Ajuangs Kitchen

Stir fry calls for colorful vegetables and meat, playing around with different colored pepper gives it a good presentation. The vegetables i choose for my stir fry were red onions, green pepper and carrots. My secret to stir fry is mixing the soy sauce with honey and corn starch because it thickens the stew and tastes better. Once you throw in your vegetables and a mixture of your sauces and spices you have to be careful to stir it because the corn starch and the honey will make the sauce really stick to the pan if left unstirred. To make the egg fried rice i emptied the pan of the chicken and re-used the pan without cleaning it, i added vegetable oil and finely chopped onions. I then added rice (cooked) to the onions and mixed it. I pushed the rice to one side and added eggs to the empty side of the pan, I let the eggs cook until they were almost ready then mixed the rice and the eggs together.

I don't know why "they" named it banana bread because the recipe is similar to baking cake without milk. This is my go to recipe when i have more bananas than i can't eat coz they are too ripe and trying not to waste them. You pound the banana's in a mixing bowl, add melted butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and baking powder. After the mixture is stirred add the flour in two portions, stirring after each addition. I decided to add coconut shaving because i have so much of it laying around and banana and coconut felt like a good combination to me. I added an equivalent of half the amount of flour to the mixture. The result was pure genius, absolutely melts in your mouth, and the combination of flavors are meant to be. The thing to remember when using banana's in any baking recipe is to reduce the amount of sugar you use because the banana's themselves have a lot of natural sugar.

This simple recipe is done by first boiling the carrots till tender. Once the water is drained add orange juice, butter and sugar and let simmer for a few minutes, the result is orange-caramelized carrots.

This recipe is inspired by my favorite Chinese restaurant in Nairobi, they usually serve cucumbers and carrots soaked in sugar water as appetizers and each time i always eat my share and most of everyone else. Soak the carrots and the cucumber in sugar water for a few hours; then drain and add green pepper, onions and croutons to the salad and toss. To prepare the onions, soak them in a mixture of vinegar, oil, sugar, salt and grated ginger, feel free to sprinkle some of this mixture to your salad. To prepare the croutons, microwave a slice of whole wheat bread till dry then cut off the edges and cut the dry bread into small square shapes. The resulting salad is amazing.

Matoke (Green Bananas) is a staple food in Uganda and Rwanda. For my west African friends, it is a lot like plantain. I've seen it cooked in many ways, the bananas can be steamed whole, or mushed. Some Matoke recipe's call for cassava and Irish potatoes. This recipe contains green bananas and Irish potatoes. I use a 1:1 mixture because i love potatoes. The potatoes are first boiled for about 8 minutes, then the green banana's are added and the mixture boiled until soft, the water is then drained. I like to add coconut milk to the mixture then mush it. For this particular recipe i was out of coconut milk, so i boiled a mixture of coconut shavings and whole milk then added that to my Matoke and mushed it. You could sieve the coconut shavings off before adding milk, but adding the shavings gives it a different texture.

Its been said that avocado is good for curbing the appetite so this is a perfect dish to make for snaking. It is also a good dish to serve with tortilla chips as an appetizer when hosting friends. It is a must have for me when i make quesadilla's. You simple mix together avocado's, lemon juice, garlic, cayenne pepper, salt, tomatoes, cilantro and onions. To maintain the green avocado color remove the seed and the pulp from the tomatoes before you use, i just throw the whole tomato in there.

I love experimenting with pancakes, this one is pretty tasty. I use coconut shavings in equal proportion to the flour. There some recipe's call for coconut milk but i just use regular milk.

This is a recipe that's very easy to make and tastes really good. First you split a boneless skinless chicken breast into half and then pound it. You then dip it in a mixture of egg and water, followed by a mixture of bread crumbs, salt and grated Parmesan cheese, then fry under medium heat with a tablespoon of vegetable oil, cooking each side for about ten minutes. The result is some very creamy tasting chicken. Masala fries are a good way to jazz up your french fries. In a skillet, fry one chopped onion, add a mixture of water, cumin, coriander, curry, paper, salt and ketchup. Once the mixture comes to a boil add the cooked french fries. When making masala fries there is no wrong recipe, you could add garlic, green pepper, tomatoes, cilantro and use a combination of the spices you love.

This was my favorite meal growing up, i loved eggs so this was such a treat for me. This meal i've been told, is the common Kenyan bachelors meal. Ugali for all who are not familiar with it is a mixture of corn flour and water cooked under medium heat. Its a lot similar to the west African fufu. There are a lot of myths i've heard over the years regarding the do's and dont's of making a fully cooked ugali; the one that both my mother and my brother swear by is that if more than one person cooks the ugali then the ugali will be "raw"; there is no explanation behind this myth and i have not experimented to see if its true. What I've learned about cooking ugali however, is that the heat plays an very important role, if too hot then the ugali will burn and not cook on the inside, if too low then the ugali will not get fully cooked either. I recently learned that if the flour has been sitting in your pantry too long then your ugali will have a bitter taste to it. I call this mix of vegetables greens because i love to mix three green vegetables; Sukuma wiki(Kale), Spinach and Cilantro together. I first fry up some onions with a little oil, then add the mixture of vegetables beginning with the sukuma and spinach then once they have cooked a little i add cilantro. My perfect method for making eggs for this particular meal is to place some oil in a pan, add tomatoes and cover the pan with a lid and cook under medium to low heat. The result is that the tomatoes form a wet paste, i then add the eggs and cover until the egg is ready. I however still cannot get the eggs to taste as great as my grandmother's.

Every once in a while i get a cinnamon craving, this recipe more than satisfies that craving. The original recipe is adapted from allrecipes.com. I recommend reducing the sugar by almost half because the end result with the current measurements is overwhelmingly sweet. I also added vanilla to the recipe. The cookies require lots of space to spread out so i would not put them too close together on the baking tin other wise you'll end up cutting them apart like i do most of the time.

Growing up the smell of pilau only meant one thing, visitors were coming. This meal is served in almost every Kenyan wedding and many other special occasion. For my West African friends, pilau is very similar to jollof rice. There many different ways to make pilau and over the years the ingredients in my pilau recipe have been influenced by different friends. For this pilau i used beef, rice, pilau masala, galic, onions, coconut shavings, tomato paste and salt to taste.
I love to use bones when making pilau, reason being i prefer to save most of the meat for the stew so using bones still gives the rice that rich beef flavor without crowding my rice with meat. The process from start to finish takes about 2 hrs including the preparation, this is mainly because once the pilau comes to a boil i like to put the heat on low, cover it and let it cook slowly. The other option is to let most of the water boil out then place it in the oven, both methods require time. The hardest skill to master when making pilau is how much masala to use, too little and you don't fully get the taste, too much and it tastes a hot mess. What has worked for me is one huge teaspoon of masala per cup of rice.
My recipe for beef stew varies with whatever is in my refrigerator and whatever vegetable's I'm craving at the time. For this recipe i choose to use carrots, green pepper, onions, tomatoes and to spice it up i used cayenne pepper, curry and corn starch to thicken the stew. If to be served with plain rice i usually add garlic and tomato paste but because the rice already had both i opted out of it. Other vegetables I regularly use on my beef stew include celery, potatoes and peas. I recently tasted beef stew that had sweet corn in it and it was pure genius. I will have to adopt that in the near future.

Given that it's a new year and I have to keep with the eating healthy resolution for a while, today i decided to try out what i call the Mango-Curry Beef Salad and Mango Madness non-dairy smoothie to go with it. I'm a recent salad convert, i never thought you can have a salad and call it a meal until i went on a no-carb diet few weeks ago, and now I'm a salad junkie! The Mango-Curry beef salad is an adaptation from the Mango-Curry Chicken salad recipe i saw on allrecipes.com. This is by far the most delicious salad i have ever tasted but then again i haven't tasted that many. I substituted the chicken for beef and the cranberries and walnuts for raisins. To prepare the fillet(beef) i tenderized meat, then add water, cumin, salt and cayenne pepper and boiled until all the water evaporated then added a little oil and let it cook slowly. I recently acquired a new blender so i've been going a bit crazy with the smoothies. I call this one Mango madness because the mango taste is very heavy, the smoothie also contains oranges which gives it a citrous taste, other fruits included in the smoothie are banana and pawpaw. The resulting smoothie is high in fiber which is good for those trying to clean out their system and low in calories since no sugar is added. This is one recipe i highly recommend, it is tastes amazing and is healthy and is very filling as well.

I love any meat and cheese recipe and this one is no exception. This recipe is adopted from several tortilla and quesadilla recipe's. All you need for this recipe is tortilla's, cooked beef, and cheese. If you have never made a tortilla before it is basically a simplified chapati. I always like to make extra tortilla's and refrigerate for those occasions when i need a quick meal. This recipe is perfect to re-define your left over beef or chicken especially if you have the tortilla's in your refrigerator, then you can have a delicious meal in five minutes. Simply place strips of beef onto one half your tortilla, add cheese and cover with the other half and place in a pan or oven until the cheese melts. I prefer to use mozzarella cheese because its my favorite cheese but cheddar works as well. I love to use left over meats for this recipe because the meats are already spiced up making my quasadilla that much tastier. Making your meat from scratch is also an option, feel free to flavor as desired. Tortilla's are best served with guacamole but on this occasion i opted for a salad being a new yr and all.