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14 Delightful South African Christmas Dishes

The main course of a South African Christmas are exciting and mouthwatering flavors. These dishes have earned their place as festive favorites to be enjoyed year after year by South Africans and visitors alike.

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Recipe of the Day

Muamba Chicken (Muamba De Galinha)

4.7 (3)

Muamba is a family of palm based dishes across Angola and the Congo basin, and the chicken version is the one most often named as Angola's national dish. Chicken is simmered in palm oil with onion, garlic, tomato and hot pepper, thickened with okra, and served over rice or with funge, the cassava porridge. This particular version takes a path towards the Congo. Peanut butter goes in alongside the palm oil, which is a Congolese and Central African treatment more closely associated with moambe than with the Luandan preparation, and the result is heavier and nuttier than the Angolan version that relies on palm oil and okra alone. Both are legitimate. Muamba names a method rather than a single fixed recipe, and it changes as it crosses the region. The palm oil is what holds all the versions together. It is pressed from the fruit of the oil palm, which is indigenous to West and Central Africa, and it gives the dish its deep orange colour and a flavour that no other fat provides. Angolans call it dendem. Whatever else varies between one muamba and the next, a version made without palm oil is a chicken stew and not a muamba, which is the one point on which nobody in the region disagrees.

Total: 1 hr 30 min
Serves: 7
Difficulty: Easy
Country / Region: Angola

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