Burundi - home cooking

Burundi is a tiny country in central Africa without any real national culinary identity. As a result, the closest I could find to a suitable restaurant in London was a Ugandan restaurant which claimed to offer some "Burundian style" dishes. On checking their menu online, I couldn't find any. So it was back to the kitchen.

Never before have I come to research the cuisine of a country and found such a small variety of dishes that I could cook. Burundi is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and no doubt a result of this is a small variety of dishes using almost exclusively staple items of food. Ideally anything I would cook for this project would involve meat. We are big meat eaters. However, the meat options in traditional Burundian cuisine were few. Of the dishes I could have chosen were those involving chicken giblets, tripe and blood. It was time to look at the non-meat options.

There was one option which actually appealed quite strongly. A Burundian bean soup. I'm a fan of soup. I've said that before. I'm also a fan of beans, whereas Elle historically isn't such a big fan. But this was the best it was going to get.

For the the soup I bought 400g each of butter beans, cannellini beans and kidney beans. Crucial mistake in the measurements, as you'll read later. I also needed vegetable stock, 4 onions, a bunch of celery stalks, one green and one red pepper, dried chilli flakes, fresh parsley, salt and crunchy peanut butter.

Bad preparation meant I didn't have time to soak the beans overnight. If truth be told, I forgot that was even a thing. It turns out it's quite a crucial part of the process for various reasons, not least to ensure the beans are safe to eat. After a quick bit of research online, I settled for the flash soak process. This basically involves covering the beans in water, bringing them to a boil for two minutes, removing the heat, placing a lid on top and letting the beans soak in the water for an hour (topping up with boiling water to cover if required). This supposedly brings the beans to a state similar to that if they were soaked overnight. I can't dispute that. They seemed ready to me.

At this point I knew this was going to be a bit of a nightmare. The biggest soup pot I had wasn't big enough to accommodate all the beans I had. I suddenly realised I was cooking for sixteen people. At this point I had to employ the use of another pot. And it didn't end there.

Before the hour soak was due to end, I fried the chopped vegetables until softened (around 10 minutes) and then added this to the beans. At this point I added the chilli flakes, chopped parsley (around 6 tablespoons) and 2 teaspoons of salt.

The idea at this point was to now cover the entire mixture with vegetable stock and water and simmer for 90 minutes. The problem I had here was there was no room for the water. At all. It was clear that I had to spread out the entire contents of the soup pot into the other three pots that I owned. Even this was just enough!

So I added boiling water to all four pots, on all four stove hobs, to cover the mixture and brought all pots to a simmer - maintaining this temperature for the next 90 minutes. With about 15 minutes to go the last step was to stir in about six tablespoons of the crunchy peanut butter across all four pots, then cook for the final 15 minutes.

When the time was up, I was left with a wholesome looking, inviting bean soup of monstrous proportions. I served the soup with a well fired tiger bloomer loaf.

On eating, the soup was every bit as wholesome and filling as you'd expected, but with no one real flavour powering through. The peanut flavour was noticable, and gave the soup the texture and thickness. On cooking, some of the beans had softened almost to the point of being mashed on stirring, which helped the texture. The parsley was an addition that worked, despite me not being a huge fan of the herb. The chilli flakes were lost. Again, the soup overall could have done with more salt but I always hold back in this regard.

Generally, it was a really enjoyable soup which really did satsify. Which is just as well, as the leftovers were divided into six very generous meal-sized portions - four of which went in the fridge for the next couple of days, and the other two remain in the freezer.

Soups apparently also seem to do better on the second or third day. And I have to say, I enjoyed mine much more on the third day. Elle said the same about her lunch on the second day. I have no idea why that happens, but it was comforting to know that I had created something which kept on giving. And giving. And giving.

Burma/Myanmar - Mandalay, W2

Restaurant:  Mandalay

Location:  444 Edgware Road, London, W2 1EG

Date of visit:  7 June 2015

Time of visit:  7pm

The concept of an A-to-Z of London restaurants project based on countries is a simple one at first. The project has been following Wikipedia's list of sovereign states and has been pretty straight forward so far. Until now. The next country on the list was Burma. However, the UN and much of the international community recognises the country as "Myanmar". The UK government don't recognise the legitimacy of the regime that changed the name and therefore continues to use Burma. The media industry flip flop between the two.

What to do? I decided to do the country - whatever you want to call it - now rather than when I get to the countries beginning with "M". The biggest reason is that my list has nothing for Myanmar. I didn't want to risk not doing the country at all.

London has one real Burmese restaurant, which is fairly well known for being inexpensive and very accessible. Elle and I made a day of it and walked the four miles from our home to the restaurant, making some "refreshment" stops on the way.

We arrived at 7pm. The restaurant was fairly quiet when we walked in, but in the following fifteen minutes it really started to fill. Not difficult to do, as the restaurant was quite small.

In fact, whilst looking at the menu and deciding on our choices, a rather large group arrived without a reservation. We were politely asked if we would move to a small table by the window so they could move another two tables together to accommodate them. We didn't have an issue with this at all, but we did have to move from a comfortable position inside the restaurant to a table right beside the large window looking onto the street (and the street looking on to us!).

I should reiterate again how polite the service was though. It was a pleasure to be served by the staff there.

The menu didn't look to be quite as extensive as the one on the website. It also seemed to be a little pricier, which leads me to assume the website may be somewhat outdated. It's a fantastic menu nonetheless, with a large selection of soups and starters (including samosas and fritters), salads, various meat dishes and sundries.

The menu reads very much like an Indian or Chinese menu, which is somewhat true of some Burmese cuisine in general. However, I think it's fair to say that even if the description of a meal sounds familiar, the result will be quite different to what you would expect.

I am a fan of soup, so I had to go for one of those on the menu. I opted for the tantalising sounding chicken, shrimp and lime soup to start. Elle ordered the chicken and vegetable fritter, which I assumed would be like some kind of bhaji. For main I went for the chicken and lemongrass with lentil rice. This was a really unusual choice for me as I would almost always be drawn to the spiciest dish on the menu! Elle, on the other hand, picked the chilli chicken with coconut rice.

While we waited, we took in the surroundings. One of the things that really stood out for me was the lack of music in the restaurant. It struck me as really unusual. The restaurant itself has a slightly informal cafe feel, but is comfortable. Interestingly, the toilet for the restaurant is outside the back of the building, and is locked with a passcode (which you get from the door frame inside the restaurant!).

The drinks came shortly after we ordered. I had a beer. The beer was simply listed on the menu as "beer". On asking, we discovered they stocked Tsingtao and Singha beers. Similarly, the wine by the glass selection was signified by "Glass of wine" on the menu. No suggestion as to the size of the glass (it was served in a 125ml glass in the end, but filled beyond this measurement line). The wine wasn't really of a great quality, but this wasn't really an issue.

The starters came in no time. Elle's fritters - two of - appeared as deep fried bhaji-like creations. Battered strands of onion, sweet potato (or carrott), courgette and the odd chunk of chicken. It was served with three generous pots of soy, tamarind and sweet chilli sauces. The fritters were nice and crisp, with good chunks of chicken. The batter was quite light, and overall didn't seem too greasy at all. The tamarind dip was a little bland. Soy sauce was soy sauce. And the sweet chilli sauce had a real kick to it.

As did my soup. It was fantastic - bursting with flavour. The lime flavour cut through really well but was in no way overpowering. It was really refreshingwith  a small amount of chicken and shrimp (I counted three of the latter) with a handful of beansprouts and ample coriander. I'm not a huge fan of coriander, but it was a perfect addition to the soup. It worked incredibly well.

The mains came in good time too. The first impression was that the portions seemed fairly small. As time went on this was proven to be a non-issue as the portions were actually incredibly filling. My chicken and lemongrass was lovely. Not spicy by any means, but full of flavour. The lemongrass was again was everpresent, but not overpowering. The chicken was presented in small bitesized chunks with a nice thick sauce. The lentil rice was particularly enjoyable. It appeared that the lentils had been softened then almost mashed into the rice.

Elle's chilli chicken had a lovely rich sauce with a real kick, and again small bitesized pieces of chicken. The coconut rice was lovely - the flavour was much stronger with this portion of rice, but when that flavour is coconut this is no bad thing! It complemented the spiciness of the main very nicely.

Overall this was a really enjoyable visit. The service was fantastic, and the quality of the food was very high. I came away feeling we had eaten something fairly familiar, but with a Burmese twist. And having not spent very much money.