Cooking class

Cooking class!

 

For our language class yesterday we worked with our instructor and each of our moms and had a little food exchange lunch! This was probably my favorite day so far. Tommy, Pharren, and I decided to make them fried chicken, sweet potatoes, and a salad. Little did we know when we picked our menu that we would have to start from scratch with everything, including the chicken! They came walking up with a live chicken in their hands for us to kill, clean, then cook. They ended up doing most of the work on that one because clearly none of us had a clue on what to do. I have a hard enough time taking a frozen chicken breast out of the freezer and cooking it! It was about all I could handle just watching the chicken be killed, its head slowly cut off with a really dull knife while it squawked away, then watching the moms chop it up. If there is one thing I learned it is that people in Mozambique let nothing go to waste! They had a use for literally every last part of that chicken, my mom even took the intestine and braided it all up, it was kind of cool to watch I will admit. After it was cut up, we did the rest of the work and I must say I was both very impressed and surprised at how well our chicken turned out :)

 

The moms showed us how to make my favorite dish thus far, which I can't think of the name right now, but I now know how much work goes into making it! Cooking here, like anything else, is an big process!

 

Step one...lighting the coal stove

 

 

 

 

After a few failed attempts, they turned to a plastic bag to light the charcoal...healthy! Not

 

 

 

 

                                            

Step two...cutting up all the greens and letting them cook in water

 

                                          

 

 

 

Step three...grinding up the peanuts
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to rotate pictures, sorry lol

 

 

 

 

 

Step four...grinding out the coconut and making coco-water out of it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Step five...putting it all together and letting it simmer. This dish is really hard to explain the taste of because I have never really had anything like it. The coconut and peanuts give it a sweat and creamy taste, but it also tastes really fresh because of the greens used. They usually eat it over rice (no meal goes without a big pile of white rice here).

 

Step six...Enjoy!! What I described making is in the bottom left of the plate, then there are the sweet potatoes we made, the salad, and the breaded chicken.

  

 

 

I just had to include a few of the chicken pictures too!