If you've never heard of the country eSwatini, maybe you've heard of Swaziland. The latter is an Anglicized word, and the country officially changed its name to eSwatini in 2018. Wikipedia consistently has it spelled with a capital "E" but as far as I know the lower case "e" is correct in the Swazi language so that is how I will refer to it here. The recipe I made for eSwatini is very simple, mostly because I couldn't find many recipes at all, and any I did find I had already cooked for surrounding countries. The recipe I landed on may or may not be authentic, but looking around it seems every other blog dedicated to similar projects all chose the same recipe for eSwatini. The internet is massive, until you try searching for authentic recipes from fairly obscure countries.
So, like I said, it is incredibly simple. These are all the ingredients needed: avocado, ginger, lemon, salt and peanuts. These ingredients are combined into a salad called slaai.
I first juiced my lemon and grated my ginger and mixed them together in a bowl. This was probably the most time consuming part of the recipe.
I then diced the avocado and added it to the lemon juice to marinate for a bit.
I then chopped my roasted peanuts and added those to the "salad." And...that's pretty much it! It's basically a nice little side dish that had lots of brightness from the lemon and ginger and a good contrast between the softness of the avocado and the crunchiness of the peanuts. Can you tell I'm trying to come up with more to say about this dish?
The cuisine of eSwatini relies a lot on porridges made of grains like sorghum, but they also eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Corn is especially popular. They call it "mealie" like South Africans, and it eat grilled or boiled on the cob, or steamed/baked into "mealie bread" aka cornbread. There is also plenty of South African influence regarding barbecued meats, with goat meat remaining very popular.
And in case you're not familiar with the country, it is located to the east of South Africa, almost an enclave, but it shares its eastern border with Mozambique. It's quite small, and it makes sense that it would have plenty of cultural similarities to South Africa.
Recipe Used: Slaai
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