Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel is largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.
Malawi is a small landlocked country in East Africa. It’s interesting to look at on the map because 1/3 of the country is taken up by the giant Lake Malawi. While Malawi is among the least ‘developed’ countries in the world, it has a growing tourism economy and has been making great strides in the area of science and technology. 85% of Malawi’s population live in rural areas and many Malawians are subsistence farmers.
It was tough to pin down a recipe that represented Malawi and wasn’t repetitive of some of our earlier recipes. Throughout my research, I came across a yummy dessert that represents some of the staple ingredients in Malawi, as highlighted in this article by Restamag. Zitumbuwa is a deep-fried, pancake-like banana fritter made with bananas and cornmeal. Some recipes recommend spices like cinnamon and nutmeg which sounds delicious so I was sure to add both to my batter. We followed this recipe:
Our Zitumbuwa turned out so good– crispy, sweet, and satisfying. I opted for coconut oil for frying as it complimented the sweetness of the dessert and kept it on the healthier side. I also decided to sift icing sugar but then decided it wouldn’t be complete without some chocolate sauce. These were so tasty, simple, and fun to eat. We would absolutely make Zitumbuwa again as a healthier dessert or a heartier Sunday brunch feature!
While we ate, we watched this video on YouTube:
Let us know what you think!