The Republic of Burundi is a landlocked country in the Great Riff Valley of Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lake Tanganyika.
Burundi was colonized by Germany and Belgium during the 20 century but became independent in 1962. Before then it was an independent kingdom. During the 1970's there were two civil wars, bouts of ethnic cleansing and genocide which resulted in hundreds of deaths and the country became one of the world's poorest.
In 2000 the two main tribes, Hutu and Tutsi, signed an agreement for a ceasefire, however, there is still unrest in the country.
It's a year since we last 'travelled' on our world food adventure. The food of Burundi was daunting and we kept putting it off. However we finally decided to give it a try - after all we are privileged to have a choice in what we eat!
For our Burundian meal we made: Ibiharage; Boko Boko Harees and North African spiced carrots. 😁
Boko Boko Harees
I had a bit of a panic as I began to cook as I realised that although I had read the recipes several times I hadn't noticed that the bulgur wheat had to soak for 3 hours! It was lucky that I had begun my prep early!
The main ingredients were: bulgur wheat; chicken breast; onion; turmeric and chicken giblets. Haha, chicken giblets! They are really hard to find over here, sometimes we get them in a whole free range chicken and we use them to make sock for gravy. So they were going to be missing from this dish.
As I was cooking I also noticed that although the recipe asked for grated onions and sliced onion in the list of ingredients it didn't mention the grated ones in the recipe - and I had cried buckets while grating them too - so we added them to the onion rings. We also had to make a paste from turmeric and water - I am sure I took a photo of this but I can't find it! 😁
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| The prepared ingredients, the ghee is added at the end of the cooking process. |
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| There is something very strange about boiling chicken to cook it. In the pot is bulgur wheat, chicken and a little salt! |
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| The bulgur wheat and chicken had to be cooked until they had the consistency of thick dough! Mmmm! |
The Boko Boko Harees is served with fried onion rings and the turmeric paste.
Ibiharage
We bought canned navy beans (which are white not navy! 😂) so we didn't have to soak them. I also made the berbere mixed spice (coriander seeds, cumin, fenugreek, peppercorns, all spice, cardamon, cloves, chillies, sweet paprika, salt, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric) It smells delicious.
Other ingredients are onions, garlic, salt.
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| Ready to start cooking. |
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| It only takes a few minutes to make this dish. After frying the onions and garlic to soften them you just stir in the beans and finally add the spice and salt. |
North African Spiced Carrots
I think this is a more general African dish, we included it to add vegetables to our meal. The ingredients are: garlic, paprika, cumin, coriander seed, lemon juice, and parsley.
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| The ingredients ready to begin cooking. You fry the spices for a while and then add the lemon juice and water and cook till 'syrupy', apparently the carrots should only take a few minutes to cook when added but ours took longer. |
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| When the carrots are cooked you add parsley and lemon zest - if you have some! The finished meal To be honest I should have arranged this in a more picturesque way on my plate! It was all very beige! Haha! Even our carrots were pale orange. You can see the turmeric paste and fried onions on the top of the Boko Boko Harees. |
Verdict
It was ok! We have been surprised before about how flavoursome boiled chicken can be, but the bulgur wheat had become very gloopy and was very filling. The fried onion added flavour but I wasnt a fan of the turmeric paste, it was quite grainy.
The carrots and beans were good, not good enough for us to feel compelled to eat them again but still quite tasty.
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