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Mozambique

Mozambique flag

For today’s country we chose Mozambique which we all quite enjoyed. As usual, we selected both a main and a dessert.

Our main was peri peri chicken which was marinated overnight. The sauce was made of blending up red pepper, jalapeƱo, onion, garlic, coconut milk, oil, oregano, basil, lemon juice, and paprika, added to chicken breasts that had been rubbed with chicken stock, salt, and pepper.

Prepping the sauce for the marinade.

As the chicken was being BBQ’d I cooked the remainder of the sauce to use as extra flavouring over the chicken. It smelled so good as it simmered.

Marinating overnight.

We hadn’t thought to make any rice or anything to go with the meat but had cut up lettuce for a salad. Many of us opted to eat the meat over the lettuce, using the extra sauce as a dressing. This was a fantastic way to enjoy this meat and we are thinking about making the sauce again and preserving it somehow.

Such a delicious way to eat the meat.

The dessert was made was a gluten free cake called bolo polana. I was a little uncertain how it would be consisting of mashed potatoes, but it wasn’t bad at all!

Mashed potatoes and ground cashews.

I started by making mashed potatoes and grinding up raw cashews. While the potatoes cooled I creamed butter and sugar.

Added zest.

I added the potatoes and cashews, then some orange and lemon zest. To this I added egg yolks, keeping some whites aside to add after.

This took such a long time!

Beating the egg whites took quite a while since we used an old fashioned egg beater. Since I’d already used my mixer and didn’t want to take out my beaters I thought we’d try it, but didn’t expect it to take quite as long. It really made me wonder how my grandma did it, likely using it for most of her baking!

The cake, topped with roasted cashews, turned out to be quite moist and I couldn’t taste the potatoes at all really. I quite enjoyed it, especially being gluten free, but some of the kids weren’t so sure. It was still warm when we ate it, which I really liked. I think it might also be good to add a light syrup or watered down jam to it for added sweetness.

Bolo polana topped with roasted cashews.

https://www.internationalcuisine.com/mozambican-bolo-polana/

Did you know that Mozambique is named after Mussa al-BIK, a sultan in the 15th century? The name contains all 5 vowels and, when played in Scrabble, gives more points than any other one word country name. They were a colony of Portugal until 1975 and 21 of their 98 airports are paved.

Mozambique is home to 1200 species of fish and has the best coral reefs in the world. Over 50% of the population is under the age of 15, with 54 being their life expectancy. There are more than 40 local languages with most people speaking more than one.

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