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We had one of the best starters of our entire highway journey in Heaven. We had arrived in Kigali, delirious with pleasure and exhaustion some 5,500km and 25 days after leaving dwelling.
“The place’s a very good place to eat?” we requested on the lodge the place we had been staying. “I’ll e book you straight into Heaven,” smiled the reception desk clerk.
Heaven was a spacious thatched restaurant in jungle-style gardens in a complicated suburb in Kigali, across the nook from Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s presidential palace. And Heaven served cocktails. I had the Urwagwa Bitter, thanks, a mixture of vodka, native banana (urwagwa) wine, do-it-yourself lemongrass syrup and freshly pressed citrus. I additionally tried the banana wine individually and it was unusually good.
These deliciously crispy native lake sardines had been served with tree tomato sauce and a spicy chilli mayo, at Heaven in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
The memorable starter was Lake Kivu Sambaza, native lake sardines, marinated in lemongrass and ginger, and deep fried with tamarind sauce. Crisp and salty, they had been served with a tree tomato dip – made out of the tamarillo fruit which is broadly obtainable and far utilized in Rwanda – and a chilli mayo dip, a elegant mixture of flavours. I’ll always remember these salty little sardines.
That’s the factor about meals journey, isn’t it? Culinary reminiscence. Highway journey style snapshots.
There have been many. The toasted marula nut snacks at Planet Baobab, a camp on the sting of the Makgadikgadi Pans in Botswana. Baobab bushes and countless white salt plans.
We purchased the primary of the spicy potato samoosas at a roadside stall in Simbawunga in Tanzania after we’d crossed the border from Zambia. Every thing was totally different, the individuals, the structure, individuals spoke solely Swahili.
Consuming native meals is without doubt one of the joys of taking an epic African highway journey. This was in Malawi. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
The tuna pasta Hugh made in Livingstonia in Malawi, excessive up within the mountains overlooking Lake Malawi; the primary slug of Zimbabwe’s very high-quality Gold Mix Black whisky on a cold evening within the jap highlands of Nyanga.
A easy scrumptious tuna pasta with capers and a chilly Kilimanjaro beer in Malawi. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
A most memorable meal in a unprecedented setting was when Hugh celebrated visiting his hundredth nation whereas in Burundi. We’d had a creepy border crossing from Tanzania (grumpy border guards and a tedious automobile search) and a tough day’s driving via densely populated villages, with horrible roads. After which there we had been on the evocative-sounding Tanganyika Blue Bay Resort, gazing out over the second-biggest lake on the earth.
This scrumptious agency white fish we loved in Burundi is known as mukeke and is endemic to Lake Tanganyika. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
I ate, for the primary time, the endemic fish of Lake Tanganyika, which is known as mukeke in Burundi and DRC, migebuka in Tanzania, the place it’s dubbed essentially the most scrumptious fish of Kigoma, the northernmost lake city, and bukabuka in Zambia. In English, it’s generally known as lates perch or glossy late. It’s a agency white fish and was completely grilled and skewered, served with African veg and chips, and lake views.
Hugh additionally celebrated with a Primus beer, the native Burundi beer, which I’d by no means heard about however surprisingly most beer-loving pals had. He’d already tried St Louis from Botswana, Windhoek from Namibia, Zambezi from Zimbabwe, Mosi Oa Tunya from Zambia, Kilimanjaro from Tanzania, and was nonetheless going to have a Virunga in Rwanda, a Carlsberg in Malawi and a 2M in Mozambique at sundown on the Tete River.
Sundowners with our sponsored Clemengold gin on the Zambezi River on the Caprivi Strip in Namibia. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
We had been additionally fortunate sufficient to be partially sponsored by ClemenGold gin, which supplied nice aid from dusty roads and plenty of Instagrammable sundowner moments. Even, ahem, if the bottle needed to be stuffed with water, just a few weeks into the journey.
A ten,000km highway journey just isn’t an countless Pan-African high-quality eating expertise, nevertheless. The distances between locations are lengthy; you usually don’t know what’s obtainable forward, and meals will be severely costly in touristy locations.
Our fundamental culinary technique was to eat on a finances on the locations we stayed at and visited, to do as a lot of our personal cooking as doable, and to style and purchase native stuff as we went alongside.
Generally we had been so so drained all we may eat for dinner was a samoosa with a whisky. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
To my nice benefit, Hugh is a foodie and winner of Come Dine with Me (November 2021) and he produced, with a flourish, fabulous meals within the remotest of campsites. He made superb spicy rooster with coconut milk at Kundalila Falls Campsite in central province Zambia, the place we had the entire waterfall and campsite to ourselves.
But additionally, sure, 40 days is a really very long time for which to plan menus, and there have been nights once we had samoosas and whisky for supper, and mornings once we needed to cease on the aspect of the highway and warmth leftovers as a result of we had been getting road-trip hangry (hungry and offended).
Soya mince is an asset to a tenting meal if it’s performed correctly. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
The key to self-catering on a highway journey is to have good gear and a crate of fundamentals. Hugh being Hugh naturally had La Creuset pots, a Japanese kettle, a two-plate gasoline range, a battery-operated espresso grinder, a plug-in automobile fridge and two plastic crates with a formidable number of spices and seasonings, tinned stuff like chickpeas, entire peeled tomatoes and beans, in addition to dried items like beans, rice and soya mince.
There have been instances on our highway journey we needed to pull over and warmth up the leftovers, like Hugh Fraser right here. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
A revelation for me on this highway journey was soya mince and the way scrumptious it may be in the event you do it proper. One other nice revelation was how requirements will slip.
She who used to show up her nostril at something aside from high-end sauv blanc discovered herself fortunately quaffing field wine on the shores of Lake Malawi. We additionally ultimately stopped shopping for milk as a result of even within the automobile fridge, the bumpy roads churned it to butter. Ice grew to become a luxurious in some elements.
Hugh shopping for tomatoes on the roadside in Malawi. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
Our greatest impromptu roadside meal was in Sitalike village in Tanzania. We’d pushed the entire morning on dust roads via Katavi Nationwide Park by which we noticed nothing however a handful of zebras and the occasional kamikaze bus hurtling in direction of us at breakneck velocity. We reached our vacation spot and abruptly, urgently, wanted a chilly beer and a highway journey carbo-load, native type.
A much-loved Pan African meal is chipsi mayai, which is French fries in an omelette. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
We sat underneath umbrellas at a road café with Kilimanjaro beer and ate Chipsi Mayai, a much-loved Pan-African dish. Chipsi is the Swahili phrase for French fries, or chips, and mayai means eggs in Swahili. It’s mainly a extremely indulgent French fry omelette, freshly cooked on a small gasoline ring and served with a tomato sauce and a chilli sauce, each straight from the plastic bottle.
The Indian affect is powerful throughout southern Africa, significantly in Tanzania, and the nicest Indian meal we had was at Aslaam Tandoori, a road café on a pavement in Mbeya, southern Tanzania. The rooster is marinated in a mixture of garlic, cumin, ginger, coriander and garam masala, then rubbed with lemon and cooked over the coals proper there.
This fiery tandoori rooster was loved at a road restaurant in Mbeya in Tanzania. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
The intense fiery color, the chef mentioned, was from good high quality Kashmiri purple chilli powder, which provides an intense purple color however is gentle on spice. We’d had an excruciating journey to Mbeya on dust roads and needed to substitute two tyres. Then the highway journey gods smiled upon us and we sat within the heat night air ingesting purple wine and speaking SADC politics.
The most effective worst meal with one of the best worst décor was the unbelievably scrawny rooster we had on the Gombe Nationwide Park chimp station in Tanzania, with chips and salad. We got here in quest of the chimps – and located them – and we stayed on the analysis station which was a fundamental spot the place the meal was cooked outdoors underneath the tree. Hugh dubbed it the Carl Lewis rooster, all legs and tiny physique, after the US subject and observe athlete.
Road sellers in Malawi promote dry noodles; the rooster wasn’t on the market. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
Tea and low had been a pleasure all through our whole journey. Tanganda Tea from Zimbabwe was my all-time favorite, and the Rwanda Robust Mountain Tea was additionally wonderful. In each Burundi and Rwanda, African tea is a milk tea spiced with ginger and chai, a superb breakfast tea.
The espresso in Rwanda was excellent. Espresso is grown by practically half one million small-scale farmers there, most of whom produce a bean known as Bourbon, which is a revered Arabica selection.
This Tanzanian Peaberry espresso is a uncommon African espresso varietal grown in southwestern Tanzania. (Photograph: Bridget Hilton-Barber)
A scrumptious shock was the Tanzanian Peaberry espresso, a uncommon African espresso varietal grown within the Mbeya area of southwestern Tanzania. These splendidly easy and full-bodied Tanzania Peaberry espresso beans are evenly roasted and wealthy in flavour, with a touch of darkish fruits.
There are those that journey in hermetically sealed autos and mindsets, stopping solely to eat and drink that which is acquainted. We weren’t these individuals.
What a pleasure to have the ability to strive a brand new flavour, tear into an area stew, or settle for the supply of one thing we’d by no means tasted earlier than.
Because the late American chef Anthony Bourdain mentioned: “Meals is the whole lot we’re. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your private historical past, your province, your area, your tribe, your grandma.”
And that’s well worth the tasting. DM
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