The African Pot: Favourite destination
Eager lunchtime customers flocked to her kitchen in the industrial sites to partake of trotters, beef stew, madora and sadza, and she soon became known as ‘the benevolent matron of meals.’
In the commercial world, gifted cooks are like hens’ teeth, but following a tip off from a fellow foodie, George and I visited The African Pot in the ZB Life Centre, and came face to face with Mrs Babatola, a gifted cook from Nigeria.
Considering the numbers of customers visiting African Pot, Mrs Babatola is just as successful in food preparation and in drawing the crowds as the fictional Mai George.
If smart suits and ties are anything to go by, African Pot is a favourite destination for captains of industry, and movers and shakers based within the CBD. Since there is no décor to speak of at African Pot, table cloths are non-existent and paper napkins are of the ‘blowin in the wind’ variety, it is obvious that visitors are attracted by the lure of seriously tasty food, rather than the notion of being seen in up-market surroundings.
On arrival, George and I secured the last available table, strategically situated outside the restaurant, where we could see who was who in the city at lunchtime.
Inside, the diminutive and smiling sous-chef, clad in a pink kitchen suit, allowed us to choose from a variety of dishes, while Mrs Babatola carefully monitored all proceedings.
George made a ‘safe’choice of beef stew and rice, which was served in generous portions and garnished with cabbage and green peppers.
Some fetching looking bream cooked in tomato and onion caught my eye, but eventually I chose the zondos with sadza, and two side dishes, one of guru with rape, the second a portion of black-eyed beans. This veritable feast could easily have served four. With two cokes, priced at $1 each, the total cost was $9.
Well, I have eaten zondos at numerous establishments around and within Harare, and have even cooked them successfully in my own kitchen.
But I have to concede that Mrs Babatola takes the first prize for preparing this deliciously gelatinous and velvet textured dish.
With the addition of a spoon of home made chilli relish, rich in vitamin C and other life enhancing properties, this is the kind of food that has people coming back for more. The guru and rape was cooked to perfection, and the beans, with a flavour combining savoury with a hint of sweetness, were delicious, especially with another spoon of chilli.
According to Mrs Adebisi Vincent in A Cookery Book for the Tropics (1962), a typical Nigerian breakfast might be cassava cooked in coconut milk, followed by moyinmoyin (steamed savoury beans).
Lunch might consist of ewedu soup (a dark, leafy green, rich in iron and carotene) and meat, followed by fresh pineapple slices. Liquids and solids are both measured out in Players’ No 3 cigarette tins. For instance, a recipe for boiled rice calls for 3 cigarette tins or one and a half pounds of rice, 6 cigarette tins or three pints of water and one teaspoon of salt.
Mrs Babatola is unlikely to be measuring ingredients out in Players’ No 3 tins, and she will have had to adapt her cooking skills to Zimbabwean dishes and to available basic ingredients. Whatever her methods, the executive cook at The African Pot is well on the way to earning her own title of “benevolent matron of meals”.
The African Pot
Shop 5 ZB Life Centre
Jason Moyo Ave/2nd St
Harare
Tel 792379
– cmalakoff@gmail.com