Chapatis

The glorious, ubiquitous chapati. I don't think there is a food more loved by visitors to Uganda, except for maybe the rolex. My first time in Uganda I ate these at least every other day; they were amazing and cheap and, how did street vendors manage to roll out such deliciousness? While in Mukono and Kabale I had my favorite chapati vendors to visit, a chapati is a chapati anywhere you go (in Uganda, anyway). Sometimes you'd arrive when a stack was already finished, waiting for customers, but the best times were when the vendors were just setting up, rolling out balls of dough, rolling them flat, then cooking them with an obnoxious amount of oil on a flat frying pan heated to scorching hot over a blazing charcoal brazier. I imagined they must be difficult to make, but luckily my friend's host mother, Doreen, showed us one night that they are the easiest breads to make, dispelling the chapati mystery forever. This was confirmed when, a year later, I was in Uganda again and my coworker, Clement, showed me and a fellow volunteer how he makes chapatis - exactly the same way as Doreen, albeit with a bit more oil. Suffice it to say I am presently a chapati-making fool.

Chicken Lababdar

The one that started it all, in terms of this blog, anyway. Chicken Lababdar is Seth's favorite dish at our favorite Indian restaurant here: Dawat. One night, after tasting his dish at the restaurant, I declared confidently that I could easily recreate that at home. However, an internet search for the recipe brought me three sites with the exact same recipe, including typos, causing my confidence to slightly falter. I am not one to give up, though (at least not with cooking) and the internet did provide a decent starting point, so that each time I make this I change something and get a little bit closer to what Dawat has to offer.

Chicken Shawarma

You might look at this picture and think, "I thought she said chicken shwarma; what the hell is this?" And, for the most part, I would have to agree with you. When I think of shwarma, I see small eateries with meat roasting on an upright spit (similar to that used in gyro places), where the meat is sliced off in thin strips, then finely chopped with onion, tomato and lettuce before being wrapped up in flatbread to make a Middle Eastern snack that is part burrito, part salt lick. Yet, there is this one place nearby where Seth and I go to order "big platter" (the owners/cooks speak about 10 words of English and the 5 Arabic words in my lexicon don't help much*) and we are given a plate loaded with hummus, sliced vegetables, lettuce, flatbread and chicken that looks remarkably like this. Do they call it shwarma? I have no idea, but one of my Middle Eastern cookbooks does, so there it is.

Cabbage with Yellow Lentils

I hope everyone had a fantastic Halloween and that you visited many houses that gave out handfuls of candy. Seth and I had originally planned to go out but changed our plans at last minute and stayed home, leaving us candy-less for the hordes in our apartment complex.  I tried to simply ignore the knocks on our door, but as the background music on the tv grew into crescendo I cringed and went running into the bedroom. I figured the farthest corner in the room was the safest place in case the kids should storm in, demanding booty. There might have been blood when I tried to give away canned goods. When I was young my mom gave out Little Debbie snack cakes, usually oatmeal pies. Yes, we were that house. I don't think Mom gave out candy until I was in college.