Rosa and Maria were our empregadas in Mozambique. They looked after my older
brother Simon and me, and kept the house. The story goes that when we first
arrived in Maputo – taken there by my father’s work – my mother insisted on
doing the cooking, despite offers from Rosa to take it on during the week. It
wouldn’t be necessary, my mother said, as she enjoyed it, after all. So Ma
continued to cook her repertoire of family dishes, accumulated over various
travels, alongside English classics, such as bangers and mash. That was Simon’s
favourite dish.
But, increasingly, she started to question her continuing rejection of Rosa’s
offers to cook for us. The smells that would come from the kitchen when Rosa and
Maria cooked for themselves were so incredible that, at some point, my mother
simply gave in. And once she had started, it would have been madness for her to
stop, because, for one, chicken amendoins superseded sausage and potatoes in my
brother’s estimation, and, for me, Rosa’s cooking firmly established Mozambique
as a place of food wonders.
Before I continue, I first have an admission. Chicken amendoins is a
misnomer. As a young boy, I was almost fluent in Portuguese, but we spoke
English at home, which is reflected in my family’s jumbled name for the dish.
The dish is actually known in Maputo as caril de amendoim, which translates as
stew, or sauce, of peanuts. It has a creamy colour, which makes it far removed
from other peanut based sauces such as a groundnut stew, satay sauce, or even
peanut butter. Before I learnt how to make it myself, relatively recently, I had
numerous theories about what it could contain, and became convinced it was
coconut that gave it a distinctive colour. It is actually just raw, pounded
peanuts in water that give it such a unmistakable colour and flavour.
I continued to enjoy Rosa’s chicken amendoins, cooking and company immensely
for the remaining few years we spent in Mozambique. We left Maputo in the early
90s, when I was seven. Except for a couple of visits in the early period after
we left, we did not return. My Portuguese was forgotten (I continue to be very
disappointed about this), and my memories of Mozambique faded. There was the
occasional discussion along the lines of “remember Rosa, chicken amendoins and
that bean soup, blah blah blah” although, naturally, over time those memories
became increasingly distant.
I thought that was it. It had all been relegated to the back of my mental
filing cabinet, alongside some other dusty thoughts that I’ll only ever be able
to recall in a very dim light. But that wasn’t it. I was wrong. Researchers have
long debated the relationship between smell, taste and memory, and it was not
for nothing that Proust wrote about madeleines. One summer, when I was a
student, my memories of Mozambique were brought back in vivid HD. It must have
been in my second year at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I’d become
good friends with a guy named Miles. We had organised a picnic in Greenwich Park
with his brother Duval, and Duval’s closest school friend, Yemi. Miles was
excited because they’d cooked one of his family favourites to bring along to the
picnic – groundnut stew, a West African sauce made with pasted roasted
groundnuts, onions, scotch bonnet pepper, and often chicken – which I tasted
before we packed up the food.
That was it. Right there in his kitchen, before we left for the park. It was
so evocative of chicken amendoins that I couldn’t believe it. I still remember
cradling the teaspoon, stuttering “bbb-but, but do you know what this is? How do
you make this? Oh, Lord!”
Bang! Time travel.
It would be apocryphal to say that this event was the beginning of our
partnership, although it was definitely the first in a chain of events that led
to Yemi, Duval and me cooking and hosting dinners together under the name the
Groundnut.
I recently had the opportunity to meet Rosa and Maria again, courtesy of
Eliseu, a good family friend who hosted my mother and me when we returned to
Maputo for the first time in over 20 years. What did we do? We hugged, I fumbled
with Portuguese and we ate together. What did I achieve? I learned to make
chicken amendoins. It was just like I remembered. Incredible.
Chicken
amendoins
To all intents and purposes, until I learned the recipe, chicken amendoins
was a work of magic in my mind. But it is brilliantly simple. Try to ensure the
peanuts are pounded as finely as possible to give the finished dish a velvety
texture although, as you’ll see in the method, you can control the texture as
you please.
chicken amendoins
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The dish is
actually known in Maputo as caril de amendoim, which translates as stew, or
sauce, of peanuts. Photograph: Elena Heatherwick for the Guardian
Serves 4
1 chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
375g raw peanuts
½ tbsp
salt
1 tsp black pepper
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
2
green bird’s eye chillies, left whole
Steamed rice and/or steamed plantain,
to serve
1 If your butcher hasn’t done it for you, cut the whole chicken into 8 pieces
and remove the skin. Season the meat with ¼ tbsp salt and black pepper. Cover
and set aside.
2 Either using a large pestle and mortar or a food processor, pound or blitz
the peanuts into a coarse powder.
3 Peel and cut the garlic into fine slices.
4 Add the ground peanuts and garlic to a deep saucepan with 1.2 litres of
boiling water and leave to cook over a low heat for 1 hour. Make sure the mix
does not boil.
5 If you prefer a smooth sauce, at this point you can strain the liquid and
remove all or some of the ground peanuts, leaving just the milk. Having said
that, I like to keep a good deal of the ground peanuts in to give the final dish
more texture.
6 Add the whole green chillies, remaining ¼ tbsp of salt and the chicken,
then leave to simmer for 40 minutes.
7 Remove from the heat and serve with white rice or steamed plantain.
