Katogo

green banana simmered in one pot with beans or offal until it takes up the sauce: the Ugandan breakfast that needs no side dish

Origin: Kampala & Central Uganda

From the journey of Banana.

Katogo means mixture, and the word describes a method rather than a fixed recipe. Green matoke bananas are peeled, cut, and cooked in one pot together with whatever the protein is, so that the banana absorbs the sauce as it softens instead of being steamed separately and dressed afterwards. That is the distinction that matters in Uganda: matoke is steamed and served with a sauce beside it; katogo is cooked in the sauce, and it is breakfast. The pairings are regional and personal. Beans is the commonest and cheapest; offal, particularly cow's tripe and intestine, is the version most associated with Kampala and is what a stall will sell at seven in the morning; goat, smoked fish, and groundnut sauce all have their adherents. Whichever it is, the dish arrives as one thing rather than two. Uganda eats more banana per head than any country on earth, and the East African Highland bananas grown around Lake Victoria are a distinct group found almost nowhere else: they diversified in place over something like a thousand years and there are hundreds of named cultivars, sorted by whether they are for steaming, for beer, or for roasting. Katogo uses the cooking types, which are starchy and barely sweet. It is eaten with the fingers or a spoon, from a shared dish at home and from a plastic plate at a roadside stall, and it is regarded as substantial food for people going out to work.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 8 green cooking bananas (matoke)
  • 400 g dried red kidney beans, soaked overnight and cooked, or 2 tins, drained
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 thumb of ginger, grated
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 700 ml water or stock

To finish

  • 2 spring onions, chopped
  • 1 small bunch coriander, chopped

Method

  1. Peel the bananas. Green matoke skin does not come away like a ripe banana: score the skin lengthways with a knife, oil your hands to stop the sap staining them, and lever it off in strips. Cut each into three or four chunks and drop them into cold water until needed.
  2. Heat the oil in a wide heavy pot and fry the onions until soft and golden, about eight minutes.
  3. Add the garlic, ginger, and curry powder and cook for a minute, then the tomato purée for two minutes more.
  4. Add the chopped tomatoes and green pepper and cook down for eight minutes to a thick base.
  5. Add the cooked beans, the water, and the salt, and bring to a simmer.
  6. Drain the banana and add it to the pot, pushing the pieces under the liquid. They should be just covered.
  7. Cover and simmer for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until the banana is completely tender and has taken on the colour of the sauce. Stir once or twice, gently, so it does not break up.
  8. Uncover for the last five minutes if the pot is loose; katogo should be thick rather than soupy, with the sauce clinging.
  9. Taste for salt, scatter over the spring onion and coriander, and serve hot.

Notes

Green cooking bananas are not plantains and not under-ripe dessert bananas, though plantain is the nearest substitute outside East Africa and works acceptably. The sap stains hands and clothes and does not wash out, so oil your hands before peeling. Cook the banana in the sauce rather than adding it at the end, since absorbing the sauce is the whole definition of katogo. For the Kampala offal version, simmer cleaned tripe for an hour first and use that liquid as the stock.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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