Mozambican food

You are probably amazed that I've managed to write 2 whole posts without mentioning food, and also with so many photos too! However, I absolutely fell in love with Mozambican food, both in the village and in the city.

The food in the rural areas was very similar to the food I've had before in its neighbouring Tanzania and also in Kenya. The focus is on bulk and carbohydrates, with the aforementioned xima, as well as rice, yams and potatoes, accompanied by a small amount of saucey vegetables and beans. Our favourite was 'kor-fu' (not a Greek island), some kind of kale cooked in coconut milk. Perhaps the best food we had was on the build site, cooked by the wonderful wonderful Maria. She did absolute wonders with the food, made even more amazing by the fact that she did it all on open wood-fires. Here is the making of xima (the white stuff being stirred):

Everything is done on the floor, the ladies all have just amazingly strong backs. They also appear to have asbestos hands, not a tea-towel or oven glove in site to lift the lids of pans! And here is Maria herself - one of the most cheerful people I've ever met:

We stayed in accommodating provided by a Spanish Mission called Casa de Gaito in the nearby village of Massaca. It was very basic, with no hot water, frequently no running water, but we were fed very well by the Mission's cook Emilia. She did a mixture of traditional cooking for us, such as rice with cabbage:

She also tried her hand at making us some Westernised food. I guess it was to appease previous teams who were less keen to try the local food, but in general these were less successful! Here's a pasta bake, topped with plastic Kraft cheese slices!:

Outside of building, we had 2 days of rest and relaxation in and around Maputo. Our trip to the beach on the Macaneta Peninsula was hilarious. Everyday we were in Mozambique, it was 25-30C, bright sunshine, but of course the day we go to the beach was also the day we had storms and pouring rain. We did brave it on the beach for about 20 minutes before huddling back inside, but at least the food made up for it. The seafood here was wonderful, here is the grilled red snapper:

And it was also the first time I ate the very famous Mozambican prawn. These were enormous, and sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. Very juicy, and very much benefited from being barbequed. The rest of the team (composed of a real vegetarian and 2 fake ones) were a bit disturbed watching me suck out their heads:

The restaurant scene in Maputo itself is extremely cosmopolitan, and you can more or less eat whatever you want here, from Indian to Thai food. However, I decided to try something more traditional, this time a prego, which was basically a Portuguese steak sandwich. Leonie the real vegetarian was very brave to try this, given that it was quite rare in the middle:

Maputo also hosts the famous fish market, and it was an experience in itself going there and buying the fish! Thankfully we had our taxi driver Franco to help us, but the whole confusing process involves buying the fish from one guy, getting another guy to clean/gut it, then getting another guy to cook it for you. Unfortunately if you are a tourist, they really hassle you and you feel like you're being swindled the entire time, but the seafood was extremely fresh, and extremely cheap! We had 1.5kg of prawns for 450MT, which is about £12, and a guy will clean/gut your fish for you for 20MT/50p! The best thing we ate here though was the crab - again ridiculously cheap at around 40MT/£1 each, I wished we'd bought more: