Uganda

I spent a week in Uganda for work, during which the most convenient lunch option was a local food buffet just down the road.

Back row: Stewed beef, Beans, Greens
Middle: Peanut sauce (or groundnut sauce, as they would say there)
Front: Taro, Ugali, Matooke
Not pictured: Rice (it's covered up by all the stuff on top)

So what are these exotic blobs of ugali and matooke, you ask?

Ugali is made from finely ground maize meal. Think polenta with all the branding savvy that Africa has to offer. It's the staple food across much of Africa, going by names like nsima in Zambia and Malawi or fufu in West Africa. I've also had it made with cassava flour and still called ugali (in Rwanda). Honestly, it's not particularly appealing -- it tends to be very bland, but it fills an otherwise undernourished stomach well.

Matooke, while not a whole lot more interesting to the palate, is a lot more interesting culturally. It's essentially mashed up bananas or plantains -- they're somewhere in between what we find on our grocery store produce departments, slightly sweet by still ultimately just a big glob of starch -- and really only eaten in Uganda. Bananas are the traditional staple food of Uganda, which I think is unique in the world. Rwanda and Burundi are also heavily dependent on bananas, but neither are identified with them as wholeheartedly as Uganda is.

Both ugali and matooke are normally eaten by hand -- you pull off a little (or not so little) piece of it and flatten it out a bit to pick up a chunk of something or make a little scoop to gather up some sauce.

Overall this was alright, pretty good by African standards.