be eating it at least once to experience what it was like here :).
And that’s Kenya, unwrapped.