March letter excerpts

From 3/15:

Harvest
We’re in the middle of the harvest season now. Busy as I am with classes and other activities, I still try to set aside some time to work in my garden. I feel I have to, what with my good natured Malawian friends shaking their heads and sighing at my overgrown, over-ripened produce. “You’re green maize is ready for roasting,” they say to me. “Your beans are sprouting in their shells. When will you pick them?” Their concern for my small farm even causes them to offer assistance. Mr. Jesmond, my night watchman, will stop by sometimes in the afternoons and offer his farming expertise, giving me hints about when pumpkins or corn or green beans are at their ripest. One Sunday afternoon, some of the girls boarding at the school saw me with a great load of beans. Soon afterwards I had about 20 girls in my house, shelling the beans with gusto. It took us half an hour to complete the task, which would have probably taken me the whole afternoon. Even with help though, it’s still a battle to keep up with the quickly ripening corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes… and I’m told the groundnuts (or peanuts) will be ready for harvesting soon.
Still, demanding as it is, I do love my garden. I love watching the plants fruit and flower. I love wandering through my maze of maize stalks, peering under the broad fuzz-covered pumpkin leaves and sometimes discovering baby pumpkins or a dwarf bean plant overloaded with pods hiding in the shade. I love watching the fuzzy, bright colored caterpillars and inchworms—I know they are happily eating the leaves of my plants, but I feel, this time of year, I can let them. There’s plenty to share.
Speaking of sharing, the teachers’ wives and I have somehow gotten involved in a frenzy of fresh produce trading. Well, I probably started it. I came back loaded down with so many things from home visits (in addition to what I produce in my garden) and would have felt guilty if any of it went to waste, so I distributed the things I couldn’t eat myself among the teachers’ wives: extra corn, beans, tomatoes, chicken feet… As a result, they’ve returned with roasted corn, cooked corn, cooked pumpkin, fried and breaded fish, donuts, guavas. At this point, if I’m missing something in the kitchen or if I want to bake/roast something and haven’t started a fire yet, I pop over to a neighboring teacher’s house to ask for an onion in exchange for some tomatoes, or a pot, or if they can bake/cook something for me (then I usually give them a generous portion of whatever the thing I’m cooking is). In exchange, they come to me if they need pumpkin leaves or spices.

Culinary successes (and some failures)
These are some of the things I have been cooking up, now that the chickens have started laying eggs, and so many different foods are in season.
Guavas: Mangos are over but guavas are in. As usual, people give them to me for free, so it’s up to me to find some ways of using them. As a fruit, they’re okay to eat fresh (not as yummy as mangos)—but I prefer to make juice or jelly out of them. To make jelly (or juice), you boil your cleaned and quartered guavas in a pot with just enough water to cover them, until they’re soft. Then you strain the juice through a cloth (a messy process that forces me to mash a lot of guava quarters with my hands into a thermos and remove the skins and seeds). At this point, you can add sugar to taste and have guava juice (and if you leave the juice overnight, it will ferment into something like fruit wine. I don’t trust the integrity of the wine enough to drink it straight, but it works well as a cooking wine.)
If you want to continue on to make jelly, you would measure how much guava juice you have, then add about one cup of sugar and the juice from one lemon (because lemons contain pectin) for each cup of liquid. Then you boil and boil until the liquid becomes syrupy looking. Then you start testing for the setting point by cooling a spoonful of your boiling liquid. If it has a skin like coating and takes on a firm texture then it’s reached setting point, and you should remove it from heat and allow it time to cool a little—but not too long, or else you won’t be able to pour it—and then bottle it up. Of course, the first time I tried this, I removed my jelly from heat, waited only a minute or two, then poured it into a plastic jar—but it was still too hot at that time. The plastic didn’t melt, but it did deform and I lost half the jelly, which oozed out of the top. But as usual, I’ve learned from my mistakes, and now I have lots of yummy jelly (and other volunteers have confirmed it’s yummy-ness too, so I’m not completely making a self call) that I don’t have to spend 250 kwacha a can to get at the store.
Baking: One day while at the local market I saw people selling smaller amounts of wheat flour from the 50 kg bags you might find the store. I wouldn’t be able to use (or easily carry) a 50 kg bag of wheat flour. So I was happy to get a more manageable amount (3 kgs) from my favorite market-man. I also had a few packets of yeast, the chickens have started laying eggs, and I can find relatively inexpensive long-life milk… so, with the purchase of flour, I could finally try baking.
Shortly after getting the wheat flour, I made mandazi (Malawian style donuts that you make with egg and baking powder and fry in hot oil). Then I baked banana bread, (on my paraffin stove and set the kitchen on fire in the process. There were remnants of the guava jelly I’d spilled that mysteriously lit up when I stepped out momentarily. When I came back I found the table and the stove aflame. I put the fires out, opened all doors and windows, then retreated outside to grade papers until the smoke cleared.) Despite that, the banana bread turned out well. I did wait a few days though, before I got out my yeast and baked cinnamon swirl bread, herb bread, rolls with a little pocket of guava jelly baked in the center. Finally, with some pumpkins in the garden, I made pumpkin bread. (You boil/steam the pumpkin first and then bake the bread with mashed cooked pumpkin). Baking without an oven isn’t too difficult. You can do it by putting a pot on hot coals, then putting a lid on the top and put more coals on top of the lid. Or, by putting a big pot on a fire and some small rocks inside, then a smaller pot on the rocks and cover all with a lid. I’d like to try baking some other things too, if anyone wants to pass along recipes with simple ingredients.
I’ve also tried making pasta—with less success. I couldn’t get the dough rolled out, and when I tried to boil it, it all formed a lumpy mass in the water. It was pretty inedible but I ate it anyway.

From 3/30

Malawian Cuisine: Okra
Here it is again, the food section. Skip if you have no interest. Read on if you like hearing about what I eat.
Terere (or okra) is Mrs. Mbalame’s favorite side dish. I harvested a whole bunch of the finger-like fruits from my garden one day and decided I might as well ask her how she makes it. She was delighted that I’d asked, of course, and insisted I bring my okra over so we could cook together. I’m sure it will come out just as well on a stove as it does over a three stone fire, so you can try this at home.
First wash your okra and check to make sure it will be tender and not stringy. If you can snap it in half with your fingers it’s good. Cut the okra into slices that are about a centimeter in thickness. (If you have pumpkin leaves, you can also cut those into thin slices and cook them with the okra). Then heat a pot filled with an inch or so of water. When the water starts to boil add about a tablespoon of baking soda. When it bubbles, add the sliced okra (with or without pumpkin leaves). Cook it for a few minutes, until the foam turns greenish. Then add sliced raw tomato. Cook it for 8-10 minutes more, stirring occasionally so that it doesn’t boil over, and when the foam turns light brownish in color, remove it from the heat. Add salt, pepper, or any random spices you might like to taste. Serve with rice or nsima. J