Seems like everyone else has had a chance to share one of their favourite recipes, so I’ve decided to share one of mine! I call it Archer’s cold revenge. This is because it is a cold rice salad served with hot spicy mince and when the two meet in your mouth…mmm…mmm.mmm! My housemates and I stumbled upon it late one Saturday night in 2005 under serious intoxication. We were really hungry and the month had chapad kona mbaya so we had to make do with whatever we had. So we boiled some rice and threw anything we could find into the mix. It came out so well that later, under sobriety, we perfected it!

Ingredients

1. Rice (depends on the number of people you’re cooking for. 1 cup serves two)
2. One large white onion
3. Two or three large tomatoes
4. One large green pepper
5. Mrs H.S Ball’s chilli chutney (it’s hard to find it in Nairobi, you may be lucky to find the ordinary flavour chutney at Nakumatt Prestige and Village Market)
6. One tub of mayonnaise

For the mince, I’m sure you all know how to prepare that so I don’t have to write down the instructions here. Just make sure it’s spicy kiasi.

Directions

1. Wash and boil the rice as you normally do.

2. Slice the tomatoes horizontally, comme ca

3. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut out the insides of the tomato, like zees.

The insides may be kept separately and used to prepare the mince.

4. Chop the remaining part of the tomato slices into tiny pieces, about half a centimeter thick.

After you’ve chopped all the tomatoes, place then in a container.

6. Slice the green pepper vertically into very thin slices, about half a centimeter thick.

7. Finely chop the slices into half-centimeter thick pieces.

8. Peel the white onion and wash it thoroughly.

9. Chop the onion horizontally into very fine slices, namna hii.

10. Chop the onion slices into very fine pieces, just as you did for the tomatoes and the green pepper.

11. Throw the finely diced onions into the same container as the tomatoes and the green pepper. Mix them up just for fun.

Relax with some vodka and lime as you wait for the rice to cook (and for your eyes to recover from the onion assault!)

12. After the rice is done, allow it to cool for a few minutes. This is important so as not to cook the tomato slices. This can be done by pouring the rice into a large plastic container and breaking up the lumps.

13. After the rice has cooled down, add the chopped onions, tomatoes and green pepper.

14. Pour in two thirds of Mrs H.S. Ball’s chutney into this mix.

Don’t try to read the rest, it’s in Afrikaans. You know, that slowly dying language that’s found in Southern Africa among those people who I don’t like very much?

15. Mix it all up until it turns into a nice red mixture.

16. Add in three to four tablespoons of mayonnaise.

Mix that all up very nicely. Add salt to taste.

At this stage, you may decide to eat this as a snack or dessert and you may wish to add finely diced sandwich ham. But if the rice salad is going to be part of a main meal, the ham and mince combination may not go down well. And it would be a good idea to ask before you do, since some people may not eat ham.

And voila!

C’est magnifique, no?

Note:

This is a very very filling dish!

What’s on my Playlist?

Together – Bob Sinclar feat Steve Edwards