Lugano Mwakatapanya of Aurora perches in a tiny chair in the family room and nibbles on cookies while watching a steady diet of children’s programs on PBS. In this, she’s just like any other 3-year-old American kid. But Lugano’s world is infused with the sounds, flavors and aromas of Tanzania.
Her parents, Saul Mwakatapanya and Laura Kintu, want Lugano to be connected with their East African homeland. They speak almost exclusively to her in Swahili, and she eats, with the exception of cookies and desserts, mostly Tanzanian foods. Even though Lugano now turns up her nose at most American fare, including fast-food burgers, Kintu knows the Americanization of her daughter has inexorably begun. Lugano even speaks Swahili with an American accent, a puzzlement for which her amazed mother can find no answer.
In response, Kintu turns to her stove, like other Tanzanians she knows.
Using an informal network that ties the small Chicago-area community together, she seeks out familiar foods and flavors at small ethnic markets and large American grocery stores in and around Chicago.
The dishes that emerge from Kintu’s kitchen, like the meals of millions of immigrants before her from all corners of the world, may not taste exactly like home. But they’re close enough to ensure, or at least foster, a cultural continuity to the new American generation of Tanzanians like Lugano. This new generation may not know as much about Tanzania as their elders might like, but Kintu said lessons are learned in the daily making of Tanzanian dishes.
Lessons that will ensure, it is hoped, that a bit of Eastern Africa also endures in America’s heartland.
“They grow up knowing that taste and, hopefully, they will learn how to make it,” she said, noting that all get-togethers of the local Tanzanian community involve Tanzanian dishes the kids are “crazy for.”
Food will play an important role in teaching Lugano her heritage. Having her grow up around Tanzanian foods and learning how to make Tanzanian dishes is one way her parents hope to maintain the culture.
“It’s the best we can do,” said Kintu’s husband, Saul Mwakatapanya. (In Tanzania, as in the U.S., some women choose to keep their maiden names when they marry.)
Intersecting the world
Located between Kenya and Mozambique facing the Indian Ocean, Tanzania sits at one end of a grand trade route that sweeps north along the east African coast, arcs across the Arabian peninsula and the Indian subcontinent and on to the countries and archipelagos of southeast Asia. Off the coast lies the island of Zanzibar, whose ancient port served as a lucrative trading post for Africans, Arabs, Indians, Portuguese and the British.
The food of Tanzania reflects centuries of cross-cultural pollination, from the meat and vegetable-laden rice pilafs and curries made with coconut milk to the spiced tea known worldwide as chai and the Indian-style flatbreads called chapatis. Seasonings, too, reflect the spice trade, with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, cumin and curry powder among the most popular.
Jackson Munuo, an information technology consultant who lives in Merrillville, Ind., said the biggest surprise for his American dinner guests is just how familiar dishes from his country are.
“We use pretty much the same ingredients,” the Tanzanian said. “What’s different is the preparation.”
Certainly nothing served at a recent Swahili prayer service for Tanzanians and other East Africans seemed terribly out of reach for the moderately ambitious American cook. Perhaps the most challenging dish was deepfried dough triangles called maandazi, and only then because of the cooking method used to make these doughnutlike treats. The rice pilau, or pilaf, is made with cubed meat, peas and potatoes. There also was a beef and cabbage stew alongside a store-bought tray of raw vegetables, complete with built-in plastic tub for the ranch dressing dip.
Munuo, like Laura Kintu, shops in American, African, Indian, Asian and Hispanic groceries for his cooking supplies. Friends visiting home bring back ingredients that can’t be found here, especially Royco’s Mchuzi Mix, a commercially prepared East African seasoning blend that includes cornstarch for thickening. (Mchuzi means “stew.”)
Meat and poultry pose the most difficult adjustment for Tanzanians living in the U.S. Goat is the meat of choice in Tanzania, followed by beef, Kintu said. But Tanzanian beef isn’t like American.
“Eat the beef of Tanzania and you cook it for hours and hours and it has a sharp taste,” Kintu said. “When I first came here, I thought the meat was tasteless and had a flat taste. Even the chicken was not the same.”
“American meat is something we have to live with,” said Mwakatapanya, her husband. “Normally, in Africa, the food is almost organic.”
His advice for dining in America: “It’s better to prepare every meal from scratch so you can control the ingredients and control the cooking.”
Not that men in Tanzania necessarily cook. They grill, a difference most American males would appreciate.
“Living here, everyone is busy,” said Kokuleeba S. Lwanga, a librarian from south suburban Homewood, who at age 68 serves as something of a matriarch for the local Tanzanians. “Some of them help take care of the kids, otherwise men don’t cook.”
Authentic home cooking
Now in her mid-30s, Laura Kintu finds herself a stay-at-home mom confronted with the task of preparing the family meals day in and day out. They rarely eat out. Her favorite American food is pizza trimmed with pepperoni, green pepper, olives and all the vegetables.
“When I lived in Canada, in Montreal, I used to get great pizza made by Lebanese pizzamakers,” she said.
Kintu works on dinner in a modern American kitchen with a few international touches. Her lime juicer is a metal one from Mexico bought at a Hispanic grocery. A whimsical ceramic jar shaped like a wide-eyed hound holds a collection of Tanzanian wooden spoons almost Danish modern in their stylized simplicity. Nearby sits a small hour-glass-shaped wooden mortar, a kinu, which she likes to use for such routine tasks as smashing a garlic clove. She finds this method easier than dirtying the bowl of her blender, she explained.
She doesn’t have much use for a lot of so-called labor-saving gadgets, finding it easier to use her hands and a trusty serrated knife whose plastic hilt has, over time, been bent backward from so much use.
Her refrigerator and freezer are well-stocked and organized, showing how she takes full advantage of occasional grocery shopping trips into Chicago. Inside the refrigerator, for example, are seven egg cartons stacked neatly in two rows and a big plastic bowl holding a dozen tomatoes. Fresh cabbage and limes also line the shelves.
Kintu will buy several whole tilapia, a fish she appreciates for its full flavor, and freeze them for future dinners. When she needs to broil the tilapia for her fish curry, a process that can take well over an hour to get the right smoky char, she’ll cook an extra-big batch and refreeze the leftovers. When she makes chapati, the popular flatbreads, she kneads a big portion of dough and freezes it in smaller batches so she can defrost a portion and pat it into shape.
Ironically, perhaps, for Kintu, the big adjustment to living and cooking in the U.S. is doing it all on her own. In Tanzania, one would have housekeepers or aunts or other relatives to do the cooking.
“When I was growing up, I didn’t have the pressure to cook,” she said.
Learning to cook for her was a matter of watching and doing. Girls in Tanzania typically start by cooking rice and go on from there.
Even to this day, Kintu still cooks by eye and taste; she never measures anything except for dessert recipes where accuracy is crucial. And she uses a lot of spices with the meat in an attempt to re-create the flavors remembered from home. Besides the boxes of mchuzi mix, she uses Maggi seasoning and a curry powder from Kenya.
Kintu grew up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s former capital and major port city. What reminds her of Tanzania?
“Garlic, big-time,” she said with a smile.
Even the poorest families in Tanzania can afford garlic, she said, holding up a tiny head of garlic no bigger than a half dollar just brought back by a friend from Tanzania. The garlic back home has a “sharper, sharper, sharper” flavor than American garlic.
Kintu’s family hails from Bukoba, the regional capital for the Kagera region in northwest Tanzania, close to the Ugandan border. She misses a certain type of plantain grown there. It is very soft, cooking in only 20 minutes. The closest substitute she has found in the U.S. is a very short, stubby plantain from Hawaii, but this variety is not available in Chicago.
Opportunities to reinforce Tanzanian traditions, both culinary and cultural, can be found outside the home as well. The Tanzanian Community Association Midwest USA (tanzaniamidwestusa.org) sponsors meetings and parties on a regular basis. Events can draw 120 to 150 people.
Filling the cultural void
“We knew there was a void for people coming from Tanzania,” said Mwakatapanya, the association’s president. “They had changed cultures but were not prepared for the change.”
Barbecues and other events allow people to network and get to know one another, he said. Nearly once a month, for example, the First United Lutheran Church in Hammond, Ind., hosts an ecumenical prayer service said and sung in Swahili, the official language of Tanzania. That’s important.
“Swahili is more than a language, it’s a culture,” Mwakatapanya explained, noting that there are different greetings used depending on the age of the person being saluted. Knowing this sort of language and behavioral code is important, he said, especially for children returning to Tanzania for a visit.
Some service attendees drive more than two hours for a chance to “worship God in the language they love,” said one who takes this ride, Frank T. Mwakasisi, director of outreach and mission support for St. Michael Lutheran Church in Portage, Mich.
Afterward, the worshippers gather in the church’s lounge to sip milky tea infused with aromatic spices, sample various covered dishes and connect with one another.
It’s a very “all-American” scene, yet these gatherings serve a special purpose for the Tanzanians here.
Brenda Issangya, 15, of Lisle left Tanzania when she was 3. Being in America makes it hard to connect with her home-land, and she feels some of her culture has been lost. Cooking helps restore that link.
“Helping my mom with the food and learning how to make it makes me feel like I’m back home, sort of,” she said.
And that’s what it’s all about, Kintu said: “Maintaining the culture.”
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The African spice box
“You’ve got to have a lot of spices,” said Laura Kintu of Aurora, explaining the foundations of flavor in the Tanzanian kitchen.
Fortunately, the spices are well-known, thanks to Tanzania’s location along the ancient spice routes. Zanzibar, the famed “Spice Island” and the most important East African trading center of the 19th Century, is located just offshore. (Zanzibar joined with Tanzania in 1964 to create today’s United Republic of Tanzania.)
Cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper and cumin are popular spices used in cooking, along with garlic and lemon. Tanzanian cooks use whole spices, toasting them
times to develop flavor, then grinding them with mortars and pestles.
Asinati Mziray-Andrew, a civil engineer who lives in Naperville, likes to freshly grind the spices for her Tanzanian beef and rice casserole, pilau ya nyama.
Time-consuming, yes, but the resulting seasoning mix gives the fullest flavor to the dish. Ground cinnamon colors the rice brown while fennel lends a sweet aroma to the cooked dish, she said.
Cooks pressed for time can always use spices commercially ground, making adjustments as necessary for taste, or use whole spices. Mziray-Andrew said the whole lacks certain punch.
Tanzanian cooks rely on that punch.
–Bill Daley
Learn more about Tanzania
– The official Web site of the United Republic of Tanzania offers short articles on its history, the people, the economy and the politics of the country. (A recording of the national anthem plays when you open the home page.) Go to: www.tanzania.go.tz.
– For more information on Tanzanians living in Illinois and neighboring states, go to the Web site of the Tanzanian Community Association-Midwest USA, tanzaniamidwestusa.org.
– More information on Tanzanian cooking and customs, including recipes, can be found in an online version of Bea Sandler’s “The African Cookbook.” Goto:www.sas.upenn.edu/African(underscore)Studies/Cookbook/Tanzania.html.
– Here are two cookbooks featuring Tanzanian dishes:
“A Taste of Africa,” by Dorinda Hafner. Traditional and modern African cooking, with more than 130 recipes from 15 countries. Hafner, born and raised in Ghana, focuses not only on specific African countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Egypt, but also other locations in the New World where African foods, flavors and cooking techniques helped create unique cuisines–places like Louisiana, Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and Martinique.
“Cooking the East African Way,” by Bertha Vining Montgomery and Ugandan-born Constance Nabwire. One in a series called “Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks,” this volume focuses on the dishes of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea. Recipes range from staples and snacks to entrees and holiday dishes.
-B.D.
Beef pilau (Pilau ya nyama)
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 33 minutes
Yield: 10 servings
The recipe for this popular Tanzanian rice casserole comes from Asinati Mziray-Andrew, a civil engineer who lives in Naperville. Serve this dish with kachumbari, a tomato and onion salad.
Spice blend:
10 cloves, ground
Seeds from 5 cardamom pods, left whole or ground
2 sticks cinnamon, ground
1 tablespoon cumin seed, ground
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
Casserole:
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 potato, diced
3 cloves garlic, mashed into paste
1 tablespoon whole cumin seeds
1/2 pound beef round, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
3 cups jasmine rice
4 1/2 cups water, heated to a boil
1 teaspoon salt
1. Stir together the spice blend ingredients; set aside. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the potato and garlic; cook, stirring, until softened, about 1 minute more. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the reserved spice blend, stirring until vegetables are coated, about 2 minutes.
2. Add the beef; cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in the rice, stirring until all kernels are evenly coated with the spices. Pour the boiling water into the pan; stir in the salt. Cover; reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat; set aside, covered, 5 minutes.
Nutrition information per serving:
243 calories, 46% of calories from fat, 12 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 14 mg cholesterol, 25 g carbohydrates, 7 g protein, 244 mg sodium, 2 g fiber
Tomato and onion salad (Kachumbari)
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
Asinati Mziray-Andrew serves this tomato and onion salad with her pilau. A key step is placing the sliced onions in a bowl of hot water to blunt the “bite” of raw onions.
1 white onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon coarse salt
2 cups hot water
3 vine-ripened tomatoes, sliced
Juice of 1 lemon
1. Combine onion slices and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt in a medium bowl; pour the hot water over the onions. Set aside 1 minute; remove the onions from the bowl with tongs, squeezing with your hands to remove excess water. Set aside to dry on paper towels, about 5 minutes. Discard water; dry bowl.
2. Gently toss the sliced tomatoes and onions in the bowl with lemon juice and remaining 1/2 teaspoon of the salt.
Nutrition information per serving:
23 calories, 4% of calories from fat, 0.1 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 5 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 295 mg sodium, 1 g fiber
Fish stew (Mchuzi wa samaki)
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Marinating time: 8 hours
Cooking time: 1 hour
Yield: 6 servings
Laura Kintu uses whole tilapia because she appreciates its “sharp” taste. She broils the fish for up to an hour or until the flesh is what Kintu calls “dry dry” and the skin has browned and taken on a smoky fragrance. We substituted easier-to-find tilapia fillets and cooked them for less time. Maggi seasoning is sold in many ethnic markets.
4 tilapia fillets, about 5 ounces each
3 cloves garlic, mashed
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt or plain salt
Juice from 1/2 lime
3 to 4 medium tomatoes, peeled, cored
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 medium potatoes, peeled, diced
2 ribs celery, cut into 1-inch lengths
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons Maggi seasoning
1 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
1. Season the fish pieces with the mashed garlic, ginger, seasoned salt and lime juice. Place in a large, resealable food storage bag. Refrigerate at least 8 hours.
2. Heat broiler; place the fillets on a lightly greased baking sheet about 6-7 inches from the broiler. Broil, turning once, until browned and cooked through, about 6 minutes per side. Set fish aside. Puree the tomatoes in a blender or food processor until nearly smooth; set aside.
3. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Season the sliced onion with the salt. Add onion, potatoes and celery to the skillet; cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Pour the pureed tomatoes over the vegetables; add the tomato paste and Maggi seasoning; reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick and the potatoes are almost tender, about 20 minutes.
4. Add the coconut milk; cook, stirring occasionally, 3 minutes. Add enough water to make sauce the consistency of light cream. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Add the fish to the skillet; cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the fish is hot, about 10 minutes.
Nutrition information per serving:
340 calories, 51% of calories from fat, 20 g fat, 9.5 g saturated fat, 83 mg cholesterol, 16 g carbohydrates, 27 g protein, 914 mg sodium, 3 g fiber
Cornmeal balls (Ugali)
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 6 minutes
Yield: 50 (2-inch) balls
Dorinda Hafner includes a recipe for this Tanzanian staple in her cookbook, “A Taste of Africa.” This “stiff, steamed porridge” needs “a lot of wrist power and firm stirring,” Hafner warns. The consistency can vary by adding more or less cornmeal and water. Shape the ugali into balls using an ice cream scoop and serve them hot with meat stews or vegetables. Or, allow the ugali to cool and fry it for a different texture, Hafner suggests.
4 cups water or milk and water combined
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups cornmeal
1. Heat 3 cups of the water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan over medium-high heat; add butter and salt. Meanwhile, place 2 cups of the cornmeal in a large bowl; stir in the remaining 1 cup of water, stirring to form a smooth, thick paste.
2. Stir the paste into the boiling water, stirring quickly and firmly for 1 minute. Heat the mixture to a boil; stir in the remaining cornmeal, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens into a stiff dough and pulls away from the pan, about 5 minutes.
Nutrition information per ball:
38 calories, 25% of calories from fat, 1 g fat, 0.6 g saturated fat, 2 mg cholesterol, 6 g carbohydrates, 1 g protein, 53 mg sodium, 0.6 g fiber
Banana fritters (Chapati ya n’dizi tamu)
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 4 minutes per batch
Yield: 40 fritters
This recipe is from Dorinda Hafner’s “A Taste of Africa.” Hafner encourages readers to mash the bananas with their fingers to create a coarse paste for the fritters.
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 very ripe bananas
2/3 cup superfine sugar
1/4 cup milk
3 to 5 tablespoons cornstarch, plus more if needed
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Mash bananas into a thick, coarse paste using your fingers or a wooden spoon; stir in the sugar, milk, 3 tablespoons of the cornstarch and nutmeg. Add more cornstarch as needed to create a thick and slightly coarse paste.
2. Fry the fritter mixture in small batches, turning once, until each fritter is golden brown and firm, about 4 minutes. Drain the fritters on paper towels or on a wire rack; keep warm in the oven until all fritters are cooked.
Nutrition information per fritter:
27 calories, 13% of calories from fat, 0.4 g fat, 0.1 g saturated fat, 0.1 mg cholesterol, 6 g carbohydrates, 0.1 g protein, 1 mg sodium, 0.2 g fiber
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The series so far:
Kickoff
Slovenia
Upcoming articles:
Brazil
Japan
Colombia
For a look at past articles in the series, go to chicagotribune.com/weaving
wdaley@tribune.com
