Chocolate Cream Pie and the Food in Rwanda

My inaugural pie in Rwanda – tada!

I thought I should start out with an easy one for my first pie in Rwanda. No need to dive right into something like croissant-making, be trumped by new ingredients (not to mention lack of practice), and go down the hole of discouragement. Starting out easy!

For starters, I’d been really craving not only baking, but also good food. And by “good,” I really mean good-tasting, not good-for-you:P  When I first landed in Rwanda, I was quite excited about learning to cook the local cuisine, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that not much (of what I considered) cooking went into preparing the local food. You literally just take edible things out of the ground or off the trees, apply some heat, or eat as is. With almost every “dish,” you can pretty much tell where it came from. Food here is fresh, unprocessed, healthy. Let me demonstrate.

Pictured: beans, unknown vegetable mash that I assume is spinach but is more likely cassava leaves, meat (almost always beef), rice, and potatoes. Add to that drops of pili-pili (super hot chilli oil), and you have the typical Rwandese meal. Well, that is except for the cooked bananas, which is a major staple of the Rwandese diet but I don’t seem to like very much for some reason, and maize ugali, which queerly enough tastes and feels a lot like rice cake. And the mounds of fresh tropical fruit, like mangoes, passion-fruit, papayas, pineapples, and avocados, which are available everywhere for a pittance!

Not that these foods aren’t good – I actually much prefer the canteen here to Korean cafeteria geupsik (ick!) – but I just really really need my sugar-and-fat-fix from time to time. You know, the comfort foods that people raised on heavily processed meals are addicted to to varying degrees.

So, back to baking!

Luckily, even after months of staring into my computer, running around all across Rwanda, and basically NOT baking, I still remember how to make pie crust! After all, I do have over a hundred pies under my belt. Hehe!  The chocolate had me grocery-aisle-debating again. Anyone who’s done any sort of cooking knows that taste is directly related to the quality of ingredients you use. So, it basically boiled down to 1) should I use the Lindt, which is of proven quality but upsettingly expensive in this hilly landlocked country, or 2) should I go for the local brand at a fraction of the cost? In the end, I went for Cadbury (which, actually, may or may not be local) thinking that in the continent that produces cacao, how could I go wrong?

And I bet right because the pie was chocolaty-good! It tasted like chocolate pudding in an edible pie- crust dish, and satisfied my cravings for bad “good” food:)

I invited my new work colleagues over for a tiny sliver of pie each (like just the width of the buttercream decoration...), which I think most of them took for lunch before going back to work. Probably had the same number of calories as a plate full of food here. Haha!

Creamy and Spicy Crab Tartlets

I have finally arrived in Rwanda!

Or rather, I arrived over two months ago and I have finally settled in – more or less. Many things are still up in the air, but things have normalized enough for me to think about non-impending activities again. Like baking! Not to mention that my oven has also arrived awhile ago and is sitting a tad bit too decoratively in my new kitchen. And maybe I have a tugging feeling that I need to revive my old coping strategy-cum-obsession. It’s been much too long…

Baking in the land of a thousand hills will definitely be a challenge. The original deadline for the completion of this project is fast approaching; I have to make exactly 50 pies in about 50 days! But seeing as how I will encounter new obstacles in a new land (will I even be able to find the right flours?), I shall give myself a generous extension. Perhaps to finish the project in the 2 years that I’ll be here in Rwanda? A very generous extension, indeed! But who’s keeping track, anyway?

I begin the thousand hills chapter with the last of the morning calm chapter. These crab tartlets were made too long ago in what seems to have been my previous life, so much has changed since then. But if I remember correctly, the whole wheat crust was divine! Its cracker-like hearty crunchiness was made even better by its buttery flakiness. Really, I could snack on it the whole day long!

The filling, however, was somewhat less impressive. I’d chosen the spicy crab as my last in Korea because I knew I’d have very limited access to things marine and Asian in a landlocked African country.  But despite the homemade tobanjan and heaps of roe, it failed expectations. Perhaps it was not the best way the end a chapter. But oh well, not everything’s perfect!

***

Looking back – Baking has really made the last couple of years quite enjoyable for me. It is methodic, honest even. And to me, it is orienting. Calming. Comforting. Reassuring. And I’ve come to know that some things are just ‘good’ and there is no meaning beyond that to analyze or ponder. I mean, come on, what’s better than homemade pie? Yes, this is the essence of why I bake.

Looking forward – Who knows what the future holds? It’s hard to tell in the beginning what the end will look like. But whether you’re pleasantly surprised or unwarily dismayed along the way, it’s important to steadily plod through. So, here’s to the final fifty pies in the land of a thousand hills!