Tanzania

July 7th is celebrated as Saba Saba day in Tanzania (saba saba means seven seven in Swahili) marking the day that the political party that lead Tanzanian independence from British rule was formed, as well as the day of the Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair. In honor of this national holiday, I made a couple iconic dishes from Tanzania.

The first is called chipsi mayai, literally meaning chips and eggs. It's basically an omelet with french fries in it.

This is actually my first time making proper fries; I usually roast them (like how I made "fries" for Belgium). It wasn't actually very hard! I used to be afraid to fry things but now that I've gotten used to it, it's really not that intimidating.

Once the chips/fries are made, it's time to start working on the omelet. The "filling" is pretty simple, just onion, tomato, and a little bit of cilantro.

You then add the chips in and mix it up a little bit. They need to stay a little bit flat or flipping the omelet is a mess.

The scrambled eggs are then poured on top.

Once the egg cooks most of the way through, you flip it. Full disclosure: the picture above is what happening to my first one. I could not get it to flip correctly, so I ended up with a scramble instead of an omelet.

My second one turned out much better. I actually went against the directions in the recipe and went with what I was comfortable with: I put the eggs in the pan first, let them cook a little bit, then added my veggies and chips. This made it a billion times easier to flip, plus it's prettier with everything on top!

Chipsi mayai is a popular street food, often eaten with ketchup (Tanzanians call it tomato sauce). I decided to eat mine with hot sauce because I really don't like ketchup. Plus hot sauce is just ketchup for grownups.

The next dish I made also required some deep frying. I figured an omelet and fries wasn't enough to fully represent a whole country so I decided to make a dessert as well. Mandazi are a type of fried bread made with coconut and spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom.

The recipe I used was the "easy" version, since usually these are made with yeast. I'm not sure why I didn't just follow the regular version from the same author; I'm comfortable making yeasted doughs. I don't think I even looked at the regular recipe; I just focused on the fact that it said easy in the title. In this version, all the ingredients are mixed together and formed into a dough that's a little sticky but holds together enough to roll into a big one-inch-thick slab.

The dough is then cut into triangle shaped pieces...or triangle-adjacent. Shapes aren't my strong suit. Basically they just need to be bite sized.

Those something-like-but-not-necessarily triangles are then dropped into hot oil to fry until they are puffy and golden brown.

They come out smelling of coconut and cardamom, crispy on the outside and (hopefully) fluffy on the inside. Mine came out a little on the dense side because I wasn't convinced my dough had enough flour in it since I could figure out how you would be able to roll a sticky batter into a circle. Apparently I added too much, because they were less like the beignets I was expecting. It may also be due to the fact that I didn't use a recipe with yeast in it, so they didn't have the texture they probably normally due. It was fine though; when eaten with a bit of the leftover rosewater syrup from Qatar or some jam or even dipped in coffee, they made for a good treat that wasn't too sweet but still hit the spot.

Recipes Used: Chipsi Mayai // Mandazi