I enjoy cooking and have worked as a professional cook in the military, in restaurants, and as an amateur at home. Cooking in a bush kitchen is a whole 'nother experience.
When you join the Peace Corps and you get sent to your country of assignment, you start off with sometime in a training village getting the cultural immersion experience. I live with a host family eating meals with them, going to church with them, and generally learning all I can about daily living from them. The nerve center of any home, to me at least, is the kitchen.
At home I have a kitchen that I've set up as I like it. It's easy for me to prepare complex or simple meals in a reasonable amount of time without too much effort. I have knives that I like, tools that I need, running water, and it's easy to clean as you go. In someone else's kitchen it's a little more challenging because of lack of intimate knowledge of where everything is, the quirks of the oven, and a general sense of wanting to tread lightly in someone else's space. In a bush kitchen, everything is more time consuming, takes more thought and preparation, and simple tasks become complex. So a complex task becomes crazy.
My host family's bush kitchen is a double sink with no running water or pipes. A wood fire for your stove and no oven. A large wooden work table. And everything from plates to silverware to spices (all three of them 😋) are just out because there are no cabinets. The floor is packed dirt. And the chickens, dog, and cat regularly come in looking for scraps.
So for me, cooking in this environment takes me allot longer to accomplish any task than it normally would. My first attempt to make dinner for everyone was fried rice. It went over well and wasn't too hard for me to do. Well, it's fried rice. Kind of the definition of simplicity. Bolstered by this experience, eight weeks of observing my family cooking, and my own confidence in my cooking skills I attempted turnovers next. Oi vey what was I thinking??
I was thinking it wouldn't be that hard, especially since I was inspired by the recent cooking experience at a fellow volunteers house during my walk about week where we all made samosas / empanadas / turnovers which came out super yummy.
My turnovers tonight took hours to make. And they weren't that good. And they got kind of burnt.
But my family is super nice, said thank you for making dinner, and said the turnovers were great. And fortunately host Poppa went fishing today. So there was plenty of fresh fish to go with the turnovers.
One thing that sticks out to me and is the silver lining to me is that I introduced a different kind of dough to my host mom. She was surprised that this was something you can do with flour. She was really intrigued by the taste of the turnovers which she said was like biscuits (cookies). Normally the family will make flour laplap which is a water and flour batter fried in oil. Or a simple bread. So at least I introduced something new that she and the girls found to be interesting.
Also I used an avocado to make a simple guacamole, sorry no cilantro. Host momma really liked it and was like "Hey! Why didn't you show us this when the avocado tree was in season?" There's an avocado tree in the yard that when I arrived was in season and we were eating avocado every day, a couple of times a day. But that's over until next year. I didn't say anything at the time it was in season because I don't want to be overbearing and instead just observe in the first month of being in the training village.
Later I talked with the other volunteer on how she made her samosas and figured out where I went wrong. I got my oil and water ratios backwards. Instead if a small amount of oil and then mostly water until you get a good dough consistency I put in mostly oil. My mistake and why it took so long for the dough to get made and why it didn't taste as good as I would have liked at the end.
My third attempt to cook dinner was an assignment as apart of our training. I used a recipe from one of our handouts, Helti Bred or Healthy Bread. The recipe makes single serving rolls stuffed with aelan kabig (island cabbage). I used tin meat (corned beef) with lightly sauteed carrots and green beans. Again it took way longer to make than normal, and cooking the bread in the saucepan took some practice. By the third batch we had it down, because by now it was a group activity with the whole family with my host Poppa being the most interested. You have to be sure to oil each roll all the way around. That's the key. In the end we had really yummy stuffed bread that I could see myself making for a carry
My third attempt to cook dinner was an assignment as apart of our training. I used a recipe from one of our handouts, Helti Bred or Healthy Bread. The recipe makes single serving rolls stuffed with aelan kabig (island cabbage). I used tin meat (corned beef) with lightly sauteed carrots and green beans. Again it took way longer to make than normal, and cooking the bread in the saucepan took some practice. By the third batch we had it down, because by now it was a group activity with the whole family with my host Poppa being the most interested. You have to be sure to oil each roll all the way around. That's the key. In the end we had really yummy stuffed bread that I could see myself making for a carry with me lunch the next day.
with me lunch the next day. with me lunch the next day.
Cooking with the family in their bush kitchen is a good experience for me before I go to site. I'm gonna have to figure out all of these quirks and if I don't, well, there's no restaurant to go to if I screw up dinner. I will have a host family who would be happy to feed me. And I know of one volunteer who contributes financially and had his mom make almost all of his meals. But for me, I want to cook. It's my happy place. (Literally. When I would sleepwalk as a kid I would end up in the kitchen 😉) I am planning on getting a propane burner which will make things easier. But there will be times when I will have to cook on the fire. So fingers crossed I acquire a new skill!
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