Welcome To Swahili Food
I’m nuts about nuts, haha sorry i know that was terrible. Growing up in Mombasa was glorious because of the abundance and variety in the snack department. Mombasa is a melting pot of so many different cultures and each one brought its own set of snacks to the party. One snack or shall i say treat that i vividly remember having was Kashata za njugu (peanut burfi). My walks home from school were always eventful, I always had food handed to me by my 10,000 mothers in the Village. Kashata za njugu was one of the many treats i devoured on the way home, its no wonder i was a fussy eater once i got home. Hehe sorry mum.
With my memory in tow, i decided to rummage through my vault of food knowledge, my trusty and dusty hand scribbled recipe book. This book is so old (20+ years) the papers are now brown but that doesn’t matter, what matters is the little torn, badly spelt instructions on how to make peanut buffi.
Reading it instantly made me smile because i remember how difficult it was for me to convince my mother to drive me to Mirikiti market to get Nido milk powder. Back then, that was where you could find the best deals on Nido amongst other things. It is also where i managed to learn about a few Somali treats but thats a story for another day.
The steps to making kasha za njugu are fairly simple. The tricky part is working fast to remove the mixture from the pot to the greased sheet and shaping them. That said, If my 9 year old self could manage eons ago, I’m almost certain you’re going to manage just fine.
