I am known amongst those closest to me to be a woman who loves to cook but also an extremely picky eater. It is these two things that led to this challenge.
With the help of my sister, I will cook every single one of the recipes from Allegra McEvedy's 'Around the World in 120 Recipes', aiming to do three recipes a week. Why this specific book you ask? Well, it's simple - we wanted adventurous and varying recipes and this book gets great reviews!!
Follow this blog and you will see how my tastes progress as I experiment and how we inspire our weekly menu. We're cooking each dish for a family of three adults and a toddler. Obviously some of the recipes won't necessarily be suitable for the toddler but we'll try and vary as many of them as possible so that she can enjoy the experiment too!
The whole household is looking forward to this challenge because, like many others, we have dug ourselves into a little bit of a food rut. With three working adults, all with their own favourite dishes, it becomes more and more difficult to come up with new and inventive dinners that aren't too time consuming to make.

So, challenge accepted! Lets see how this goes!

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Mpunga Wosakaniza Ndi Nsinjiro (Malawi)


What? You mean you have no idea what this is? Oh, you're not from Malawi! ok well now I understand. 

Well, in English, this is called chicken and peanut rice. There are however plenty of other ingredients.  The main fear for me being the chilli and the corriander, neither of which I'm a fan of. 

The recipe itself is quite simple, it's basically a risotto with a Malawian twist - the result of which is quite delicious. It's actually very fast to make too.  It's the kind of recipe that would only take one or two run throughs before you're making it in a flash without needing the book in front of you. 

It's basically chopping, frying, stirring, and boiling for about 20 minutes. Nothing overly complicated. 

 Although there are a lot of ingredients (in fact the list looks a little daunting at first), most of them don't need to be chopped and theycook through very quickly so it's a very fast meal to make.


 The recipe made such a vast amount and the chilli content was so low that I could barely taste it which is perfect for me. There were quite a few spices in it too. 

 The challenge of making this in Germany is that it includes a spice called Sumac - which I'd never heard of and seemed like it might be a challenge to find here.  Luckily for me however, I didn't even have to look since a good friend of mine with impecable timing had recently returned from a trip to Turkey and happened to have brought plenty of Sumac back with her. 

There was one other small issue associated with making this from Germany - it's very salty! Mainly because the bacon, chicken stock, and peanuts all include vast amounts of salt. One suggestion Dave had for fixing the salt content was to exchange the peanuts for almonds so we'll give that a shot next time.

This is something we're going to have to work on though because it was very tasty and uncomplicated.  It would be a great dish to whip up while Soph's putting the baby down for the night and have plenty of left overs for lunches during the week. 

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2 comments:

  1. Unknown9 June 2014 at 13:12

    They sell Sumak at Turkish groceries! Also unsalted peanuts at the Asian shop ;-)

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  2. Unknown9 June 2014 at 23:23

    Thanks for the tips Emily. Luckily when I mentioned to my friend that we needed Sumac she told me she had some so I didn't need to hunt it down. As far as the peanuts go, we honestly assumed they would sell unsalted in the supermarkets but unfortunately not. We'll definitely pop to the asian store next time we make it though. Thanks again.

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