Amasi Recipe
Lagos, Nigeria ·
Aperçu
Amasi is fermented milk, thick and sharply sour, and it is one of the oldest things eaten in southern Africa. Unpasteurised cow's milk is left to ferment until it separates into a watery liquid called umlaza and the thick curd that is amasi itself, and the separation is the process rather than a fault in it. It carries names in most of the region's languages: amasi in isiZulu and isiXhosa, maas in Afrikaans, mafi in Sesotho, magege in Xitsonga. That spread of names across unrelated language families is a reliable indication of how long and how widely a food has been eaten. Amasi is associated particularly with Zulu and Xhosa households, where it was made in a calabash or a hide bag and served in a clay pot with wooden spoons. Its usual place is over pap. The sour milk against the neutral maize is a pairing that predates any of the dairy products it now sits beside on a supermarket shelf, and it remains an everyday South African food rather than a revived one. Commercial maas is sold nationally, which has changed how it is obtained without much changing what it is.
Can I make amasi with shop milk, or does it have to be raw?
Pasteurised milk will not sour the same way on its own, because the bacteria that do the work have been removed. You need to add them back with a starter, which can be a few spoons of existing amasi or a plain live culture. Keep it somewhere warm and undisturbed. Raw milk ferments unaided, which is why the traditional method assumes it.