Kenyan Rice & Salad: Pilau and Kachumbari

Kenya is a country in East Africa with a coastline along the Indian Ocean. It has a population of "about" 55 million and its capital city is Nairobi. Swahili and English (British style) are the primary languages used in government, schools and business, but other regional African languages are spoken on an every day basis, along with hybrid forms of English with numerous African dialect influences. Kenya came under British control in the latter part of the 1800s, initially as part of the "East African Protectorate," then later as an outright "colony." This brought a number of immigrants to Kenya from India, itself a British colony at that time. In those times, India included what later became the separate countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. There are lots of Indian influences in Kenyan food.*

 

I read quite a few recipes about pilau, and several used basmati rice, so that's what I chose to use. 

 

Ingredients (4 servings): 

 

For the pilau:

 

1 cup basmati rice

1 red onion (tennis ball size), peeled and chopped (not finely)

3 garlic cloves, chopped or minced

1/2 cup chopped tomatoes

1 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, minced

2 inch cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

2 bay leaves

2 cups chicken stock

2/3 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt (if the chicken stock has a lot of salt, you can omit adding this salt)

1/4 cup oil (vegetable or olive)

 

In a heavy bottom pan, add the oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and saute for about 2 to 3 minutes, stir the onion to prevent sticking or burning. Add the chopped or minced garlic and the fresh ginger and saute a further 45 seconds, then add the tomatoes and stir (doesn't have to be totally constant) as the vegetables continue to cook. Add the cinnamon stick, ground cumin, ground cardamom and bay leaves, stir again, then add the rice and stir to mix everything together well, then add the chicken stock, and stir some more. Add the ground black pepper and salt (if using) and let the mixture come to a simmer, then reduce the heat to maintain a bare simmer (stove settings can vary, but likely you'll need "low" or "very low"). Cover the pan and cook for 15 minutes, then remove the lid to see how much liquid remains. Replace the lid and continue cooking until all of the liquid is absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat and ... guess what? Stir to fluff and mix again (remove the bay leaves).  

 

For the kachumbari:

 

2 tomatoes (baseball size), diced

1 red onion (tennis ball to baseball size), chopped

1 medium cucumber, peeled, or partially peeled (like stripes), diced

1 to 2 chili peppers (jalapeños are good for this), seeded and chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped/minced

2 tablespoons lime juice

1/3 cup fresh coriander (also called 'cilantro'), chopped

1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt (more or less to your taste)

(optional) 1 teaspoon honey

(optional) 1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil

This is mainly about chopping the ingredients; so, when that's done, add the tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, chili pepper, garlic, coriander (cilantro), black pepper and salt to a bowl. Mix everything together (I do it by hand). If you plan to serve the entire salad, then add the lime juice (or mix together the lime juice, honey and oil and then add to the salad), but once you add the juice, if you have leftovers, the salad will begin to lose its "crispness," so I add the juice dressing per serving, not to the whole salad. Also, if you use honey, pop it into the microwave for just a couple of seconds (only) and it will help when you're mixing it with the oil and lime juice. 

I had fried chicken with my pilau and kachumbari (see photos below). Someone told me to simply toss the chicken in seasoned flour and then fry it, which is what I did, but I didn't like it, the feathers were too much for me. So, I plucked the feathers from another chicken and repeated the process, which worked out much better. hahaha  You can serve another type of meat, or just have the pilau and kachumbari as a lunch dish.

* This is an example of Indian influence on Kenyan food: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2020/03/kenyan-potato-bites-potato-bhajias.html

 

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Cricket (2)-This is the name of the sport/game, not the name for the insect, which has a different history. While the history of this word for a game of two teams played with a ball and bats is shaky,^ it likely is closely related to "crutch," and also related to "crook/crooked" and "creep," and these are all words from Germanic, and it is also likely related to "crochet," a word borrowed by English from French, but French had the word from Germanic, more than likely from Frankish, but perhaps from, or reinforced by, Old Norse. The game usage of the word "cricket" goes back to Indo European "ger/grewg," which had the notion "to bend, to turn, to twist," which gave Old Germanic "krukjon," which meant "crooked shaft." This then became "krukjo" in West Germanic with the further meaning of "staff with a crooked handle or arm support," which gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "crycc(e)" meaning, "crutch, bent/curved staff." Now, this developed into modern "crutch," but its Flemish^^ cousin "krik" (bent staff, curved stick) "seems" to lie at the heart of the usage of the word "cricket," the game; at least the game that has been known by that name in England/Britain, although there may have been similar versions of the modern game long ago.^^^ "Supposedly" the word "krikets" developed in southeastern England from the Flemish word (there were quite a number of immigrants from Flanders there in the 1500s through the 1700s, many associated with cloth and weaving), and this was then anglicized as "cricket." The mid 1800s saw the secondary meaning develop in England of "the proper way to do things," likely from the notion of "play the game of cricket properly," although this meaning is often put into the negative for something being done unfairly as, "that's not cricket" ("that's not fair or proper").

 

^ Unraveling the shaky history of the word "cricket" is somewhat equivalent to unraveling the shaky history of the game itself, which "may" have come from various similar games that eventually produced the immediate forerunner of the modern game, but to which the name came to be applied. When I say the history of the word "cricket" is "shaky," I really mean the specifics are tough to determine, although the broad history of the word seems clear.  

 

^^ Flemish is the dialect of Dutch spoken in the Flanders part of Belgium. In times long past, Flemish was seen as its own language by some, but in more recent times it has been viewed as a regional dialect of Dutch. I watch numerous language programs, and I have noticed that Belgians from Flanders now often say they speak Dutch, although I'm sure there are some who still say they speak Flemish (Vlaams). Dutch, including the Flemish dialect, and many of the nearby German dialects (that western part of Germany, Luxembourg and Lorraine) all developed from Frankish, the Germanic language (dialect) of the Franks. 

 

^^^ Seemingly in the 1600s and up until the early second half of the 1700s, the ball was rolled along the ground (bowled) and batted with bent/curved sticks like modern hockey sticks, but in the second half of the 1700s the ball was thrown (pitched), leading to the abandonment of the curved stick in favor of a straight bat.