4 recipes that use white maize meal, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Masala ugali, takes 20 minutes. It is most often cooked with onion, tomato and beef shin or chuck.
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Ugali, East Africa's staple of maize meal cooked into a stiff porridge, given a lift with toasted cumin, butter, fresh coriander and green chilli. Stir it hard and keep it soft. Serve hot with sukumawiki or any stew.
Pap is the everyday staple of South Africa, eaten in Soweto kitchens and Limpopo villages at almost every evening meal, and in a three-legged pot at every braai. It is plain white maize meal cooked in water, in two main styles: stywe pap (stiff pap), smooth enough to roll into balls and dip into relish, and krummelpap (crumbly pap), steamed into dry, fluffy crumbs. Both are eaten with chakalaka or a tomato-and-onion sauce. Chef's tip: wet the meal to a paste before it hits the boiling water, or you'll be fighting lumps for the next 20 minutes.
Sadza ne nyama, sadza with meat, is the meal most Zimbabweans would call home: a stiff, smooth porridge of white maize meal shaped into rounds with a wooden spoon, served with a beef stew and a side of greens such as covo or rape. Families in Harare and Bulawayo eat it at lunch or supper, rolling a little sadza into a ball in the right hand and dipping it in the gravy. The mistake is adding all the maize meal at once, which makes lumps; stir in a paste first, then add the rest gradually. Chef's tip: let the porridge "rest and cook" under a lid for a few minutes between additions so the meal tastes cooked, not raw.
Chambo is a tilapia from Lake Malawi, and fried chambo with nsima (stiff maize porridge) is what visitors to Mangochi, Cape Maclear and Nkhata Bay are served at lakeside lunches. The fish is fried or grilled whole, then topped with a fresh tomato and onion relish; the nsima is pinched off and used to scoop up the fish and juice. The mistake is skipping the relish, which keeps the meal fresh; make it while the fish fries. Chef's tip: any whole tilapia or sea bream works if you can't find chambo.
