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| Christelle with the mackerel |
Christelle and I have an unusual back story. We are both wildlife vets and to a certain extent, she is my 'career twin'...she has worked with bonobos in the wild, in a sanctuary and in a reintroduction project. The same goes for me, except with chimpanzees. In addition, we are both doing our PhD in Berlin at the moment, working with samples collected in the field. I really only got to know her this year, but after a bit of chatting, it turned out we spent a whole week at the same primate health conference in Cameroon, now eight years ago. Christelle even dug up a group picture from then with both of us. Oddly, we have zero recollection of seeing each other then, even though we both gave presentations during that week. Slightly disconcerting!
Over the last few months, I have shared many meals with Christelle and heard stories about her life in Lubumbashi (near the border with Zambia), Kinshasa and with the bonobos. Foodwise, I was very surprised to hear that Christelle grew up eating quite a bit of Greek food! Her mother became friends with a Greek restaurant owner in Lubumbashi, loved the food and learned to recreate the recipes from him. Another story involved a neighbour in a street near Christelle's house. He was an old man known around the area for eating dogs (not very common there), and Christelle recounts that whenever he passed, the dogs would bark at him more than at anybody else, as if they knew he was to be feared.
Today, Christelle is offering up a typical Congolese meal for me, three German friends, as well as Oby, a colleague from Côte d'Ivoire, and Tanguy from Gabon (who cooked meal 72. for this blog). She has stuffed and coated four huge mackerel with a paste of parsley, garlic, green onion and salt and placed them on the barbecue in the garden. The fish are scored along both sides to facilitate the cooking.
As we are waiting for the hot coals to do their work, our German colleague Werner confides one of his weirdest food habits. Growing up, he liked eating fishsticks with chocolate. I am not tempted to try myself, and very surprised to find at least one other person online who does have the same preference. Christelle has a more innocuous habit of eating ice cubes as a snack, and licking salt from her hand for the taste. Also slightly odd, but I do actually know a few more people who do the same.
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| Fufu (from maize and cassava meal) |
As a side dish, Christelle has prepared fufu, a starchy ball made with maize and cassava meal. I have tried pure cassava fufu before (as pounded yam as part of the Nigerian meal for this blog) and was not that convinced by the consistency. However, Christelle's version is a lot softer and with a pleasing, slightly grainy texture. Great with the cassava leaf sauce à la Congolaise. The way Christelle has prepared it, with peanut powder, gives it a very difference taste to the cassava leaf sauce I have eaten, more than 100 times, in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. Tanguy and Oby agree it is not comparable to their versions either. A real discovery! None of us have heard of the poulet mayo either, which has become famous in recent years. The chicken is baked/grilled first, then mixed with mayonnaise and in this case some bell pepper, and placed back in the oven or on the grill one more time. I do not think I am very familiar with mayonnaise in baked dishes, but the end result is very pleasing. Christelle says it is specifically popular as a bar snack to be eaten while drinking cold beer; there is even a catchy song with the dish as its title!
Though DRC is not that well known as a tourist destination, I do know friends who have had a very good time in Kinshasa while there for work. The nightlife is legendary, with music from international stars like Koffi Olomide, Fally Ipupa and the late Papa Wemba. The latter also popularised the "La Sape" movement, a flamboyant fashion style featuring tailored suits, dating back to the 1920s but still popular now. Brightly attired sapeurs feature in quite a few photo books, documentaries and music videos. To be fair, some of these focus on Brazzaville, the capital of Congo Brazzaville (or 'Republic of Congo'), separated from Kinshasa by just a river (also called the Congo), but with many cultural similarities.
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| Grilled mackerel, cassava leaf sauce, fufu, 'poulet mayo' and rice. |
