Fun fact: Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, but has the largest elephant population in the world! That doesn't have anything to do with the food I made tonight, I just thought it was cool.
I made two Botswanan dishes tonight. The first one is a spinach stew called morogo wa dinawa. Technically I can't call it that because in Botswana they use a different leafy green called morogo, which is also called wild spinach or African spinach. So I don't think using baby spinach is really cheating too much. I'm sure it tastes very similar.
The dish starts by adding spinach to a pot with some oil, along with thinly sliced onion and chopped tomato. The recipe I used called for green bell pepper, so I also used one, but I'm not sure if that's totally traditional. Once the spinach starts cooking, it releases its juices and the steam cooks the rest of the veggies. It's seasoned very simply with just salt and pepper.
While that cooked, I started making the pap. Pap is the Botswanan version of a cornmeal porridge that is very prevalent throughout southern Africa. It's very similar to grits, but thicker and stiffer. In Botswana, the stiffened pap is torn off into pieces to use as a utensil for eating stews and such.
Mine didn't stiffen up too much, probably because I left it on low heat right up until we were ready to eat. I liked the consistency, but I'm also one of those people who like my grits congealed. Seconds are always better than firsts when the grits have been sitting on the stove for a while.
The pap was also only seasoned with a little salt and pepper. (And a little butter, as the recipe I used called for--again, not sure how traditional it is but it's definitely delicious.)
Since we had some "beefless tips" aka fake meat in the freezer, I decided to use them as an accompaniment to the rest of the meal. Botswana's national dish could be considered a salted meat dish known as seswaa, which is traditionally served with the two other dishes I made, so this wasn't too far off the mark.
Overall, the two dishes were tasty and relatively healthy! Surprisingly, I haven't converted Chris into loving grits like I do, but he did like the pap, so I consider that a win. Maybe instead of buying instant grits I will just make pap from now on!
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