To finalize such a productive and busy fourth week of stakeholder interviews, workshops, and team meetings, I wanted to do something I knew I’d be experiencing if I were to be in Malawi right now as was planned pre-COVID-19 – eating Malawian cuisine. Yesterday, July 6, was also Malawi Independence Day, and in my family celebrating the 4th of July always involves a homemade barbecue cookout and copious amounts of side dishes, so I wanted to do (slightly somewhat) the same for the 6th. My teammates Ruth and Chikumbutso have talked before about nsima (pronounced see-mah), a maize porridge that is a traditional dish in the country. After finding a simple recipe online, I set forth in my cautious attempt to make nsima. To my surprise there are only three ingredients (well, technically two) in the recipe: boiling water, cold water, and cornmeal. I attempted to follow the instructions as best as I could, but I definitely made some mistakes along the way. For anyone interested in recreating this dish, here are the instructions and things I found helpful when making it:
- Boil 3 cups of water in a saucepan.
- In a bowl, make a paste using part of the cornmeal and all the cold water.
This ended up being about 2/3 of the cornmeal, but I recommend using less since the “paste” I created ended up a little too thick. - Add the paste to the boiling water. Heads up – it may be obvious, but try not to burn yourself during this step.
- Stir with a spoon until the mixture has a thick porridge-like texture.
As someone who does not eat porridge, I continued stirring until all the water was mixed in with the paste I had added. - Cover the saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes.
Warning – while setting the saucepan to simmer, the mixture started bubbling and, in my own words, sounded very angry at me. This settled down once it began to simmer. - Turn the heat to the lowest setting, remove the lid, and gradually add the rest of the cornmeal, stirring constantly. Be prepared to use all of your arm muscles in this step as it gets increasingly difficult to stir in the cornmeal. If the mixture appears solid enough and is the texture you’d like, don’t feel the need to keep adding the dry cornmeal.
- Continue until the mixture thickens to the desired consistency.
Since I have never made this nor eaten this before, I just continued stirring until it became too difficult and my arms were tired. - Cover and cook on lowest heat for another 5 minutes.
This was the final result out of the saucepan! The block of nsima was very malleable and tasted like cornmeal as expected. - Stir before serving and shape as desired.
Again, since I have never eaten this before and don’t know what shape I should desire it to be, I went with small, circular patties.
I enjoyed the flavor and texture of the nsima I made and I’m looking forward to making it again and improving my technique! One thing I realized halfway through was that I was using yellow cornmeal and I think I was supposed to be using white cornmeal, although I’m not quite sure what difference it may make. The recipe and my overall experience making nsima technically ends here, however once my family tried it, they made a few suggestions to turn it into a dessert with a southern twist. We decided to pan fry them in butter (yes, we know this is very American) to crisp the sides and then we plated them with some powdered sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup. The result was absolutely delicious, and while my initial intent was to replicate the traditional dish, I had fun playing around with it in the end and trying something new.
Overall I enjoyed my experience of trying to make nsima, and I can’t wait for the day when I can finally travel to Malawi and try it there for myself! To my colleagues in Malawi (or other parts of the United States), I challenge you to make southern hush puppies, a popular side dish here in Texas that is also made of cornmeal and usually served with fried fish. If you feel like trying out this recipe or nsima, send me an email at lep7@rice.edu with your final product so we can compare!
See you next time,
Lauren
Link to the nsima recipe I used: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/malawian-nsima/