Cooking with Rosie & Arnoldi

Rosie's son Arnoldi

Rosie is the head chef at the hotel where we are staying.  On her day off, she occasionally brings guests home with her to do some traditional cooking.  We decided this sounded perfect.

Dina & Rosie

Exiting out the back gate of the hotel, we walked to her house through the neighborhood near the hotel.  She lives in one room house with a curtain separating a small living room from her bed.  She was proud of her home and it did appear in better condition than many of those we walked past to get there.  She and her son, Arnoldi, welcomed us.  Before cooking could commence, they dressed us for action, or at least appropriately for Tanzanian cooking.

We made 6 dishes in 3 hours over open flame in the small concrete area outside her front door.  The “stoves” were 1 charcoal and 2 kerosene. 

Dina & Arnoldi shelling peas

We began our time by shelling peas.  We were not terribly fast and Arnoldi stepped in to help speed us up.  While we worked on the peas, Rosie cut up beef for the stew.  Like everything she chopped that day, the chopping was done while holding the beef in hand and lopping off chunks. 

 

Our next two tasks were dealing with the coconuts and green bananas.  Rosie used a cleaver to break apart the two coconuts and then had Dina and I take turns sitting on a small stool with a serrated blade sticking out.  We were asked to rub the inside of the coconut on this blade until all the white had been removed as shavings fell in the bowl below.  This was fun, but, again, we were not terribly good at it.  Each of us, thinking we were done, would hold up our coconut to have Rosie tell us, “More.”

The skins of the green bananas (known as cooking bananas) seemed to be attached more firmly than bananas at home according to Dina.  She had the task of helping Rosie peel a stack of green bananas. 

 

Rosie creating perfectly consistent slices of onion for the peas.

Our next task was cleaning and de-stemming what looked like collard greens.  This may be the one task that we were able to complete ably.  From here, Rosie gathered the leaves tightly and began to shave off small slices.  It looked easy enough.  Adrienne then got to try.  It was so damn hard.  Even after Rosie corrected the manner in which Adrienne held the knife, she struggled.  The experiment was over as soon as Adrienne sliced her own finger (if you had been watching her technique, this was bound to happen).  Arnoldi gathered a bandaid or “plaster” and after a bit of laughter, the finger was fixed.  Our final cooking task was to help stir the ugali, maize porridge.  Let’s just say that Rosie is very strong and we are very wimpy.  She briskly stirred the stiff mix and we could barely move the large cooking spoon (more laughter ensued).

Dishes

Beef, green bananas, coconut stew

• Coconut milk – Take the coconut shavings, add a bit of hot water, stir around and then strain out the shavings and squeeze them.  Four coconuts yielded nearly a liter of coconut milk.
• Fresh peas with carrot, onion, green pepper, coconut milk
• Beef, green banana, coconut milk stew with onion, tomato, & green pepper
• Ugali – maize or cornmeal porridge (literally water and maize flour)
• Rice with carrots, green pepper, and a bit of coconut milk
• Fish – stir fried over onion, carrot, tomato, green pepper, and then simmered in coconut milk
• Tanzanian collard greens – greens with a bit of red onion, salt, and then reduced in coconut milk

NOTE: LARGE helpings of salt and oil were added to everything!

All food was placed in insulated containers and carried to the hotel where we sat down to eat our partially self-prepared lunch.

The best part of cooking at Rosie’s was that we got a small glimpse of community life.  Her sister was in the courtyard area doing laundry (all three hours we were there she was bent over washing).  Other women from the village would peak around the corner and laugh at us.  We were definitely part of the afternoon entertainment.  Her one-year old niece, Sabrina, had to be fed (it was 12:30 and little Sabrina still hadn’t eaten that day) and was alternately cared for inside the house for by Rosie, her son, or her sister.  When extra items such as stools were needed, she walked off to gather them from neighbors (or asked Arnoldi to go get them).