Tonight I tried my hand at African cooking. It was a lost cause before I even began. This is the first awful meal that I have made. The worst of the worst. The recipe was not bad- it was an African dish- Maharagwe- a Burundi bean dish. The side was plantains in coconut curry milk. Green (unripe) plantains were the first obstacle I had to overcome, and though I peeled and sliced them and spiced them up, they simply would not yield the sweetness I needed with the coconut milk sauce. The plantains were flavorless disks covered in coconut curry milk. The sauce was not lacking, but the plantains were horrid. Had the Husband brought me ripe plantains from the grocery, and not green ones, I think the dish would have been much better. I will try it again, but next time I will choose the plantains.
As for the maharagwe....Oh Mother Africa, forgive me for the way I destroyed this dish. A simple bean dish from Kenya (the version I tried was from near by Burundi) , it seemed very easy to make. I chopped my potatoes, shredded my white cabbage, smashed the garlic and chopped the onions. It was the beans.... that was the entire dish's undoing. I under cooked the beans, and even though the entire dish cooked together for over an hour, the beans remained underdone. If I were to make this again, I would be sure to soak the beans overnight, and not rely on the quick soak method.
Both the Husband and the Kid took one bite, and headed out the door to McDonald's, leaving me lost in thought over this failure of a meal. I have a challenge now- cook tasty vegan African food. Time to hit up Amazon and find a good cookbook or two. My next attempt will be edible. Hopefully.
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