African Cook Book
By: Pauline Ludisi MunyoreAfrica is blessed with some of the finest ingredients in the world all occurring either naturally or by default, organically grown. I say by default because due to poverty, most farmers can not afford modern genetically engineered food and the dangerous chemical-ridden fertilisers. So they have stuck to the readily available manure and land races - local traditional seeds and plant species. This is a blessing considering the enormous price tag that organic foods have in other continents such as Europe.
Although there has been a pull factor by the modern foods and life style, Africans have not reached point where they take their traditional foods for granted. We must hold our breath and hope that we will not succumb to modern social engineering by embracing high calories and fattening food as it is in other parts of the world.
It is refreshing nowadays to see urban and sophisticated people putting traditional leafy vegetables on their shopping trolleys.There was a short time in history when traditional food we momentarily pushed a side, ostensibly because the emerging middle class thought the food was reminiscent of backward and unsophisticated past. Thanks to the researchers and Non-Governmental organisations that have re-energized the re-discovery of traditional foods.
Organisations such as the International Plant Genetic Resource Institute (IPGRI), Kenya Indigenous Resource Institute, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and Kenya Society of Ethnoecology among others, are spearheading the awareness agenda with great success. With the emergence of Agri-biotechnology, the need for clear and easy to understand guidelines is even more earnest.
For more information on traditional foods, medicinal plants and research in underutilized plant species, please go to this sections.
In these pages, we shall try to give you traditional African recipes every month. We hope you will enjoy trying them at home or on your next African Safari Holiday. But if you want more information or a comment to make, then please fill in this Enquiry form and we will try our best to get you answers.
Some advise
Some of the best foods in Africa occur naturally either in disturbed or in pristine ecosystem, so please if you re collecting or foraging (as it has become in a popular past-time adventure in Europe) - know your plant identification and classification properly. Do not just pick wild plants randomly, even those looking similar could be unrelated plant species, some plants are poisonous. For a start, mushrooms must be treated with a lot of caution.
So if you enjoy living off the land, get your basket and head to the shrubbery. We will start a series of innovative recipes soon.
We have featured some useful publications here for your reference.