Wali ya mboga
A recipe from Zaynab Issa's forthcoming book, Third Culture Cooking.
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ICYMI, I chatted with Zaynab Issa late last year about her path to food media (part one) and her forthcoming cookbook (part two). In the final installation of my three-part series, I have a recipe from her upcoming cookbook, Third Culture Cooking, which is out next Tuesday, April 1!
This recipe is for Wali Ya Mboga, a Swahili dish that reflects her roots in East Africa and India, and it’s a dish I helped test for the book. When she first announced she was writing a cookbook, she called for recipe testers on Instagram. I filled out the form not thinking anything of it, and I was selected from nearly 1000 people. I was given an advanced recipe, and while the techniques were not new to me, a few of the flavor combinations were. I am not particularly familiar with East African and Indian cooking, so I was excited for the challenge of testing a recipe and learning something new.
I was given explicit instructions to follow the directions exactly, which is a very weird experience for someone who most often uses recipes in a less-rigid way. But that’s the point: to cook the recipe and leave notes where things don’t work or don’t make sense. And boy, did I leave a lot of notes:
When Zaynab and I met a few months later, I learned I was one of ten people to test this recipe, and a good deal of folks had similar issues and questions as I did. She took all that feedback and incorporated them into the recipe, adjusting steps and tweaking timing, to get to the version that was eventually published.
This recipe hits on a lot of different flavor combinations: a deeply spiced and warm chicken, a spicy and slightly pickled kachumber, and a salty-cooling yogurt. They all come together to make a well rounded dish.
Here’s what Zaynab says about the recipe:
In its purest form, the inspiration for this dish, wali ya mboga (Swahili for “rice and vegetables”), is simple—literally just a mix of sautéed vegetables and rice. This riff on the Khoja version I grew up eating is reflective of my roots in both East Africa and India. Sure, rice and vegetables are still present in the form of long-grain rice swirled with ribbons of spinach, but there’s also tender yogurt-marinated chicken that braises in a spice-forward, aromatic tomato curry made with lots of sweet, frizzled onions, making this version closer to a biryani. Finish each serving with a dollop of creamy salted yogurt and a helping of sharp and tart lemon-dressed onions known as kachumber, and you’ll have a wonder-fully balanced meal.
She’s also going on a book tour and you can find more info here.
