Wanja Kavengi
As a daughter of the mountain, my palate is not sophisticated enough to appreciate honey-glazed meats. Admittedly, I inherited my ancestral sweet tooth and I love sugary things – confectionery, pastries, fruit drinks, sex – but meat is where I draw the line.
When I say I want sweet meat, I do not mean I want honeyed meat. I want meat that has, first of all, been boiled thoroughly in excess water. The excess water is never a mistake, oh ye culinary amateurs. It is a strategy. And the strategy is called thufu. You fetch that thufu directly from the sufuria with a plastic or metal cup and serve it, so that you drink it as the meat dances in the remaining ocean in the pot until people who do not know how to cook start saying it will lose its taste and nutrients.
Somewhere along the boiling, some hoho, onions and kafirifiri will be added, then a second round of thufu will be extracted. It is now sweeter, not because of honey, but because of the hoho and kafirifiri. The salt is not enough, but somehow that’s why the thufu is sweet.
A third round of thufu will come about just before the meat is served. The meat is overcooked, yes, but as a daughter of mūrima, “overcooked” is not part of the kitchen vocabulary.
If the meat is kashoma, it has to be burnt over an open fire so that we can smell the smoke and hear the shhshhshh sounds each time the meat is turned and the fat melts into the fire. In fact, hearing and smelling the kashoma in the background makes the stories we’re beating sweeter and the laughter louder. If at any point you feel experimental and decide to add some honey on the meat, you will be asked kwa nini umeharibu nyama. Now Gítonga can’t eat the meat tondū ena sukarí.
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