Ugali, Greens and Eggs

11:15 AM

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.

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1 comments

  1. The number one bachelor meal for sure. The myth is wrong though about cooking more than one person,I have done that many times and it come out okay.
    Someone told me ugali is taste less. It was to much work for me to start thinking about it every time i ate,so my life continued. Great stuff.

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