KAMITU
This was a delicacy for toddlers and the very old who had lost most if not all their teeth. Kamitu was made by mashing boiled beans and potatoes. It was painstaking work to lift beans out of the githeri for this dish. If the gods smiled and the land was green, it meant that there would be spring onions so partakers of this meal would have the treat of this mash up being fried.
KAMITU TWO
Boiled potatoes and green bananas mashed together. Sometimes for toddlers they would pour some milk into the dish because it could become hard after it went cold.
MUKIMO/IRIO
This one has many variations:
There is the boiled maize, potatoes and pumpkin leaves/or Mabaki (what are these leaves called in English?) mash up.
There is the githeri, maize potatoes and pumpkin leaves mash up.
There is githeri or plain maize, potatoes and pumpkin mash up. This one ilikua ngori because in the absence of pumpkin leaves, it means the farms are dry the maize or githeri had to be hard, dried maize. The pumpkin would sweeten the dish a little.
My least favourite, mbaazi (njugu cia gikuyu), potatoes and maize mash up. This dish gave me such terrible heartburns I shiver when I see it.
My favourite was and still is the soft maize, fresh peas and potatoes mash up. This one was always had when there was plenty in the farms and in the markets and peoples’ spirits were up. It was also a season of cabbages and carrots.
MATAHA
AHEM! Very sweet dish but sat very badly in the stomach. Woe unto you if you ate more than two handfuls of this dish. You were left feeling as if you were carrying a stone in you tummy, literally. Very heavy dish. And God have mercy on you if you gorge on this and take liquor after. This was prepared with the weirdest combination of ingredients. Njahi, potatoes, and some bananas called Mitore when ripe. I would still take a risk to have an “itaha” (serving) of this one.
GITHERI
You all know of this one. Githeri means “on its own” so it could be had plain on its own or “Mukarango” fried. Fried on this one means a lot of things. It could be fried with just onions that were allowed to totally brown to give it flavor, and a douse of water. Or fried with potatoes, green bananas, nduma, pumpkin, cabbage, sukuma wiki, carrots. Please note that it was not strange to find githeri fried with a number of these combined.
NJENGA
A rare dish to be made. Was mostly available during or after a ceremony, mainly ruracios and others before or after. It was a tedious process making njenga. So maize was placed in a large pestle and women would take turns with pestles to crush the maize. The blisters from this task! Once done (the husks removed and maize crushed properly) they would scoop it out into a large sufuria and repeat the process until the required amount was done. Water would be added and husks sieved out. The water was fermented to make a porridge (ucuru wa muukio) and the crushed maize would be boiled together with beans or mbaazi to make Njenga. Thus if you hear a Gikuyu say they are going or coming from njenga, means they’re going partying or coming from a party.
MUKANGU
This was a sad dish. Very. It meant that there was nothing in the farm and you were very poor to afford any pennies for beans, njahi or peas. Mukangu was dried maize, boiled. Salt. Period. Chewing it was labour.
GITOERO/ITOERO
Hehe, buckle up! The Gikuyus had/have some funny combos in the name of stews. Fried with onions and tomatoes when available.
Potatoes (yes them again), cabbage, carrots.
Green bananas, potatoes and a decent amount of water. If there was plenty this could be eaten as a dish by itself but if not this was a stew for ugali (believe it or not) or rice if you’re lucky.
Nduma, potatoes and water.
Browned onions, sometimes burnt, potatoes and water. Lucky if there were carrots, at least in the absence of tomatoes they gave this stew some colour. This stew was made for rice and yes, for chapos! Many a Christmas this was the go to stew and for those blessed enough there would be at least a few pieces of meat floating in the soup. For the very blessed, a piece of good ol’ kienyeji chicken. By the way I am going to make this one, one of these days without any meat. I actually liked it a lot. And you could tear the chapatti up and douse it the soup (we’d call it mutokoyanio) and eat it up with a spoon….
My worst of gitoeros was the pumpkin, potatoes and watery soup. Hated it and I hate it to date.
NYENI
What a lot of the Gikuyu people of today don’t know is that “nyeni” was used in reference to green vegetables. Managu, sukumawiki, mabaki, terere, thoroko, pumpkin leaves. The word mboga, was used in reference to cabbage. In fact if you were to be sent to the market or to mama Kariuki’s (uchuniwe kwa shamba) and told to come back with “mboga” for ten shillings, asking which mboga didn’t even apply coz you just knew it was cabbage. On the hand if you were sent for “nyeni” then you’d stop to ask which ones.
What was your best and worst meal of yester years? Na ni gani sijaweka? Ongeza hapo chini.