Of all the dishes I wrote in my last post. The one I was most curious about was Ugali. This was because it was made basically with one ingredient: cornmeal and a type of cornmeal that as a Venezuelan born I was very familiar with.
Venezuelan’s staple grain like many Latin American countries is corn. We make many typical dishes using corn: arepas, empanadas and cachapas. Of these the first two are made of cornmeal. We can find it in white and yellow precooked form. The most famous brand and the one used by most Venezuelans is “Harina Pan.” In fact Venezuelans are very proud because the precooked flour was invented by a Venezuelan Engineer in the 1950’s called Dr. Luis Caballero Mejias. Then Empresas Polar developed a commeecial form of it and called it PAN (meaning Producto (de) Alimentación Nacional. Great name… (I always had thought it meant bread! which is pan in Spanish… but even by this association it works as it is Venezuela’s bread!
Long story short, this precooked Maize Flour “Harina Pan” became internationally popular and it is now produced internationally even here in the US. So I bought a bag… (American made).
Ingredients
- 3 cups of Harina Pan or a different brand of cornflour precooked
- 1/4 of teaspoon of salt (or to your taste)
- 5 cups of water
Directions
1. Place the water in a big pot and bring it to boil. Remove about 1 cup and place it aside.
2 Bring heat to medium. Add the 3 cups of flour slowly as you mix it with the water. Use a strong wooden spoon as it will get harder and harder. Use water set aside as needed to soften the dough.
3. Shape the dough into a small mountain. Ugali’s shape can vary, so you can make sort of a pie with it (what I chose), you can place it into bowls to shape it like you would rice (but use a plastic so it does not stickor fluff it up as use it sort of like mashed potatoes.
4. Me: place a bit of water (2 or three spoons) as you are done mixing and cover. Allow it to cook on its own for about 5 minutes. Be careful that it does not burn. Do this too if you are going to place them in bowls as it needs to cook. Add more water to make it softer so it can be reshaped by the bowls.
5. As soon as you see it cohesively formed, remove it from the pot. (Turn it upside down on a plate) and then and turn it around on the plate.
6. Let it cool for a bit. It will firm up as it cools and make it easier to cut in pieces.
To complete my Rwandan meal, I chose the Brochettes. We call them Shish Kebabs here or simply Kebabs. I was very proud because I had never made Kebabs in the oven before! I read that one must soak the skewer before or it could burn… so I soaked them for about 10 minutes.
I set up my Brochettes high on a glass baking dish using foil paper. I made them hang off the bottom of the pan:
You can use any meat of your choice, peppers and onions… and a nice barbecue sauce! Marinate the pieces ahead of time for a nicer flavor.
Place the brochettes in the oven at 400 F. for 15-20 minutes.
It was delicious… and I think I enjoyed deeping the Ugali in the sauce of the brochettes the most!
Biraryoshye! (Delicious in Kinyarwanda)
It was so great using cornflour in a different way! It is also fascinating how crop staples of the Americas have influenced world cuisine! Imagine Italy without tomatoes… Ireland without potatoes… Rwanda without corn!
My Virtual World Trip 