Immigrant Kitchens: Burundian everyday meal

Burundian Beans, Greens and Goat

This is about the furthest dish from hot dogs and hamburgers I've encountered in Immigrant Kitchens. It was such a pleasure being able to experience a taste of Burundi through Mia's kitchen in Maine. See below for the story, recipe, and how-to photos.

The Story

What Burundians Eat

Greens, Beans, and Goat

By Lindsay Sterling

I recently had the pleasure of cooking with a Burundian woman from Eastern Africa in her kitchen in Gorham, ME. The minced cassava leaves in the bottom of her large pot looked like a wad of grass clippings removed from the inside of a lawn mower. As they heated up on the stove with water, they smelled like a health nut’s green smoothie. Into the minced greens, my teacher, Mia Ntahobari, submerged cubed eggplant, diced green pepper, onions, leeks, oil, and a couple pieces of bone-in goat meat. Over the course of the next three hours, she also added tomato paste, goat broth, garlic, bay leaves, pepper and peanut butter. The final dish, called sombe [pronounced Sombay] in her native Kirundi, looked like cooked collard greens, only minced up more finely.

My kids aren’t going to like this, I was thinking. Then she said, “My kids don’t like vegetables either, but they like sombe.” Her kids are four, six, eleven, and thirteen years old now. They have been in Maine for three months since arriving from Burundi. She worries that it will be hard for them to make friends at school because of the language barrier and differences in life experience. They’ve lived through unspeakable tragedies resulting from the lack of a justice system in Burundi.

The cooked greens were one of four components in her favorite meal. “Sombe,” she explained, “Is a meal all people [in Burundi] eat regularly with beans everyday.” She used canary beans, which were large and light yellow when dried and turned tan, plump and creamy once cooked.

The third component of the meal, fried bone-in chunks of goat meat in red sauce, is popular throughout Burundi. She suspects Burundians prefer goat because it’s less expensive to raise than beef. First she boiled the goat meat in water. Then she strained out the broth and shallow-fried the goat pieces with onions, curry powder, and dried basil. Once the goat pieces were nice and crispy brown on the outside, she added tomato paste and the reserved goat broth to the make a smooth dark red sauce around the goat pieces. I thought the goat was delicious. A little tough, but fun to eat off the bone. It was not strong like lamb. The flavor of the meat was mild, a lot like beef.

Her husband taught me how to make the bugali that brings the dish all together. It’s made of corn flour cooked with water and molded into cake. To eat the meal, Burundians break of a piece of bugali from a communal cake, and then use the piece to scoop up a bite of greens, beans, and goat from their own dish. No forks or spoons were used. There was literal finger licking. Though the goat and cassava leaves did make the meal seem foreign to me, I found it to be rich, soft, warm, and comforting. I liked it even more after I took Mia’s advice and added a couple drops of ultra hot sauce, called Akabanka oil.

A week later, after finding goat meat, corn flour, canary beans, and cassava leaves at her friend’s store, Ebenezer, (654 Congress St, Portland, ME) and cooking the meal a second time, I liked it even more. My seven-year-old and husband cleaned their plates. My nine-year-old wasn’t in the mood for adventure. Hot sauce lovers have to try the Akabanga oil. It’s unlike any hot sauce in the U.S. Two drops’ll do ya. They sell it at next to the register at Mittapheap Market (61 Washington Avenue, Portland, ME).

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2013

The Recipe - Burundian greens, beans and goat

Burundian Beans, Polenta, Greens, and Goat

As Alain Bitariho and Mia Ntahobari from Bujumbura, Burundi, taught Lindsay Sterling in Gorham, ME.

Serves 12-16

Cooking Time: 3 hours

1 lb. canary beans*

1 lb. minced cassava leaves*

2 lb. bone-in goat meat, cut into 2” chunks*

1 green pepper, large dice

1 eggplant, cubed

1 + 1/4 onion, large dice

2 leeks, quartered lengthwise and sliced across

2 + 2 bouillon cubes

1/2 cup + 1/3 cup vegetable oil

4-5 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 + 1 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp curry powder

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp Goya Sazonador Total (optional)*

16 oz. tomato paste

3 cups white pre-cooked cornmeal (Masarepa brand)* or 3 cups white rice

1/4 cup peanut butter

Akabanga oil*

The night before, cover beans with water by 2 inches and soak over night. Drain and cover again with fresh water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about an hour or as long as it takes for the beans to become tender.

Put cassava leaves in large pot on high with 4 cups of water, two chunks of goat meat, and two bouillon cubes. Simmer covered for 3 hours.

Put the rest of the goat meat in a medium pot (with lid). Add enough water to not quite cover the meat all the way and 2 bouillon cubes, and cook on high with the lid on. Cook until the meat is brown.

When cassava leaves become fragrant, add cubed eggplant, green pepper, onion and leeks, and enough hot water so that it comes just under the vegetable tops. Add bay leaves, Sazonador Total, black pepper, garlic, and cook covered on medium high heat.

When goat meat is brown, strain the broth into a container for later use, and add 1/3 cup oil so that the oil is half way up the meat pieces. Add 1/4 onion, minced, black pepper, 1/2 tsp basil, bay leaf and curry powder.

After cassava cooks for fifteen minutes, add 1/2 cup vegetable oil. Continue cooking covered on medium high for another 2 1/2 hours, adding cups of water periodically to keep it somewhere between a soup and a solid. In the end, you don’t want it watery, but very moist.

When goat is getting darker brown and fried and 16 oz. tomato paste to goat and let cook for ten minutes, stirring to create a thick, red, pasty sauce. Stir in 1-2 cups of the reserved goat broth to loosen the paste into a bright red sauce. Turn off heat.

When the cassava has cooked for 2:45, then reheat the goat and pour most of the sauce into the cassava, keeping the goat pieces from falling into the cassava pot. Stir peanut butter to the cassava leaves. Cook for fifteen minutes more. Add more broth if you have it to extend the sauce in the goat pot.

You can make white rice or a thick style polenta called bugali to go with this dish (also called foufou in other African languages.) To make the bugali, bring water in a medium nonstick pot to a boil. Split water into two pots. Pour enough corn flour into the 1st pot (still on the heat) to reach the surface of the water. Stir with a wooden spoon, mashing the corn flour against the sides of the pot continuously. Add water from the 2nd pot only if the corn flour remains dry and uncooked. When the corn mixture becomes bouncy and pulls away from the pot in a single mass, it’s ready. Press the bugali evenly into the bottom of the pot, then overturn the pot so the bugali falls onto a plate. Sprinkle water on another dinner plate and use the wet plate to press the sides of the polenta into a smooth mound.

Serve a 1-inch thick slice of bugali on each plate (or a serving spoon of white rice) with along with piles of cassava leaves (called sombe), goat meat with sauce, and boiled beans. Top with 2-3 drops of super spicy Akabanga oil.

*Where to get ingredients.

Here is your grocery list for Ebenezer, 654 Congress Street, Portland, ME:

1 lb. cassava leaves

2 lb. goat

1 bag pre-cooked corn flour (or 3 cups white rice)

1 pound canary beans

1 jar Sazonador Total

1 bottle Akabanka oil

The rest of the ingredients you can get at your regular grocery store.