They look like bananas. But let me guarantee you this - they do not taste like the banana you are probably thinking of! These, my friends, are 'plantains' or as they are called in Uganda: Matoke.
Matoke is a staple of the Ugandan diet. Raw, it is white and firm - and fairly sticky to peel. Cooked, it is soft and yellow - and in my opinion kind of tastes like squash.
It takes a lot of matoke to feed a group of almost 200 people at Faith Quest Uganda. The number of peels on the ground is pretty amazing. The cooks would peel the matoke, then they would wrap the whole bunch up in the large leaves of the matoke trees. The whole large lot is then steamed in a pot over an outdoor fire.
The result? a soft, yellow mash of matoke. Generally, it's served with a sauce of some kind - maybe a ground nut sauce or sause with a vegetable base, and if you're "lucky", there just might be some kind of meat in the sauce (usually boiled beef).
I like it. Really, I do. I just can't eat a lot of it. I would sit and eat a bowl of matoke, rice or yams, and ground-nut sauce - and could hear my brain shouting at me as my blood sugar started to rise dramatically from the high starch/carbohydrate content.
But I like it. It's simple, filling, and for a Ugandan, something that grows in the back yard.
I think we should eat matoke here in the U.S.A. Maybe for one meal at Faith Quest Oregon this year.
Unless, of course, we could serve millet instead!
Just kidding.
But I liked the millet too.
