Food Photography Kenya :: The Foodies Nairobi City By Chefchots

The Foodies is a micro pop—up restaurant, an intimate place where you feel at home. Fine dining dinners paired with handpicked wines

Food Photography Kenya :: The Foodies Nairobi City By Chefchots

The main staples of Kenyan food and cuisine are Maize meal (called Ugali when cooked and unga when raw) and rice. Ugali is usually served as a white stiff porridge, good for dipping in stews or making into a makeshift spoon when you eat with your hands. Rice can be served in so many different ways, but usually, it is plain boiled rice.

On special occasions, like weddings and feasts, the rice is transformed into a wonderful fragrant mound of colorful hues infused by the spices added like saffron, turmeric, and cayenne plus nuts and dried fruits, it is a celebration of food, known as pilau rice (influenced by Indian cuisine probably dating back to when the Portuguese invaded with the aid of the Goans).

Stews are mainly served for lunch and dinner, they can either be vegetarian like maharagwe (a tasty bean dish with onions, tomatoes, and spices all boiled together, making a thick bean sauce) or a meat stew, normally goat.

Served with the ugali and stew is a vegetable dish made from kale, onions, and tomatoes called skuma wiki (which translates means ‘stretch the week’). Kale, like many vegetables, grows all over Kenya and is found in most gardens. Another vegetable side dish that is popular is kachumbari, which is a tomato, chili, and onion spicy salsa, good for waking up your taste buds.

As a treat, the stews are sometimes served with chapatis, which is an Indian flatbread, the dough is freshly prepared and then rolled very flat before being shallow fried in plenty of oil, and served warm, they are soft and pliable but have a lovely crisp edge, they are great for mopping up the juices of the stew.

Then of course there is “nyama choma” – which translates as burned meat! But is a flavoursome Swahili barbeque. The meat is usually beef or goat and occasionally chicken.

Kenya grows some amazing-tasting fruits, plump mangoes, oranges, tree tomatoes, bananas, plums, grapes, and passion fruit to name but a few. So for dessert, fresh fruit is often the main choice.

Kenyans are known to be partial to a biscuit to two and make some great macaroons known as biskuti ya nazi (coconut macaroon biscuits) Hopefully this has to whet your appetite to go there and try some Kenyan food for yourself.