Roots
Loving nshima
By Marifi Jara
QUELIMANE, Mozambique – The first time I tasted nshima was in Baguio City several years ago, during a lunch party at the house of a friend married to a British who, like some of his other foreign colleagues in a tobacco firm, either grew up or had lived within Africa. Somebody brought some maize flour back from a recent trip to Africa and so there it was, served alongside potato and vegetable salad, pasta dish, grilled meat and seafood, and of course, rice.
It wasn’t a love at first taste for me.
I found nshima very bland and the texture was unappealing – like a tasteless hard mashed potato is how I would best describe it.
Living here, where nshima, like in several other African countries, is the staple has not exactly swayed my tastebuds to it. BUT, I have found ways to actually enjoy this corn-based food which is akin to rice for us Filipinos (Jamie Baldwin, in a 2004 piece on the BBC, puts it wittily: “Starve a Zambian of nshima for more than 12 hours and they break out into cold sweats and delusions”-bbc.co.uk/nottingham/features/2004/03/our_man_in_zambia_08.shtml)
Traditionally, nshima is made by pounding dried corn kernels into powder in a large mortar and pestle (I bought one of those — for less than US$5 — and using it as a decorative plant box inside the house, which gave our housekeeper a bit of a shock as she was initially excited thinking that we would be making homemade nshima!) . The corn flour can now be bought in shops but on road trips here in Mozambique as well as in the neighboring countries of Malawi and Zambia, I have seen many rural households still make it the old way.
The corn flour is then cooked in boiled water, stirring constantly with a wooden paddle. The flour-to-water ratio depends on how the nshima is preferred, either mushy or a bit more solid. The consistency also differs between countries. I’m not sure about other countries, but here salt is added into the mixture.
I like it on the soft side, about the same consistency as a mashed potato, but that would be too soft for the traditional way of eating nshima which is rolling it into balls with the hands then dipping it in a side dish.
Nshima goes really well with a thick tomato sauce-based stew — or to Filipinize it, with an ulam (viand) or sira in Pangasinense. Now think kaldereta, mechado or menudo served on top of soft nshima. It can also be nice with a curry dish (but I personally still prefer eating a curried sira with rice or unleavened bread).
I have also successfully experimented that thro-wing in some coconut milk powder into the nshima pot gives it a bit more kick.
From an economic perspective, nshima is an inexpensive food item, much cheaper than rice. Here, for example, a kilo of maize flour costs about US$1, and that can heartily fill at least 12 adults for one meal. As most food items here are relatively more expensive than in the Philippines, I think it would be safe to assume that nshima can be produced and sold even cheaper there.
And now that there’s a move, through the initiative of the Abono partylist and the provincial government, in Pangasinan to further increase corn production and promote it as an alternative staple to rice, introducing nshima to the Filipino cuisine would be a good idea. I’m sure it is something that we can learn to love.
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