A Taste of Madagascar and Tanzania

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a ‘Taste of Africa’ cooking class, hosted by travel operator Rainbow Tours. Rainbow tours specialise in African and South American travel and cite creating “unforgettable dining experiences” as one of their key mantras. I’ve travelled a bit around South America, which I’ve mentioned in a previous post, and absolutely loved it. I think food plays such an important part as you can discover a lot about a country by what and how its inhabitants eat.

I was really excited about the invite, primarily because I knew little about African food and secondly a number of other bloggers were invited too. This always pleases me, as I’m sure I bore my friends with all my food talk, so events like these enable me to chat to my heart’s content to other like-minded souls – not that it’s stopped me before, but at least it’s to a willing crowd.

Right; back to the cooking. As Africa is one massive continent, I was pleased to find that the focus of the class was narrowed down to Madagascan and Tanzanian cuisine. Chef Attoma Mandji (in the above pic) along with his assistant Chef Amira, showed us the ropes. We cooked a dish from each country: Madagascar a ‘Romazara Vary’ (Malagasy beef with greens), and from Tanzania ‘Samaki wa Kakuango’ (steamed fish with fried onions – we didn’t have time to steam so ours was roasted).

Now I was surprised to find that the only seasoning in both dishes was salt and pepper, I was expecting more spice. It was explained that Malagasy food is not very spicy or very hot…so fair enough. But I later researched that Tanzanian food is, so they could have upped the ante on that one. Also, the beef was way too tough and could have done with a lot more cooking time. You can have a go of the recipes here.

Overall both dishes were fine – I was expecting to learn more, but it was a nice taster. What really shone through though was the hospitality of Rainbow Tours, the drinks flowed freely – I had the hangover the next day to prove it! They were also really generous with their time when it came to answering questions. So it’s easy to see why they were voted Best Tour Operator 2012, by the readers of Food and Travel Magazine.

The cooking class took place at Open Kitchen, in Old Street and is the venue for other types of cooking classes. One that caught my eye is a Persian lesson, held there on 7th Nov 2012, with Chef Amira. You can contact her on: amira.ryner@gmail.com for more details.

Many thanks to Rainbow Tours for a fun eve.