Kenyan Recipes

From Dawa to Homemade Pilau Masala, Sukuma Wiki to Irio. Everything Kenyan cooks, as it is cooked at home.

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Homemade Pilau Masala

Pilau masala is the spice blend behind pilau, the spiced rice of the East African coast, and it is a short list of whole spices rather than a long one. Cumin, black peppercorns, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon are roasted briefly and ground, and that is the whole thing. The blend belongs to the Swahili coast, where centuries of Indian Ocean trade brought spices from South and Southeast Asia into the cooking of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Pilau itself is a relative of the pilaf and pulao found from Persia to India, adapted along the coast into something distinctly East African, and the masala is the point at which that trade history is most visible. Whether to buy it or make it is the practical question. Pre-ground blends are widely sold and perfectly usable, but ground spices lose their volatile oils quickly, and the difference between a jar that has sat on a shelf for a year and spices roasted and ground the same day is not subtle. It requires no grinder: a mortar and pestle does the job, and the roasting step is what makes it worth doing at all, since brief heat opens up the aromatics before they are broken down.

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30 minEasyKenya

Recipe by Debby · Africook

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Dawa

Dawa means medicine in Swahili, and the name is a joke that stuck. The drink is lime muddled with sugar, poured over ice with vodka and finished with honey on a stirring stick, and Kenyans order it as their dawa in the way people elsewhere claim a drink is medicinal. Its origin is unusually well documented for a cocktail. It was created at the Carnivore restaurant in the Langata suburb of Nairobi, adapted from the Brazilian caipirinha after bartenders found the cane spirit cachaça gave them headaches and switched to vodka. One regular, who happened to be the restaurant's landlord, began asking for another dose of his dawa, and the name spread with the drink. It is now found across Kenya. The honey stick is the detail that makes it. A wooden stirrer is dipped in honey and left in the glass, so the drinker sweetens the drink themselves, controlling it rather than receiving it pre sweetened. There is also a non alcoholic version made as a hot tea with ginger, lemon, honey, cloves and cinnamon, drunk for sore throats and colds, which is dawa in the more literal sense and is what many Kenyan households mean by the word.

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5 minEasyKenya

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

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Kenyan Maharagwe (Spiced Coconut Bean Soup)

Maharagwe is simply the Swahili word for beans, and the dish is red beans simmered with onion, tomato and spices in coconut milk. It is eaten across Kenya and is most often served with ugali, though rice and flatbreads are equally common. The coconut milk places it on the Swahili coast. Coastal Kenyan cooking uses coconut in a way inland cooking does not, and it arrived through the same Indian Ocean trade that brought cardamom, cumin, turmeric and coriander into the region's food. Those spices are all here, and the presence of mild curry powder alongside them reflects the long South Asian presence in East Africa. It reads as though it should be fiery and is not. The spice list is long and includes chilli, but the coconut milk rounds all of it off, so the finished dish is warm and aromatic rather than hot. It is also quick: with cooked or tinned beans it is on the table in under thirty minutes. The sauce should come up to just cover the beans and will thicken further as it cools, so it is worth stopping while it still looks slightly loose.

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40 minEasyKenya

Recipe by Nympha · Africook

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African Mango and Cucumber Salad

This is an East African salad of mango, cucumber and tomato with chilli, cumin and a little cinnamon, dressed with lime and finished with roasted peanuts. It is served on its own or alongside grilled meat, and its appeal is the contrast: crunchy against soft, sweet against tart. Mangoes are not indigenous to Africa. They reached the East African coast through Persian traders around the tenth century, part of the same Indian Ocean exchange that brought rice, spices and coconut into Swahili cooking, and they have been grown and eaten there ever since. Kenya and Tanzania are now substantial producers. The seasoning is what places it. Cumin with a dash of cinnamon in a fruit salad is a Swahili coast combination rather than a Western one, reflecting the same trade history, and the peanuts and lime give it the texture and acidity that hold the whole thing together. Salting the cucumber and onion first and letting them drain for twenty minutes is the technique that matters most: cucumber holds a great deal of water, and skipping it leaves a salad sitting in liquid within minutes of being dressed.

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25 minEasyKenya

Recipe by Amara · Africook

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