International Cooking: Food from Angola

This week I cooked food from Angola, a country located in the southern part of Africa. I’ll confess to not being too excited. I was wary of trying red palm oil for the first time, which is a common component in Angolan cooking, and I also had to try okra. I couldn’t say the dishes appealed to me all that much, which is one reason I didn’t include too many this week.

What Do People Eat in Angola?

For centuries, Angola was a Portuguese colony, and some of its cuisine is influence by this. Rice, beans, chicken, pork and fish are common, and a lot of dishes use tomato, garlic and onion as a base. Red palm oil is popular for cooking and flavoring food. A popular side dish is funge, which is cassava flour mixed with water.

Breakfast is usually simple, consisting of funge, fruit, eggs, coffee and tea. I thought about composing an Angolan breakfast, but that was before I tried the funge for the first time…

What I Made

• Calulu and Funge (Fish Stew with Cassava Flour Mash)
• Camaro Grelhado Com Molho Cru (Grilled Prawns with Green Onion Sauce)
• Paracuca (Roasted Peanuts)
• Chicken Muamba (Chicken Stew)

Calulu and Funge (Fish Stew with Cassava Flour Mash)

There are two dishes here. First, there is the calulu, which is a stew consisting of fish, sweet potato leaves, vegetables, and red palm oil. I used the recipe from Travel Food Atlas. Since I was halving it and didn’t want a bunch of leftover eggplant when I needed so little, I omitted that, and I seem to have a problem finding non-baby spinach at the supermarket lately so I used kale instead.

This wasn’t exactly bad, but it didn’t seem to have much flavor. The red palm oil definitely has a smell which I can’t quite describe, and probably a flavor, but it didn’t taste very strong. This was my first time trying okra, and I’m not sure I really like it.

The second dish is funge (sometimes spelled ‘funje’), which is cassava flour mixed with boiling water so that it forms a strange glue-like mass. It doesn’t sound appetizing, and honestly, it was so much like glue, that even though it didn’t actually have much flavor of it’s own, I found it really off-putting. It is, however, very popular in Angola and a common component in most meals. If you want to try it for yourself, I followed the traditional method described on Foreign Fork. I found the mixture thickened pretty quickly and became really hard to stir, and I didn’t quite get it completely smooth, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

Camaro Grelhado Com Molho Cru (Grilled Prawns with Green Onion Sauce)

There’s not much need for explanation here. Prawns, or shrimp, are brushed with a vinegary green onion sauce and then grilled. I don’t have a proper grill so I baked them for 5 minutes, which worked well. Although these were alright, I felt there was something missing, and then I realized there was no oil in the sauce. I think that may have been just what this dish needed to be really good. I got this recipe from 196 Flavors. I made the sauce in my food processor and used large shrimp, rather than the jumbo that would usually be used, since that is what I had.

Paracuca (Roasted Peanuts)

Roasted peanuts are common in Angola, and they can be either sweet or savory. I chose to make sugared peanuts, and I added some cinnamon. They came out well though I had to decrease the roasting time in the recipe by quite a lot. I’m assuming the recipe, from Taste of Home, wanted raw peanuts, and mine were already roasted. I’d specifically chosen this recipe because it wasn’t asking for raw peanuts though. Either way, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with something this simple.

Chicken Muamba (Chicken Stew)

Chicken muamba is a popular chicken stew in Angola, and is often considered the country’s national dish. It consists of chicken pieces and various vegetables, including okra for thickening, and is flavored with red palm oil, garlic, tomato, and onions. After the calulu I was a bit wary of this, because I’m not sure I am a fan of okra. But I made it anyway, and I was pleasantly surprised. This was definitely foreign tasting, to me, but it was actually pretty good. I got the recipe from African Bites and the only change I made was to use bone in chicken thighs rather than cut up a whole chicken, and to sub an habanero pepper for the Scotch bonnet since that was what was available.

As you can see, I decided to pair this with rice rather than make more funge, which had been my original plan.

Final Thoughts

You can probably tell that this wasn’t my favorite country so far. Although the red palm oil does have a distinct smell, I’m not sure I can pin down what it really tastes like with the other flavors happening. But I guess I can say it’s not offensive? I think okra is weird and maybe just not for me, but I didn’t hate it in the chicken muamba and I still have like half a bag in the freezer, so I will be using it again at some point. The chicken muamba was the clear winner this week and I may even may it again some day.

Next week, I will be cooking food from my first Caribbean country, Antigua and Barbuda.