Country 5: Angola - Mufete de Cacuso
I've gotten into the swing of the research for this project now. I look at countries and their cuisines several days (if not a week) in advance to get an idea of what I'm after. From there I start to curate my grocery list and piece the process together in my head.
I already knew that I was going to cook mufete de cacuso for Angola's dish, but I was looking at the accompanying side dishes that I was hoping to cook for it. This was maybe a day or two ago when I stopped and out loud exclaimed "where the F is Angola??!!"
At work in my downtime I would sometimes do the Sporcle 'countries of the world' quiz and oh boy was the entire continent of Africa a struggle. I had a colleague who was able to get all of them done in about 6 minutes whereas I spent days going over the African countries so I was able to get them all. Angola is one of those big ones that I feel like I ought to remember, but definitely struggle with.
Finding a recipe for Angola was difficult. Having a large coastline, a lot of their meals include seafood so I knew I would be cooking fish for this one. While I am predominantly vegetarian, I do also eat fish every so often (and will be doing so again for the next few countries too). However, finding a fish recipe from Angola that had ingredients that were easy enough to source was tricky.
A key ingredient in many Angolan recipes is palm oil, with which I have a difficult relationship. Palm oil has been used in African cuisine for hundreds of years, and is one of the most commonly used vegetable oils in the products in our homes. It's an easy crop to grow and has a high yield, meaning that you get a lot of oil from a few amount of trees. However, it's not the most sustainable of practices. Tens of thousands of kilometres of deforestation occurs every year to make way for more palm plants, in order to produce the oil. Ecosystems are destroyed and some species are critically endangered due to the colossal loss of habitat. However, as I learned while looking into Angolese cuisine, we are encouraged not to boycott sustainable palm oil. There are ways for the growth of palm oil to be sustainable, and the World Wildlife Fund are working with industries to promote awareness and help the industry prosper, while not sacrificing any more rainforest or species.
In the end, I opted not to go for a recipe that included palm oil. I don't feel like I know enough about the sustainable practices of its production to warrant using it, plus I wouldn't have a clue about how to source a bottle of it. My partner and I have been trying to avoid purchasing foods that include palm oil, and it just made me feel a bit confused overall. I would love to find out more about the ethics surrounding a sustainable production of the oil, so I'll keep looking into it. For now, I moved on.
The recipe I did end up cooking is mufete de cacusco, Angolan tilapia. There weren't any at Borough Market and when I asked the fishmongers there, they suggested Billingsgate Market, which is only an 25 minute walk from my flat.
Billingsgate Market is open from 4am until 8:30am. I was not a fan of this, but needs must and you can't say that I'm not dedicated to this project! I woke up at 5:30am (on a Saturday! Who am I?!), snoozed my alarm 3 times and was out the door at 6am. When I arrived at Billingsgate, I was faced with an hour long line to get in. It was 6:30am. I was flabbergasted. Who were these people and why had they all gotten up so early! Grumpily, I joined the end of the line and waited.
Social distancing is an extremely important aspect of the guidelines regarding coronavirus. We're encouraged not to stand within 2 metres of each other to reduce transmission. I think I'm fairly good at this rule. Other people are clearly not. I had half a mind to turn around and ask the person behind me to Just Take A Step Back Please And Thank You. I didn't have the guts to say it out loud, but I was thinking it!
Anyway. I eventually got into the market, found the tilapia and headed home. I was extremely nervous for this recipe. It's an entire fish, including the head and fins, and I have never ever cooked an entire fish before. Thankfully it was scaled and gutted already so I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that!
Actually, the dish was very easy to cook. All you have to do is stuff the fish with lemons and onions and bake it in the oven for 45 minutes. The recipe I was following also told me to use dill, but I didn't have that available at the time so I used parsley instead.
Another noteworthy comment is that the recipe I followed said that the flavour was very subtle - in fact, the food blogger who I was reading had mentioned that she thought the flavour was too subtle, and had she had attempted it a second time, she would have added more ingredients to make it more flavoursome. Angolans like to keep their fish quite fishy, whereas I prefer my fish not to be as fishy. So I tripled the quantity of lemons, and as well as stuffing the fish with them, I also placed them on top before wrapping it all in tinfoil and baking it.
Well. It was sublime. I would say it's one of the best meals I've made in this project so far. I don't want to toot my own horn but it was absolutely perfect. I did have to YouTube how to debone the fish after it was cooked, but even that I think I executed fairly well. I am genuinely so incredibly proud of myself, not least because I cooked an entire fish, but because it turned out so damn delicious. Maybe not as Angolan as it should have been (I definitely think by adding more lemons it became slightly more Mediterranean), but holy moly, girl did good. I had a glass of white wine to celebrate - a Portuguese duoro branco which I thought was fitting as Angola had been a colony of Portugal before gaining their independence.
If there is any dish that I recommend you try cooking, it's this one.
Mufete de Cacusco
Serves 2
Ingredients
I already knew that I was going to cook mufete de cacuso for Angola's dish, but I was looking at the accompanying side dishes that I was hoping to cook for it. This was maybe a day or two ago when I stopped and out loud exclaimed "where the F is Angola??!!"
At work in my downtime I would sometimes do the Sporcle 'countries of the world' quiz and oh boy was the entire continent of Africa a struggle. I had a colleague who was able to get all of them done in about 6 minutes whereas I spent days going over the African countries so I was able to get them all. Angola is one of those big ones that I feel like I ought to remember, but definitely struggle with.
Finding a recipe for Angola was difficult. Having a large coastline, a lot of their meals include seafood so I knew I would be cooking fish for this one. While I am predominantly vegetarian, I do also eat fish every so often (and will be doing so again for the next few countries too). However, finding a fish recipe from Angola that had ingredients that were easy enough to source was tricky.
A key ingredient in many Angolan recipes is palm oil, with which I have a difficult relationship. Palm oil has been used in African cuisine for hundreds of years, and is one of the most commonly used vegetable oils in the products in our homes. It's an easy crop to grow and has a high yield, meaning that you get a lot of oil from a few amount of trees. However, it's not the most sustainable of practices. Tens of thousands of kilometres of deforestation occurs every year to make way for more palm plants, in order to produce the oil. Ecosystems are destroyed and some species are critically endangered due to the colossal loss of habitat. However, as I learned while looking into Angolese cuisine, we are encouraged not to boycott sustainable palm oil. There are ways for the growth of palm oil to be sustainable, and the World Wildlife Fund are working with industries to promote awareness and help the industry prosper, while not sacrificing any more rainforest or species.
In the end, I opted not to go for a recipe that included palm oil. I don't feel like I know enough about the sustainable practices of its production to warrant using it, plus I wouldn't have a clue about how to source a bottle of it. My partner and I have been trying to avoid purchasing foods that include palm oil, and it just made me feel a bit confused overall. I would love to find out more about the ethics surrounding a sustainable production of the oil, so I'll keep looking into it. For now, I moved on.
The recipe I did end up cooking is mufete de cacusco, Angolan tilapia. There weren't any at Borough Market and when I asked the fishmongers there, they suggested Billingsgate Market, which is only an 25 minute walk from my flat.
Billingsgate Market is open from 4am until 8:30am. I was not a fan of this, but needs must and you can't say that I'm not dedicated to this project! I woke up at 5:30am (on a Saturday! Who am I?!), snoozed my alarm 3 times and was out the door at 6am. When I arrived at Billingsgate, I was faced with an hour long line to get in. It was 6:30am. I was flabbergasted. Who were these people and why had they all gotten up so early! Grumpily, I joined the end of the line and waited.
Social distancing is an extremely important aspect of the guidelines regarding coronavirus. We're encouraged not to stand within 2 metres of each other to reduce transmission. I think I'm fairly good at this rule. Other people are clearly not. I had half a mind to turn around and ask the person behind me to Just Take A Step Back Please And Thank You. I didn't have the guts to say it out loud, but I was thinking it!
Anyway. I eventually got into the market, found the tilapia and headed home. I was extremely nervous for this recipe. It's an entire fish, including the head and fins, and I have never ever cooked an entire fish before. Thankfully it was scaled and gutted already so I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that!
Actually, the dish was very easy to cook. All you have to do is stuff the fish with lemons and onions and bake it in the oven for 45 minutes. The recipe I was following also told me to use dill, but I didn't have that available at the time so I used parsley instead.
Another noteworthy comment is that the recipe I followed said that the flavour was very subtle - in fact, the food blogger who I was reading had mentioned that she thought the flavour was too subtle, and had she had attempted it a second time, she would have added more ingredients to make it more flavoursome. Angolans like to keep their fish quite fishy, whereas I prefer my fish not to be as fishy. So I tripled the quantity of lemons, and as well as stuffing the fish with them, I also placed them on top before wrapping it all in tinfoil and baking it.
Well. It was sublime. I would say it's one of the best meals I've made in this project so far. I don't want to toot my own horn but it was absolutely perfect. I did have to YouTube how to debone the fish after it was cooked, but even that I think I executed fairly well. I am genuinely so incredibly proud of myself, not least because I cooked an entire fish, but because it turned out so damn delicious. Maybe not as Angolan as it should have been (I definitely think by adding more lemons it became slightly more Mediterranean), but holy moly, girl did good. I had a glass of white wine to celebrate - a Portuguese duoro branco which I thought was fitting as Angola had been a colony of Portugal before gaining their independence.
If there is any dish that I recommend you try cooking, it's this one.
 |
| All stuffed and ready for the oven |
 |
| Served with a side of rice |
Serves 2
Ingredients
- 2 full tilapia, gutted and descaled
- 3 lemons - less if you prefer a more fishy flavour
- 1/2 yellow onion, sliced
- 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- Olive oil
- Sea salt
- 1 small bunch of parsley, roughly chopped
For the lemon butter sauce
- 60 grams butter
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons parsley, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Pour vinegar over the fish and leave to rest for about 10 minutes - this will help to combat the fishy taste.
- Preheat oven to 200 C.
- Line your baking dish with tin foil, with enough to wrap around the fish. Place your fish on the tin foil and stuff the insides with lemon slices, onion, parsley, and salt. Coat the outside of the fish with olive oil, apple cider vinegar, and add more lemon, parsley, onions and salt. Wrap the tinfoil around the fish.
- Place in the oven and bake for about 45 minutes, until the fish is flaky.
- When the fish has about 5 minutes left, make the lemon butter sauce by combining the ingredients in a small saucepan. Melt the butter on the stove and then add the other ingredients. Pour this over the fish once served.
- Serve with rice, or funge, a cassava flour side dish (I opted for rice!).
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