Sampling native foods is one of the most exciting parts of exploring a culture. When one visits regions such as the coast of Mombasa, the seafood variety is extremely rich. Almost every traditional dish has a folk tale accompanying it, making sampling more fun.
In Nairobi the Kikuyu from the central parts of Kenya impact the snacking culture significantly. The saying in this community is ‘no part of a goat or cow should go to waste’. For that reason, everything in the slaughtered animal has some use.
Let us first deal with the parts that are not edible. These include the horns, the skin, and the waste matter from the intestines. Amongst these people, the waste from the intestines is very good manure. Organized abattoirs harness and sell this waste to farmers or redirect it into a cesspit to create bio-gas. Biogas is an important substitute for cooking gas and electricity particularly in the rural areas. The skin is sold to tanneries, and the horns turned into artifacts.
The rest of the cow or goat is edible. Butcheries buy the carcass and sell fresh meat cuts to consumers. Other parts are not sold directly as part of the carcass. The organs including the heart, the liver, the stomach, and the kidneys are all sold as pricey delicacies. For example, a common dish in many restaurants is liver with cow liver being the most common. Another is matumbo, which is the stomach.
Other sections of the animals carcass that do not fit in the category of meat cuts are body organs such as the lungs, the pancreas, and sections of the digestive system, mainly the stomach and the intestines of the animal. For animals slaughtered at home during celebrations, the blood is drained and stored to later create a delicacy. For animals slaughtered in an abattoir, the blood is drained out and where possible is included in the waste that makes biogas.
The delicacy made from these parts is mutura often called the African sausage. In its truest sense mutura is stuffed intestines. The lungs, the pancreas, and any other bits and pieces of unappealing pieces of meat are chopped up and boiled making them tender and ensuring every disease-causing organism dies. Once cooked, the blood is poured into the mixture and allowed to cook thoroughly.
This mixture is then stuffed into the intestines. Thereafter, the whole long delicacy is roasted on low heat over an open fire until the oily parts of the intestines start to fry the mutura to a brownish color. The hoofs and the head are first ‘cooked’ over an open fire to burn off the fur. The burnt fur is scraped off and together with the bones and tail, the hoofs and head are put into a large pot. These are boiled for hours until the soup has a whitish hue. This soup is very rich in calcium.
Mutura with bone soup is a special delicacy. A less complex version of the mutura is commonly sold on the street snack spots along the roadsides in high population areas, often directly outside a butchery. This mutura does not have blood in it. Some sellers will fry the mixture before stuffing it into the intestine and this makes the final snack tastier. For the adventurous, the mutura is a must-try in Nairobi.
Topic: Enjoy Traditional Meats and Snacks When in Nairobi (Read 2621 times)
