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.
We found ourselves in Southeast Africa this week. The country of Mozambique is a large country on the coast of the African continent, facing the island-nation of Madagascar. Mozambique has a heavy Portuguese influence. It was colonized by Portugal in the late 1400s and did not gain independence until 1975. Mozambique is a poor country but has great opportunity in its rich natural resources; but sadly, investors continue to pull out of Mozambique as the country is experiencing brutal violence and turmoil right now. While I want to highlight the natural beauty of Mozambique as I have the other countries we’ve ‘visited’ so far, I think it is important to acknowledge the current events in the country. Please consider donating to organizations that support asylum-seekers and people fleeing violence and please read this article from AlJazeera, which flashed across my home screen this morning, moments before writing this post.
Nonetheless, Mozambique is a stunning country with varied terrains, rich culture, and vibrant villages. Here is an honest travel guide for Mozambique:
Every post of top foods in Mozambique mentions Piri-Piri Sauce and Piri-Piri (or Peri-Peri) Chicken. This dish is #2 on this list by CultureTrip, #1 on this list by TripSavvy, #1 on this list by TasteAtlas, and #1 on this list by Hideaways Africa.
In the spirit of authenticity, we used this recipe from the official Mozambique tourism site for the Piri-Piri sauce. We made the sauce and marinated our whole chicken in it overnight. The next day, we placed our chicken on a grilling rack and baked it in the oven for a couple hours until it was nice and crispy.
We served up the chicken with fries and it was super tasty. I loved the zingy flavour from the lemon and vinegar mixed with the heat from the cayenne pepper. The Piri-Piri marinade was absolutely delicious and I would definitely use it again!
Let us know what you think!