Muamba de galinha

Angola's chicken in palm cream, cut with okra and squash and soured with lemon at the southern edge of the palm's range

Origin: Luanda & Angola

From the journey of Oil Palm.

Angola sits on the southern limit of the oil palm, and the boundary runs through the country. North of it the tree fruits reliably and the cooking is built on its oil; south of it the rainfall fails, the palm does not crop, and the kitchen turns elsewhere. Muamba de galinha belongs firmly to the north and is nonetheless the dish most Angolans would name as national. It shares its name and its base with Congolese moambe and Gabonese nyembwe, and it diverges in two ways that matter. Okra goes in, which thickens the sauce and gives it a body the Congolese version does not have, and squash or pumpkin is added to break down and sweeten it. Many cooks finish with lemon, which cuts through the richness and is the clearest Portuguese fingerprint on an otherwise thoroughly Bantu dish. Kimbundu is the language that gave the world its commonest word for this oil. Ndende became Portuguese dendê, and it crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Angolans and West Africans to become the name of the defining fat of Bahian cooking. The oil that Brazil calls by an Angolan name is one of the more direct linguistic traces of the trade. It is eaten with funge, the stiff cassava or maize porridge, and with pirão.

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg chicken, jointed into small pieces
  • 400 g tinned palm nut concentrate, or 800g fresh palm fruit
  • 6 tbsp red palm oil
  • 250 g okra, topped and halved
  • 400 g pumpkin or butternut squash, in 3cm chunks
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 3 malagueta or scotch bonnet chillies, chopped
  • 2 lemons, one juiced for the marinade and one for the pot
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 stock cube
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 800 ml water

Method

  1. Season the chicken with salt, half the garlic, and the juice of one lemon. Leave for thirty minutes.
  2. Warm the palm oil gently in a heavy pot until it liquefies and brightens. Do not let it smoke.
  3. Brown the chicken in the palm oil in batches and set aside.
  4. Soften the onions and remaining garlic in the pot, add the tomatoes and chillies, and cook down for ten minutes until thick.
  5. Whisk the palm nut concentrate into the water and pour it in, or use the strained cream from 800g of boiled and pounded fresh fruit. Return the chicken with the bay leaves and stock cube.
  6. Simmer uncovered for twenty-five minutes.
  7. Add the squash and cook for a further fifteen minutes, until it is soft and starting to break down into the sauce.
  8. Add the okra and cook for a final eight to ten minutes only. It should keep its shape and a slight bite; cooked longer it goes slippery and dissolves.
  9. Finish with the juice of the second lemon and taste for salt. Serve with funge or rice.

Notes

The okra goes in last and stays brief. Angolan cooks disagree about how much it should thicken the sauce, and the honest answer is that a little slipperiness is expected and a lot means it was overcooked. The lemon at the end is not universal but is common in Luanda and makes the dish considerably better. Both palm oil and palm nut cream are used here, which is unusual and deliberate: the oil for frying and colour, the cream for body.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

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