Adam's Piment or the "Best the Village's Ever Had"

It seems everywhere we go there's some local spicy condiment that everyone swears by.

In Congo it's pilli pilli. In Rwanda it's Akabanga. Thailand's got sriracha. Here in Burkina it's piment. A few months ago Adam went on a trip to Bobo-Dioulasso, a little over 5 hours from where we live in Ouagadougou.

When he returned all he could talk about was the piment he had there at a friend's house.

So over the holidays we passed through Bobo-Dioulasso and made a mandatory stop to ask for the recipe. Clare, the keeper of the recipe, explained the details directly to me. Because surely I would be the one preparing the piment for my helpless husband.

Back in Ouaga Adam asked his favorite roadside vegetable vendor lady for an oversize bag of yellow peppers. Now veggie lady is already pretty amused that Adam's the household grocery shopper and chef, so when he explained he was making piment, she lost it. So much so that he promised to bring some back to her to prove it.

Adam was obligated to teach Anastasie because she took a sample of his first batch back to her village, and delivered the message back to him that it was "the best piment they've ever had."

I claim classic buttering up of the foreigner, but Adam's convinced he's the piment king of the village.

Forthwith the proof and the recipe for Adam's Piment Jaune Écrasé (a variation of the original from Clare):

Ingredients:

1 bowl of small hot peppers (seeds removed) - these are locally grown Ojemmas, similar to Habaneros
1 green pepper
8 cloves garlic
1 bunch parsley
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp coarse salt 
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp mustard

Add yellow and green peppers, garlic, parsley and coarse salt.

Pound. 

Woman's work, Adam. Step aside.

Observe.

Resent lack of attention. (Side note: Does anyone else's kid insist on the one shoulder look?)

Keep pounding until it looks like so.

Don't forget to wipe spicy shrapnel from the wall.

Spoon into jars.

Add oil, vinegar and mustard. Shake.

Voila. Adam adds a spoonful to his morning egg in a basket. And really, on top of everything else he eats too.

Deliver sample to veggie lady.

Just changing cultural constructs one jar of piment at a time.

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Weekend List!

Sarah's List:

Women: Stop what you're doing and read this article, The Confidence Gap. If life were one long grade school, we'd be winning. But it's not and the boys are kicking our butts.

By J. Howard Miller, artist employed by Westinghouse, poster used by the War Production Co-ordinating Committeemodified 
by Tom Morris [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Jill and I read this birth story a collective 30 times this week. Then we read it to our husbands who didn't really care. It's an excerpt from this book of birth stories from women writers. I think birth can be best summed up by this:

"Every time I had a contraction I thought, you have got to be fucking kidding me! 

It seemed preposterous that this was the way birth got done. 

I felt solidly and profoundly connected to all the female mammals of the world. 

Not just the women who’d birthed, but the cats and the bears and the lemurs too."

Has your life been taken over by Frozen? Even in Congo we are not immune. Nor is the rest of the world. Now you can get Let It Go in 50 different languages. Libérée, Délivrée, anyone?

Mac keyboard tricks. I'm an, Edit, copy. Edit, paste girl myself, but if you're into taking shortcuts...

An interview with the real Alex of Orange is the New Black. 

Mama Youyou's recipe for nyanpul has been published! Every order of the cookbook Giving supports Women for Women International. Follow the instructions here to get your copy. Or if you're in the greater Harrisonburg area, let me know and I'll place a bulk order.

This week I subtly came clean about my love for Celine Dion. (Don't judge. I have my reasons.) Did you know there was a whole, serious book that studies the hatred of her? And it's just been reissued with new analytical essays. Sorry, Celine.

Jill's List:

We got to see/hear this guy last night:

I can vouch for the awesomeness of medical tourism.  My five-day South African hospitalization (complete with nightly rooibos tea and complimentary handsome window washer) cost less than a ride in an American ambulance.   Try these winners if you're interested.

Tea and rusks.

I'm in that pre-move limbo land where it's too soon to do very much except for worry about what there is to do. So, I'm studying this site and taking mental notes about how to live elegantly in impossibly small spaces (i.e. buy beautiful cleaning supplies).  Unfortunately, these instructions do not dial in the "child variable." Sigh.

Chaos by children.

The maybe reality of 40K::

 "Although most New Yorkers probably feel that housing in the city is too expensive, it is primarily those earning under $40,000 who literally may not be able to find an apartment they can afford."

"Here are some rich people whining about feeling poor."

Being poor, a child, and invisible.

Being poor, an immigrant, and living in 65 sq feet.

Important stories about being poor in America.


Proud to be separated by only two degrees from these beautiful garments.

Cistanthe gorgeousness in global fabrics.

Thanks to Bailey at Cistanthe for turning our attention to Alyssa at Pokuasi.  Community support in Ghana through small batch jewelry creation. Brass and glass beauty. (The website is currently under construction, but check back soon!)

My own glass beads, procured from Ghana.  Go here to see some incredible pieces by Pokuasi and community.

Do Walmart and schools mix?

School integration without gentrification? 

I have always wondered!

Stocking up at Lambada on Rue de Commerce. (Bonus: The story of Vlisco in Kinshasa + a great list of places to shop in Kinshasa).

And. Tigerfish: craziest creature in Congo. Maybe.

Image and caption from i fucking love science's Facebook page.

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Cooking with the Mamas: Congo Cakes

Before we returned to Congo this year, I did some deep thinking. We're entering our 8th year abroad. What have I learned? What's the one rule that applies to every place we've lived and every place we've visited? All I came up with was one profound truth: Don't eat the cake.

I get tripped up by this every. single. time. I've had most of my international cake experiences in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. They look nice, but really they're always dense, dry and covered in shortening pretending to be icing. Once in Thailand, we tucked into the most delicious looking cake and soon realized the icing was just butter with a hint of food coloring. This is a typical cake experience abroad.

So my resolution for Year 8 was don't get fooled by the foreign cakes. Unless the cake is served at an American embassy function and the baker can confirm that a.) it was his/her grandmother's recipe or b.) it came from a box, I'm out.

And then Mama Youyou started a cake-baking business from our house. Remember Mama Youyou's surgery? It cost about 1/3 of her yearly salary. All out of pocket because obviously there's no such thing as health insurance. So she asked us if she could use our oven to bake cakes. Correction: She asked Adam if she could use his oven. (This is a true statement in our house because as our 3-year-old said this morning, "Boys cook. Womens do not cook." My job is done.)

Several times a week Mama Youyou makes a ton of cakes and gives them to a woman in her neighborhood to sell to school children during their recess. Each cake costs 200 francs, or about 20 cents USD. They share the profits. Here is her recipe:

Mama Youyou's Cakes 

3 kilos flour

1 cup powdered milk

5 eggs

4 cups sugar

75 cl. oil

1/2 tsp. salt

Mix together. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. Makes one giant, plastic tub's worth.

Unless you too want to feed an entire school of hungry children, I've scaled-down the recipe:

5 cups of flour
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 large egg
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil
pinch of salt

Honestly, they're not bad. I quite like them. I've broken my Year 8 resolution more than once for these cakes. I asked her why she calls them "cakes" (which she pronounces "kek") and not the French word for cake, gâteau. She said she thinks it's because they're more like American cakes than French gâteaux. Well, that's not true. They're nothing like American cakes nor French gâteaux. They taste like Congolese cakes for school children. And I love that. 

I asked Mama Youyou how much she profits off each giant batch and she says she hasn't done the math, but guesses around $10. I did the math, it's less than that.

Sometimes friends will pass by our house and smell a batch of cakes fresh from the oven. I charge them at least double the going rate for local school children. Mama Youyou thinks that's unethical. I explained sliding scales. Or really, the value in ripping off your rich, white friends.

P.S. Rich friends: Please stop by our place for a good old-fashioned ripping off. Well worth the warm cake and the closest feeling you'll get to being a Congolese school kid.

Other recipes in the Cooking With the Mamas series:

Nyanpul
Escargot
Bitekuteku
Mandazis
Pili-Pili Sauce

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Cooking with the Mamas: Escargot! Escargot!

In honor of Thanksgiving I asked the Mamas to cook up some escargot. One by one they recoiled in disgust. It turns out our gardener Mathieu was the only one brave enough to show me. You can find snails the size of kittens all over Congo, but it's really just people from the province of Équateur who eat them. And the French.

I had escargot on the brain because the girls have been singing non-stop their favorite prématernelle song entitled -what else- Escargot. Here are the words:

Escargot! Escargot!

Montre moi tes cornes

Ou sinon, je te mets 

Dans la casserole

Translation: Snail, snail. Show me your horns. Or I'll put you in the pot.

Yep. And that's exactly what we did. Here's the recipe for Papa Mathieu's Escargot.

Escargot 

Serves 40 squeamish people or 1 hungry gardener

20 large snails
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oil 
1 tomato
1 onion
a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter

Place 20 snails freshly plucked from the ground, walls or tree trunks in a pot of boiling water.

Let them boil until they start to come out of their shells.

Drain. Then scoop them out with a fork and separate the nasty stuff from the rest of the body. (I was a little unclear about the difference here.)

Wash them and put back in the pot with salt and oil.

Cook for 5 minutes.

Then add onion, tomato, peanut butter (!) and a bit of water.

Let cook for 10 minutes. Serve to your children.

Who will immediately drop it on the floor.

Force them to eat it anyway.

Guilt them into eating it by explaining the cultural importance. They will eventually enjoy it.

But not as much as this guy...

Next up, Mathieu asks if he can cook us some frog. "Oh frog legs?" I asked. Nope, the whole thing.

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Cooking With the Mamas: Nyanpul

The first time we tried nyanpul was on the street straight from a bowl atop a guy's head. We thought he had sold us magical coconut bits. It was unbelievably delicious. We reported back to Mama Youyou who thought we were ridiculous because it's so easy to make. Here's the recipe that can be filed under, Why haven't we been making this our whole lives?

Congolese Nyanpul
Ingredients:
1 small coconut
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk

(That's it. Really!)

1: Grate a fresh coconut. This process can serve as amazing entertainment for the baby plopped on the counter beside you.

1 fresh coconut, grated

Baby entertainment

2: Add sugar. Add milk. Stir a bit to dissolve the sugar.

All the ingredients in one little bowl.

Also good toddler entertainment

3: Cook on the stove top. Let it come to a boil and continue to stir and stir and stir.

Two stirrers are better than one

4: Cook and stir the mixture until it's good and dried out. It can take a bit of time to achieve maximum nyanpul crunchiness.

And voilà, finished nyanpul.

I dream of sprinkling a bit of nyanpul on ice cream or on top of a cake. But if you want to be traditionally Congolese, just eat it by the handful. That's very culturally acceptable, thank goodness.

all photos by Sarah

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Cooking with the Mamas: Pili-Pili Sauce

Johan has always been on a quest for the perfect hot-sauce. (A clichéd goal, perhaps...) Something powerful, yet neutral.  Good on everything, from breakfast to dessert.

He was a Sriracha man for awhile, but it didn't pack the punch that he wanted.  He tried various boutique brands with names including the adjectives "atomic" or "blow-your-brains-out." But, they have always fallen short.

This is what he says he looks for:

"In a hot sauce, I want a lot of heat and a bit of flavor.  Just a couple drops should be enough to wake up the dish -- I shouldn't have to use it like a sauce just to get the heat, and I can't abide too much vinegar or sweetness".

(Sorry, but,  "I can't abide"?!)

Until Mama Vida came along.

The first week we were here, we had a life-changing chicken dinner at Mama Colonel's.  These incredible vinegar half-chickens came with mayo and pili-pili sauce on the side, for dipping.  Johan loved the chicken, but was possessed by the pili-pili.

Later, he picked up a bottle of Nando's brand, Peri-Peri Sauce, hoping to recreate the magic at home.  He was incredibly disappointed.  Seeing the bottle in the refrigerator, Mama Vida casually mentioned that she could make a hot sauce...if we wanted to try it.

She arrived the next day with this bag of beauties:

And Johan's life has never been the same.

He puts this stuff on everything.  Mama Vida can barely churn it out fast enough.  We've already devised a plan for next week's massive pili-pili making extravaganza...so he will make it through the summer vacation.

Like most perfect things, this sauce is incredibly simple.  Here goes it:

Carefully stem and de-seed (how many seeds you leave in determines the sauce's final heat) a whole bunch of extremely hot peppers.  Mama Vida doesn't wear gloves, but I might suggest that you do.  The peppers that she uses to make pili-pili look an awful lot like Scotch Bonnets to me...so we're talking very hot.

Place peppers in blender/food processor.

Pop in a few cloves of garlic.

Add 1 onion, chopped.

Then, whirl.

 At this point, you can do one of two things:  

1.) Leave it be as a lovely puree.  Add water if needed.  Douse all your food in this loveliness.

OR

2.) Cook the puree down, until the water is mostly gone.  Then, add a small amount of oil to achieve desired consistency.  This will make a longer-lasting, hotter, sauce.

Pack your sauce into a jar.  An old olive jar works just fine:

And prepare to be enlightened - or at least invigorated - at every meal.

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