As the country numbers get higher, people just keep getting awesomer. (That was grammatically correct, right? No? Whatever.)
Our Rwandan chef-for-a-night, Placide Magambo, is a fellow that I’d never met in my life before he fed me. Sure, we had a friend in common – a fantastic guy named Aaron, who you really should follow on Twitter. And Aaron had arranged to have Placide prepare a home-cooked meal for us, based on his mother’s recipes.
But still: the guy had never actually met me. And he made dinner for 20 of our friends, even though we were complete strangers. Amazing.
Placide is one of those guys who immediately feels like a brother. He’s an accomplished journalist who knows a thing or two about media oppression, and he had seen his share of unpleasantness before coming to the United States. He’s a vibrant, insightful guy who builds deep, warm friendships – just seeing him hang out with a few of his American “sisters” was a beautiful thing to watch.
And on a higher-calorie note: the man can cook.
Placide treated us to an amazing tour of Rwanda’s best dishes, with some long-distance assistance from his mother (thank you, Mom!). Placide prepared a magnificent Rwandan rendition of pork stewed in tomatoes, onions, and green beans:
apparently, Rwandans do tasty things to pigs
Placide also prepared a nice, fresh salad, featuring lettuce, tomato, boiled egg, onions, and sliced avocado (avocado!!!), tossed in a nice vinaigrette:
a nice, healthy salad…
But that’s too healthy. Let’s get to the exciting part: carbs.
You know that I love ugali — wondrously dense balls of white cornmeal, known as sadza or nsima or nshima in southern Africa — but Placide’s Rwandan version was just a little bit different, made from a delicious but not-super-photogenic blend of white cornmeal and cassava:
but by ugali standards, this is basically a supermodel
And then there were more carbs. Here are some phenomenal fried potatoes, which are always a work of art when they’re fresh:
And then there was pelau, the Rwandan version of rice pilaf, featuring bits of… whoa, there’s some serious ginger in there. You can’t really see it, even when Placide is pointing right at it. But holy frijoles, this stuff had a delicious, ferocious, ginger-y kick to it:
And the real star of the show was the isombe, arguably Rwanda’s national dish, featuring stockfish, peanut sauce, and potato leaves — which, if I remember correctly, Placide’s mother sent straight from Rwanda:
even better than a supermodel
If you’ve never tried the stuff, isombe is another variation of those intensely flavorful stewed-greens dishes that you can find throughout Africa — it brought back fond memories of Cameroonian ndole and Namibian omboga and Central African yabanda, just to name a few of my favorites.
And as usual, the meal was another wonderful excuse to bring 20 amazing people together for an evening of feasting — including at least one amazing musician who had his serious, isombe-eating face on:
Placide, pictured with everybody’s favorite classical musician gone wrong
Rwandan combo platter, gone amazingly right
Huge thanks to Chef Placide Magambo for the amazing meal, the legendary Aaron Leaf for making this happen, and the even more legendary duo behind Todd Reynolds Music for hosting us all. Isombe!!!
