Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« When Your Brother Is the World's Mo… | The Morning Wood »

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Chow My Cousin Is Blowing Up in Zimbabwe

Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 7:49 AM

See, she is in the government-owned newspaper The Herald....

Her name is Shamiso Okafor. Her father is my mother's brother. She was born in Moscow, Idaho, where her father studied mining engineering. She currently lives in Seattle and works at Starbucks. She loves cooking and was on Masterchef a year ago. Zimbabwe is only now learning about the whole thing.

GORDON Ramsay called her ‘Sadza Nehuku Nemuriwo’ dish “authentic” and told her she had her “heart on a plate” – yet Shami Marangwanda was left slightly deflated after failing the audition on the American TV show, Masterchef.

But the 31-year-old, who lives in Kirkland, Seattle, should be proud of taking a quintessential Zimbabwean dish to a worldwide audience.

Readers of my review of Afrikando Banadir know my opinion of this "Zimbabwean dish" is far from high:

One of the many unfortunate consequences of Britain's colonization of Zimbabwe, a southern African country that was called Rhodesia until 1980, is culinary. What is it that the British have in common with Zimbabweans? Both cultures are extremely poor when it comes down to the matter of cooking. And so, when the British entered the area that would become Zimbabwe, they brought their bad dishes to a place that already had lots of bad dishes. It was a void encountering a void. The result? Zimbabweans are stuck with one major dish: sadza with stewed meat and vegetables. (Sadza is a thick, flavorless, lumpy, sticky substance that's not only a staple, but something like the soul of the men and women of that landlocked country.)

My cousin was courageous to challenge any cook with sadza.

FacebookShare

Comments (5) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Yay Shami!

Posted by RatGirl on March 6, 2013 at 10:56 AM

I remember her appearance on Masterchef.

She should try again next year.

Posted by Patricia Kayden on March 6, 2013 at 12:27 PM

It must have been a STUNNING dish.

Posted by Actionsquid on March 6, 2013 at 12:34 PM

I spent a couple months in the hills outside of Mutare building a medical center back in '97 as part of a youth program. Sadza was the perfect staple to eat three times a day while doing a lot of physical work. Yes, it is boring, but staple foods must be boring to be effective staples. Complex flavors are wonderful when you have great variety available, but the phenomenon of "sensory-specific satiety" causes the brain to be overloaded by too much stimuli and reduce desire for that food. If you must eat only one food consistently, it is best if that food is bland and wholesome. Sadza is the food of scarcity and limited options, not the product of British culinary influence.

Posted by facet on March 6, 2013 at 1:01 PM

So, it's basically white corn polenta?

Posted by ignatz ratzkywatzky on March 6, 2013 at 1:53 PM