Frying • Simmering and Stewing • beef (ground beef) • beef broth or beef stock • cayenne pepper or red pepper • chile pepper • coriander • garlic • lemon juice • oil • onion • plantain (plantain banana) • salt • sweet green pepper (bell pepper) • tomato • tomato (canned tomato) • Eastern Africa • Uganda
Matoke
In Uganda, where Plantains are a staple crop, the plantain or plantain banana are known as Matoke (or Matooke). This dish, named for its primary ingredient, can be made with or without the meat. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar, Matoke usually refers to plantains cooked with meat. Also see: Mtori and Ndizi na Nyama.
Matoke Recipe
Plantain and beef stew, from Uganda.
Ingredients
6 plantains, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes
2 tbsp lemon juice
cooking oil for pan frying
1 onion, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 sweet green pepper (or bell pepper), chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 chile pepper, chopped
cayenne pepper or red pepper, to taste
1 tsp coriander
salt (to taste)
1 lb ground beef
2 cups beef broth or beef stock
Instructions
1
Place the plantains in a bowl, sprinkle with lemon juice, and set aside.
2
Heat oil in a large pan. Fry the onion, tomatoes, green pepper, hot pepper, and garlic together. Add spices to taste. Add meat or broth. Continue frying and stirring until the meat is nearly done or until the broth is starting to boil.
3
Reduce heat. Add plantains. Cover and simmer over low heat until plantains are tender and meat is done. Serve hot.
Ingredients
6 plantains, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes
2 tbsp lemon juice
cooking oil for pan frying
1 onion, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 sweet green pepper (or bell pepper), chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 chile pepper, chopped
cayenne pepper or red pepper, to taste
1 tsp coriander
salt (to taste)
1 lb ground beef
2 cups beef broth or beef stock
Directions
1
Place the plantains in a bowl, sprinkle with lemon juice, and set aside.
2
Heat oil in a large pan. Fry the onion, tomatoes, green pepper, hot pepper, and garlic together. Add spices to taste. Add meat or broth. Continue frying and stirring until the meat is nearly done or until the broth is starting to boil.
3
Reduce heat. Add plantains. Cover and simmer over low heat until plantains are tender and meat is done. Serve hot.
A dish of plantain-squash and dried fish
John Hanning Speke
John Hanning Speke, in his Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (London: J. Murray, 1857) describes eating something possibly similar to Matoke, but made with dried fish. By, “plantain-squash” he seems to have meant plantain (which is a fruit).
July 24th [1862] … I marched up the left bank of the Nile at a considerable distance from the water, to the Isamba Rapids, passing through rich jungle and plantain-gardens. Nango, an old friend, and district officer of the place, first refreshed us with a dish of plantain-squash and dried fish, with pombé. He told us he is often threatened by elephants, but he sedulously keeps them off with charms; for if they ever tasted a plantain they would never leave the garden until they had cleared it out.
(Where the Nile is Born)
The staff of savage life
Richard Francis Burton
In the late 1850s, Richard F. Burton explored Zanzibar and the nearby Eastern Africa mainland. In this excerpt from Zanzibar; City, Island, and Coast (London: Tinsley Brothers, 18, Catherine St. Strand; 1872) he writes about plantains in Africa:
The Musa, which an old traveller describes as an assemblage of leaves interwoven and twisted together so neatly, that they form a plant about 15 spans high is an aboriginal of Hindostan, and possibly East Africa, where however, the seeds might easily have been floated from the East : it grows almost spontaneously in Unyamwezi and upon the shores of the great inland lakes. Here the banana [and plantain], which maturing rapidly affords a perennial supply of fruit, and whose enormous rate of produce has been described by many writers, is the staff of savage life, windy as the acorn which is supposed to have fed our forefathers in Europe. . . . these East Africans apply the plantain to a vast variety of uses, and allow no part of it to be wasted. The stem when green gives water enough to quench the wanderer’s thirst and to wash his hands ; the parenchyma has somewhat the taste of cucumber, and sun-dried it is employed for fuel. The fresh cool leaves are converted into rain-pipes, spoons, plates, and even bottles : desiccated they make thatch, and a substitute for wrapping-papers ; and some have believed that they were the original fig-leaves of the first man and his wife. The trunk-fibre does good service in al the stages between thread and cord : the fruiy yields wine, sugar, and vinegar, besides bread and vegetable, and even the flower is reduced to powder and mixed with snuff. Never transplanted and allowed to grow from its own suckers, this banana has now degenerated : it is easy to see, however, that it comes of noble stock. In parts of the interior the people have during a portion of the year little else to live upon but this fruit, boiled, baked, and dried . . .
[Chapter VII – The March to Fuga. Ascent of the Highlands of East Africa . . . (Tabora)]