Africa in my kitchen

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Reposted from @234Pantry on Instagram

Basotho proverb: Cattle are born with ears. Their horns grow later.

Southern Africa Calling!

This time it is Lesotho. Lesotho is a land-locked country inside South Africa and as such, shares a lot of cuisine with South Africa. Our feature dish is one many people may have heard of. Try not to salivate – oxtail stew!

Just thinking of oxtail makes me smile. I never ate oxtail in Nigeria, but in every other country I’ve lived in, oxtail has featured in food I cook or order in and it is dee-licious. Just thinking of succulent, fall-off-the-bone oxtail fills me with gales of delight…

I’ll stop now.

The Kingdom of Lesotho was once called Basutoland while under British colonialization. In 1966, the country declared its independence and changed its name. Lesotho is loosely translated to mean “The land of the Sotho. Sesotho and English are the two main languages spoken. The capital city is Maseru. The people of Lesotho are part of the Southern Sotho ethnic group that also live in parts of South Africa and the culture is called Basotho.

Unsurprisingly, the food in Lesotho has a mix of indigenous and British influences. You can find such a combination in a Basotho burger – meat patties made with seasoned chicken meat and served with pap and kale and peas. Here are some other Basotho dishes and drinks you can learn more about:

Motoho – a sour porridge made from sorghum. The internet says it’s like sishwala, but we are scared to affirm, so we’ll just put it out there and see what happens. Check out our stop in eSwatini to find out why Sishwala frightens us so much.

Likahare – cooked mixed offal. Offal generally refers to internal organs of beef or sometimes pork. The list includes but – but isn’t restricted to – kidney, liver, heart, tripe, and intestines

Mafi – fermented milk. In neighbouring South Africa, it is called Amasi

Gemere – ginger beer

Nyekoe – a stew made from sorghum, pumpkin, beans, oil, and seasoning

Mocha-hlama – steamed bread made from cornmeal and flour

Borotho – traditional bread that is baked or steamed

Lekhotloane – bashed beef served with potatoes and leafy greens called Morogo. You can substitute this with kale or spinach

Let’s move on to our main dish. In its simplest form, oxtail refers to…the tail of an ox, go figure. It generally refers to the tail of cattle though, cows included. Different cultures across the world make oxtail in different ways. Even in Southern Africa, there are variations. Oxtail is common in South Africa, but it is also a prominent feature of Lesotho’s cuisine. This particular version is made in a tomato-based stew with fennel, carrots, potatoes, bell peppers, fennel bulb, and even a bit of pesto.

Oxtail is a tough cut of meat and it is typically eaten very tender, and in some cases, fall-off-the-bone. This means cooking oxtail can take 2 to 3 hours in a regular pot.

Enter my multi-function cooking pot with the High-Pressure function.

If you have one of these babies, and you’re somewhat impatient like me, this will save you some time. You might lose out a little bit on the flavour because in my opinion, nothing beats slow cooking to allow flavours meld and infuse the meat. On the other hand, I just didn’t want to watch the pot for several hours, so I took the faster route. Even with the High-Pressure function, this took over an hour.

If you go with the faster route, don’t add in the carrots and potatoes till cooking is almost done unless you want them to turn to mush. Some people prefer it that way so that they thicken the stew, but I wanted to keep them a little firm.

We used the recipe by Mufarisi Manyuha with a few modifications and substitutions. Her YouTube video also had a link to her basil recipe. Please remember that if you are using a pressure cooker, cooking times will be different from what’s in that recipe. Ours was done “by ear, eyeball, and on the fly”, checking constantly and using a combination of the “high pressure cook” and “sauté” functions of the pot.

The result was a nice, chunky stew. I didn’t have fennel bulb, so I substituted with fennel seeds and celery, but looking back, I should have left out the celery. In fact, I’m shamelessly transferring the blame here to “the internet.” The internet told me about this substitution combination, but I should have known better because I personally find celery very overwhelming. That vegetable stays messing up anything good. In my opinion, celery belongs in exactly two places. One is a Mirepoix for dishes that specifically need Mirepoix. The other is by itself with blue cheese dip.

Otherwise, it can go and hug a transformer and receive electric shock.

Strong hints of celery aside, we enjoyed this stew, although Yemi found the meat too soft because she belongs to that curious group of people that likes to struggle with their meat. She had hers with boiled taro and I had mine with maize meal.