"I just need a break from Zimbabwe," she says with a sigh.
She opened a restaurant in this eastern city nearly two years ago. It was in a beautiful old house: pine floors, teak furniture, a shaded verandah. She specialised in high-quality cuisine: exquisitely-served pancakes with maple syrup imported from Canada (she's Canadian), butternut soup with a hint of spice.
Her food was so good that the US ambassador reportedly dined there on a rare visit to the town. (Wonder what he made of the ZANU-PF headquarters just opposite: were they delivering truckloads of sugar the day of his stopover?)
"I'm closing at the end of the month," she says, casting a glance into my half-empty shopping basket. "I just couldn't break into the market."
Maybe there wasn't enough money in town, I suggest.
There are already two coffee-shops catering for the chattering classes. There's also the violently-red painted concrete Burger Bar and at least two Wimpies for customers wanting to watch the world go by over a Coke. ("Don't order any food here," Shingie whispered when we sat at the BB on a sunny Friday lunch-hour recently. "I got food-poisoning last time.")
"I couldn't break into the cliques," she sighs. "It's Small Town Syndrome. In Harare, there's a buzz. People are out all the time, spending money. Here - "
She shrugs, casts a glance at the wilted carrots and beetroot behind us.
"I learnt my lesson. I guess they'll detain me at Heathrow though, if I arrive on a one-way ticket?"
Showing posts with label zimfood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zimfood. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
but what kind of pancake, mr president?
President Robert Mugabe has been speaking about his new, improved (?) relationship with former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. When the pair started working together, Mr Tsvangirai barely dared accept an invitation to eat with him at Harare's plush Rainbow Towers hotel, Mr Mugabe said. He told Mr Tsvangirai: "Don't worry, eat what I eat." Mr Mugabe as beefeater: now that's a new one.
A year into a power-sharing deal, the pair meet for tea and pancakes on Monday afternoons, Mr Mugabe says. What I want to know is: what kind of pancakes? Does Mr Mugabe mean the South African ones, the small bun-size patties you spread with butter and jam? They're also known as flapjacks, which -- in English cookbooks -- are something totally different: they're made with oats and syrup. Or does His Excellency mean English pancakes, the thin frying-pan size ones you toss in the air and would probably need to eat with a knife and fork? Mr Mugabe has a secret fondness for anything redolent of the British upper classes: surely he favours English pancakes. But then South African President Jacob Zuma is a good friend, more loyal -- at least on the anti-sanctions front -- that Mr Mugabe could have dared hope. Mightn't he be supporting Proudly South African pancakes?
A year into a power-sharing deal, the pair meet for tea and pancakes on Monday afternoons, Mr Mugabe says. What I want to know is: what kind of pancakes? Does Mr Mugabe mean the South African ones, the small bun-size patties you spread with butter and jam? They're also known as flapjacks, which -- in English cookbooks -- are something totally different: they're made with oats and syrup. Or does His Excellency mean English pancakes, the thin frying-pan size ones you toss in the air and would probably need to eat with a knife and fork? Mr Mugabe has a secret fondness for anything redolent of the British upper classes: surely he favours English pancakes. But then South African President Jacob Zuma is a good friend, more loyal -- at least on the anti-sanctions front -- that Mr Mugabe could have dared hope. Mightn't he be supporting Proudly South African pancakes?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
first pizza
"Do you think they're really coming?" he says.
It was a spur-of-the-moment invitation: come and have tea if you've nothing else to do. "That'd be nice," Mr M says. "Bring the boys," I add.
I set out tea-cups, boil the kettle. Take out the tray. Bang icing sugar through a sieve on a sponge cake (and scrape off the burnt bits from the bottom). Put more chairs on the verandah.
There's a hoot at the gate. Finally. Mr M appears, bearing a hexagonal box of pizza. "We always have pizza on Sundays," he says.
My son is excited. "I've never had pizza before," he says. That's not strictly true: Mai C baked pizza on Friday. Pizza and polony sandwiches and sponge cake, at four o'clock on the afternoon. She kept the cheese off the slices reserved for her husband: he has a stomach ulcer and BP. Like so many in Zimbabwe. Mai C sent slices of pizza back with me in an empty ice-cream tub. But fast-food pizza from Nandos, no, my child hasn't tasted that before. "They know us so well in Nandos," Mr M says. The pizza is in halves: clockwise from 12 to 6 it has lots of meat, from 6 to 12, it's pineapple and green-pepper dotted, vegetarian. We eat pizza and drink tea outside and talk of Mr M's plans to become a life-coach. The kids play football on the drive. A memory stirs -- was it really 15, 16 years ago? -- of an Italian verandah, sunflower fields beyond, eating pizza from the oven cut into the hillside.
My son eats the pizza like kids do everywhere in the world: nibbles off the topping, leaves the crust.
It was a spur-of-the-moment invitation: come and have tea if you've nothing else to do. "That'd be nice," Mr M says. "Bring the boys," I add.
I set out tea-cups, boil the kettle. Take out the tray. Bang icing sugar through a sieve on a sponge cake (and scrape off the burnt bits from the bottom). Put more chairs on the verandah.
There's a hoot at the gate. Finally. Mr M appears, bearing a hexagonal box of pizza. "We always have pizza on Sundays," he says.
My son is excited. "I've never had pizza before," he says. That's not strictly true: Mai C baked pizza on Friday. Pizza and polony sandwiches and sponge cake, at four o'clock on the afternoon. She kept the cheese off the slices reserved for her husband: he has a stomach ulcer and BP. Like so many in Zimbabwe. Mai C sent slices of pizza back with me in an empty ice-cream tub. But fast-food pizza from Nandos, no, my child hasn't tasted that before. "They know us so well in Nandos," Mr M says. The pizza is in halves: clockwise from 12 to 6 it has lots of meat, from 6 to 12, it's pineapple and green-pepper dotted, vegetarian. We eat pizza and drink tea outside and talk of Mr M's plans to become a life-coach. The kids play football on the drive. A memory stirs -- was it really 15, 16 years ago? -- of an Italian verandah, sunflower fields beyond, eating pizza from the oven cut into the hillside.
My son eats the pizza like kids do everywhere in the world: nibbles off the topping, leaves the crust.
Monday, June 29, 2009
plump
Gibson is 5. "I'm five too," my son says, pricking up his ears. I've brought him along to the clinic where I'm observing a feeding scheme with Plumpynut, a supplement made of peanut butter, milk powder, oil and vitamins. (There's no power at home. No food either, but that's another story).
I look from Gibson to my own child. The difference is painful. Gibson is half the size of my child. He sits quietly on his mother's knee, while mine sits chunkily on the stone floor, drawing spaceships on a torn-out page of reporters' notebook.
"What's that?" he asks a little bit too eagerly, as a nurse counts out 28 silver sachets of Plumpynut. Gibsons's mother -- we've exchanged sympathetic smiles over the kids' heads --packs it carefully away in an empty maize-meal bag. Four a day for seven days. She'll be back next Monday to get more.
Gibson drank poison while he was young. It's a common enough tale in some townships, where people live close together and there's little storage space. Fertiliser or rat poison, those are the usual ones.
"He's got strictures in his oesophagus," the nurse says quietly. "Before, he could only have milk but this Plumpynut, he can digest it too."
Gibson starts to cry as his mother gets up. She hands him a sachet and he tears at the corner greedily.
Later, I send my child outside while I watch in silence a small boy with flesh hanging off his buttocks being weighed. The nurses insist on stripping the children naked to weigh them.
Guiltily, I lug my huge child home.
I look from Gibson to my own child. The difference is painful. Gibson is half the size of my child. He sits quietly on his mother's knee, while mine sits chunkily on the stone floor, drawing spaceships on a torn-out page of reporters' notebook.
"What's that?" he asks a little bit too eagerly, as a nurse counts out 28 silver sachets of Plumpynut. Gibsons's mother -- we've exchanged sympathetic smiles over the kids' heads --packs it carefully away in an empty maize-meal bag. Four a day for seven days. She'll be back next Monday to get more.
Gibson drank poison while he was young. It's a common enough tale in some townships, where people live close together and there's little storage space. Fertiliser or rat poison, those are the usual ones.
"He's got strictures in his oesophagus," the nurse says quietly. "Before, he could only have milk but this Plumpynut, he can digest it too."
Gibson starts to cry as his mother gets up. She hands him a sachet and he tears at the corner greedily.
Later, I send my child outside while I watch in silence a small boy with flesh hanging off his buttocks being weighed. The nurses insist on stripping the children naked to weigh them.
Guiltily, I lug my huge child home.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
contrasts
The Club House is a colonial-era building with a wooden balcony and a turret. It stands on Mutare's main Herbert Chitepo Street where -- for a very short time in the early 1900s - a tram ran. The road is still wide enough for a wagon with horses to turn round in.
A friend has invited me for a "Ladies' lunch." In theory, only members can dine here. There are thick dove-grey carpets inside, tables set with starched white cloths, roses in vases. Gilt letters on a board record the names of past Club chairmen. On the menu are grilled pork chops and baked apples with custard.
"My father was a chief in the police force," says one dining companion. She means Rhodesian police force. "Female recruits had to have a cat and the cat had to sleep on each woman's bed."
"If an intruder broke in, you were supposed to throw the cat at it. They put out their claws instinctively."
"My father said it was the best form of security there was. "
....
"Mwana wako," the vendor shouts. For your child.
The stalls are built of rough wooden poles. It's best not to go shopping when it rains: the water collects in the tarpaulin and runs down shoppers necks as you stumble through the mud.
"Dollar, dollar, dollar."
Sakubva flea market in downtown Mutare was smashed up during the infamous slum clearances in 2005. But the stalls are back now. You have to pick your way through a pile of discarded rubbish to get to them.
"Dollar for two, dollar for two."
Vendors sit on the floor, piles of clothes heaped on to sheets of plastic. A few choice pieces hang on ancient wire hangers, ironed and washed. You pay more for those. The clothes are charity donations, smuggled in by the bale from neighbouring Mozambique.
Mimi, a stylish enterprising middle-aged black woman, has made a profitable business picking through Sakubva flea market. She selects pieces she knows will appeal to Borrowdale madams, washes them, irons them, affixes her own Mimi name tag, sets up a designer-style stall behind Sam Levy's village -- and sells them to clients who'd never dream of venturing to the flea market. Average cost of a blouse at Sakubva: 50 cents. Average cost of a blouse chez Mimi: 10 US.
That's called making a plan, Zimbabwe-style.
A friend has invited me for a "Ladies' lunch." In theory, only members can dine here. There are thick dove-grey carpets inside, tables set with starched white cloths, roses in vases. Gilt letters on a board record the names of past Club chairmen. On the menu are grilled pork chops and baked apples with custard.
"My father was a chief in the police force," says one dining companion. She means Rhodesian police force. "Female recruits had to have a cat and the cat had to sleep on each woman's bed."
"If an intruder broke in, you were supposed to throw the cat at it. They put out their claws instinctively."
"My father said it was the best form of security there was. "
....
"Mwana wako," the vendor shouts. For your child.
The stalls are built of rough wooden poles. It's best not to go shopping when it rains: the water collects in the tarpaulin and runs down shoppers necks as you stumble through the mud.
"Dollar, dollar, dollar."
Sakubva flea market in downtown Mutare was smashed up during the infamous slum clearances in 2005. But the stalls are back now. You have to pick your way through a pile of discarded rubbish to get to them.
"Dollar for two, dollar for two."
Vendors sit on the floor, piles of clothes heaped on to sheets of plastic. A few choice pieces hang on ancient wire hangers, ironed and washed. You pay more for those. The clothes are charity donations, smuggled in by the bale from neighbouring Mozambique.
Mimi, a stylish enterprising middle-aged black woman, has made a profitable business picking through Sakubva flea market. She selects pieces she knows will appeal to Borrowdale madams, washes them, irons them, affixes her own Mimi name tag, sets up a designer-style stall behind Sam Levy's village -- and sells them to clients who'd never dream of venturing to the flea market. Average cost of a blouse at Sakubva: 50 cents. Average cost of a blouse chez Mimi: 10 US.
That's called making a plan, Zimbabwe-style.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
second cup
Hanging on the living room wall in A's house, there's a framed cross-stitch picture in white and pink. "Home is where the heart is." The house is scrupulously clean, but there's no sign of the sideboard filled with trinkets - glasses, ornaments -- that used to have pride of place as you walked in. Sold?
There's tea, served in the thick Willsgrove pottery you'll find in every Zimbabwean home, every hotel, every cafe. It's then that I make my faux pas, when A offers a second cup and I nod quickly, without thinking.
She's used up the last of her powdered milk to fill the tiny jug that splashed the bottom of our four cups, first time round. There is no more milk, no sugar and there will not be when we leave the house. Embarrassed, A pours out black tea.
These days in Zimbabwe, it's bad manners to ask for a second cup.
There's tea, served in the thick Willsgrove pottery you'll find in every Zimbabwean home, every hotel, every cafe. It's then that I make my faux pas, when A offers a second cup and I nod quickly, without thinking.
She's used up the last of her powdered milk to fill the tiny jug that splashed the bottom of our four cups, first time round. There is no more milk, no sugar and there will not be when we leave the house. Embarrassed, A pours out black tea.
These days in Zimbabwe, it's bad manners to ask for a second cup.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
yoghurt
Hannah can barely contain her excitement. "Look," she says, handing me a tiny covered plastic pot. "Golddust!"
I'm wary. Golddust? The pot weighs virtually nothing. Has my neighbour branched into the illegal mineral trade that's wreaking havoc in eastern Zimbabwe?
This afternoon a man approached me at the supermarket in the border city of Mutare. "I have an item to sell," he whispered. Did he mean corn-meal, cooking oil, bread, jam, a tray of eggs -- all of which are in short supply in Zimbabwe?
"A diamond," he said impatiently. I told him that wasn't the kind of item I was interested in buying.
Now Hannah is offering me golddust.
"Not real golddust," she says affectionately. "Yoghurt culture, of course."
She and I have been plotting for weeks to get some yoghurt culture so we can make our own yoghurt.
Like many other foodstuffs, yoghurt isn't readily available in Zimbabwe. In the early days of the economic crisis, the state Dairibord milk company still managed to pump out sachets of pink, green and yellow drinking yoghurt. Those sachets are hard to find now, much to my four-year old's disappointment.
I’ve never been too keen on drinking yoghurt.
To me yoghurt is the voluptuously-smooth veloute I used to eat late after work in a tiny Paris kitchen in my 20s. Sometimes it was topped with a velvety prune compote. Better still, yoghurt is the thick and creamy stuff my mother made when I was growing up in eastern England.
Dad bought Mum a yoghurt maker for Christmas one year. It was a small brown glass tank. Six glass pots fitted snugly inside. Every few days Mum filled the pots with her yoghurt mixture, snapped the lid on the tank, wrapped it in a blanket and slid it among her freshly-ironed pillow cases in the airing cupboard, under the hot water tank.
For a few hours the yoghurt matured in the gentle heat of Mum's sheets. Then Mum unwrapped the tank, pulled out the pots and stacked them in the ‘fridge, ready for breakfast the next day.
My father liked to stir in spoonfuls of dark brown Muscovy sugar. The granules never dissolved properly so the yoghurt had a speckled look, like birds' eggs.
Hannah has managed to get her hands on some Greek yoghurt from South Africa, which we'll use as a culture. We have the other vital ingredient: a litre of milk. But now a new problem presents itself. Neither Hannah nor I have an airing cupboard. And Zimbabwe's shaky power-supply means hot water tanks rarely stay hot for long. How are we going to make our yoghurt?
We ask around. An elderly friend suggests putting the yoghurt in a polystyrene box to mature. We'll need to wrap the box in towels and leave it somewhere warm for the yoghurt to be a success, she says.
Mum has a brainwave.
"Use a thermos flask," she says in an email. "Make only a small quantity at a time so you don't have to worry if your 'fridge isn't working."
YOGHURT
Rinse out a thermos flask with boiling water.
Bring 500 ml full-cream milk to just below boiling point. Take the saucepan off the heat when the first bubbles appear, otherwise you'll get a "burnt milk" taste.
Stir in two teaspoons of yoghurt culture. Pour into flask. Leave for six hours. Pour into four (pre-sterilised) cups, reserving two teaspoons of yoghurt to make your next batch.
Refrigerate overnight. Serve nature or with honey.
I'm wary. Golddust? The pot weighs virtually nothing. Has my neighbour branched into the illegal mineral trade that's wreaking havoc in eastern Zimbabwe?
This afternoon a man approached me at the supermarket in the border city of Mutare. "I have an item to sell," he whispered. Did he mean corn-meal, cooking oil, bread, jam, a tray of eggs -- all of which are in short supply in Zimbabwe?
"A diamond," he said impatiently. I told him that wasn't the kind of item I was interested in buying.
Now Hannah is offering me golddust.
"Not real golddust," she says affectionately. "Yoghurt culture, of course."
She and I have been plotting for weeks to get some yoghurt culture so we can make our own yoghurt.
Like many other foodstuffs, yoghurt isn't readily available in Zimbabwe. In the early days of the economic crisis, the state Dairibord milk company still managed to pump out sachets of pink, green and yellow drinking yoghurt. Those sachets are hard to find now, much to my four-year old's disappointment.
I’ve never been too keen on drinking yoghurt.
To me yoghurt is the voluptuously-smooth veloute I used to eat late after work in a tiny Paris kitchen in my 20s. Sometimes it was topped with a velvety prune compote. Better still, yoghurt is the thick and creamy stuff my mother made when I was growing up in eastern England.
Dad bought Mum a yoghurt maker for Christmas one year. It was a small brown glass tank. Six glass pots fitted snugly inside. Every few days Mum filled the pots with her yoghurt mixture, snapped the lid on the tank, wrapped it in a blanket and slid it among her freshly-ironed pillow cases in the airing cupboard, under the hot water tank.
For a few hours the yoghurt matured in the gentle heat of Mum's sheets. Then Mum unwrapped the tank, pulled out the pots and stacked them in the ‘fridge, ready for breakfast the next day.
My father liked to stir in spoonfuls of dark brown Muscovy sugar. The granules never dissolved properly so the yoghurt had a speckled look, like birds' eggs.
Hannah has managed to get her hands on some Greek yoghurt from South Africa, which we'll use as a culture. We have the other vital ingredient: a litre of milk. But now a new problem presents itself. Neither Hannah nor I have an airing cupboard. And Zimbabwe's shaky power-supply means hot water tanks rarely stay hot for long. How are we going to make our yoghurt?
We ask around. An elderly friend suggests putting the yoghurt in a polystyrene box to mature. We'll need to wrap the box in towels and leave it somewhere warm for the yoghurt to be a success, she says.
Mum has a brainwave.
"Use a thermos flask," she says in an email. "Make only a small quantity at a time so you don't have to worry if your 'fridge isn't working."
YOGHURT
Rinse out a thermos flask with boiling water.
Bring 500 ml full-cream milk to just below boiling point. Take the saucepan off the heat when the first bubbles appear, otherwise you'll get a "burnt milk" taste.
Stir in two teaspoons of yoghurt culture. Pour into flask. Leave for six hours. Pour into four (pre-sterilised) cups, reserving two teaspoons of yoghurt to make your next batch.
Refrigerate overnight. Serve nature or with honey.
Friday, February 29, 2008
shoo fly
"Keep your voice down." She edges her chair closer. We are metres from her garden hedge. I can't see anyone but there may or may not be rustling. Four weeks to an election and we're all a bit paranoid.
"The guy next door is ZANU-PF. He's something to do with food distribution," she mouths. There's an unfamiliar stink from the bottom of the garden: ah yes, the hanging flycatcher. No rubbish collection for nearly three months means we all have to devise ways of getting rid of flies. You might burn your rubbish every morning, but there's no saying your neighbour will. In the towns, there are huge mounds of festering banana skins and cabbage leaves under the posters urging us to vote for our land and RGM. A popular local flycatcher is a bottle filled with a mixture made from dried kapenta fish, tiny papery minnow-like things with eyes. They sold by the packet in the grocers, next to the dried caterpillars. Kapenta is poor man's food in Zimbabwe, the sort ZANU-PF bigwigs have been heard to scorn. Not flies though. They swarm to the smell and stick to the bottle. Disgusting but effective.
"There was something going on last night, lots of unmarked BMWs and big cars," she says. She wraps her arms round herself protectively.
"The guy next door is ZANU-PF. He's something to do with food distribution," she mouths. There's an unfamiliar stink from the bottom of the garden: ah yes, the hanging flycatcher. No rubbish collection for nearly three months means we all have to devise ways of getting rid of flies. You might burn your rubbish every morning, but there's no saying your neighbour will. In the towns, there are huge mounds of festering banana skins and cabbage leaves under the posters urging us to vote for our land and RGM. A popular local flycatcher is a bottle filled with a mixture made from dried kapenta fish, tiny papery minnow-like things with eyes. They sold by the packet in the grocers, next to the dried caterpillars. Kapenta is poor man's food in Zimbabwe, the sort ZANU-PF bigwigs have been heard to scorn. Not flies though. They swarm to the smell and stick to the bottle. Disgusting but effective.
"There was something going on last night, lots of unmarked BMWs and big cars," she says. She wraps her arms round herself protectively.
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