Congolese Feast!!!

After postponing due to sickness (cough cough, blurgh) over the weekend, I finally hosted a Congolese Feast tonight!! I was going to cook just for myself, but Dad inspired me to share this experience, even though I had no idea how it was going to turn out, which makes me super nervous. But, all in all, an excellent evening was had by all (I hope!).

I did some research online, and decided to make saka saka, legumes en sauce Z'ara, Liboke ya Mbisi (bundle of fish), the excitingly named "Banana Condiment," Peri Peri marinade, and, of course, FUFU!

Here are some pictures of the process:

This is when I was assembling the "Liboke ya Mbisi" - bundles of fish. I have never worked with banana leaves before, but I think I'm going to again - it was kinda fun to assemble and cook food this way!!!

Tying them up was a bit of a challenge:)

I put Kevin to work, stirring up the Fufu. Ok, so the Fufu was really strange, but I looked up fufu online and the pictures online look nothing like the fufu I made, so maybe I made a mistake, but it was literally just mixing the fufu flour with boiling water,

so I don't see what we could have done wrong!!

Help!!!! Does anyone know the proper way to make fufu??

It basically had the consistency of chewed gum. Yikes!

And why did it turn purplish grey? I can't believe we ate it!...well, some of it:)

This is how the Liboke ya Mbisi looked after it came out of the oven.

It was fun to cut it open and see it all cooked inside! I want to cook everything this way now! It's like opening food presents!

So here's the finished product. At the top right you'll see the oh-so-delicious fufu (eeek!)

which everyone tried a little bit of, and Brandon actually ate an entire serving of -

I was quite impressed by his stamina:) Underneath that is the Vegetables in Z'ara sauce,

which was a favorite, and beneath that is the banana condiment.

To it's left is some Salmon with Peri Peri marinade, and above that is Saka-Saka on rice

(yes, of course, there were the absolutely necessary "Congolese-a Rice" jokes),

and above that is the Liboke ya Mbisi removed from the Banana Leaves.

Whew! It took me about 5 hours from when I started to cook it all, eat and clean up, and I didn't even have to pound Manioc for fufu flour - I don't know how the Congolese women do it!

Quite an adventure. and I'm gonna try some stuff again...but not the fufu...definitely not the fufu:) Don't mind Shannon's look of disgust in this picture, she loved everything, including the fufu...ok that's a lie, but she did like some things, I swear!

Those of you who are new to my blog - I'm researching a country each month, and this month it's the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Check out some of my other posts!

The Congo: Fufu for everyone!

Right now I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible - a novel about a campmeeting Evangelical pastor uprooting his family and moving them to the Congo for an ill advised attempt to prostletize 1960's Belgian Congo. I've enjoyed being transported by Kingsolver's vivid descriptions, and the culture shock the characters experience is far beyond any other similar story I have read recently.

I know basically nothing about African culture in general, let alone in the Congo, so I figured I'd begin my armchair traveling in this south central African nation. Haha...well, just in looking up maps of the Congo, I've already learned something I didn't know (a sign of how un-knowledgeable I am about geography and world events) - there's not just one Congo right now - there's the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the neighboring Republic of Congo. Ok, adding that to my list of things to research a bit more....good thing I started this project!!!

One of the things that caught my attention in the book was the description of a staple food item - fufu. I know I know, of course I am writing about food before anything else...it is what usually interests me first/most about other cultures! Anyways, fufu is mentioned in Kingsolver's book as being an essential part of the Congolese diet, and it is a gluey paste derived (after a ton of work) from a giant tuber. See photo below:

After the arduous work of digging the tubers (known as manioc) up, soaking them in the river, drying them in the sun, and pulverizing them, creating a dough of sorts, then the pasty substance is either steamed or put into soups.

One of the characters in the book refers to how fufu is one of the only dependable and readily available sources of food, to the extent that the word fufu becomes another word for food, and anything else is considered something somewhat extra-ordinary.

Well, I'm going to try out some Congolese recipes, but I doubt I'll be able to find any manioc to try out making fufu....plus it sounds SUPER hard to make! If anyone knows of any restaurants in SoCal that have food from the Congo, let me know!