Zanzibar Pizza

May 8, 2019
zanzibar pizza, tomato slices, white plate, lesso fabric, kanga,

I’ll be the first to admit, i hadn’t the faintest idea as to what Zanzibari pizza was. Was it pizza with prawns and chilli on top? Now there’s a delicious idea to try next.

 

I pulled out my trusty laptop and began to look for anything that would point me in the right direction to gain a better understanding of this Zanzibar pizza i was asked to make. I found a video by Mark Weins where he reviewed or shall i say crucified the Zanzibar pizza -Oh Mark, did you have to be so cruel? I expected to see something different but ended up watching what we call Chapati mayai in Mombasa get an upgrade. The steps are all the same except for the Mayo and cream cheese (Zanzibaris be bawling!) Those are ingredients that aren’t added in Mombasa.

My kids and i love chapati mayai and so i grabbed a bowl, the flour, salt, oil and got cracking with making my Zanzibari pizza in sunny Muscat.

Zanzibari pizza dough is fairly straight forward to make and the hardest part is waiting for the dough to rest. The longer its left in peace, the better it gets -kinda like most mothers

My verdict and that of both my kids? We loved it. I can see why its so popular in Zanzibar. Heres how you can make it: 

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Zanzibar Pizza

  • Author: Vanessa Mehri

Ingredients

Scale

Dough:

  • 1 cup of All purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup water; you might need more so add a little at a time

 

Fillings:

  • 1 onion; diced
  • 2 tomato; diced
  • Cream cheese cube
  • Mayonaise
  • Egg
  • Minced meat; i recommend my Samosa mix recipe
  • Chilli; optional

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, add the All purpose flour, salt and oil followed by water. Add enough water to bring the dough together into ball. Cover and set aside for at least 1 hour
  2. Once your ready to assemble, pinch off a small piece of dough. Oil your countertop and start stretching the piece of dough out into a large disk.
  3. Add your filling of choice, include the egg, cream cheese and mayo for an authentic Zanzibari Pizza.
  4. Bring all four sides together leaving a small space in the centre.
  5. Carefully lift the uncooked Zanzibar pizza off the counter and add it to a pan with a little oil. Cook each side for 8 min.
  6. Cut up into smaller pieces and serve with your favourite sauce or chutney

Keywords: Zanzibar pizza, zanzibar, swahili recipes, make mayai, east african snacks,

 

7 responses to “Zanzibar Pizza”

  1. maimuna juma says:

    good

  2. Giorgio Genter says:

    Simple and fast (not counting the time for the dough to rest) and very delicious cause everybody will fill it with her/his favorite items. Well, I naturally changed 80% of the ingredients above (adding 6 different kinds of cheese, 3 kinds of smoked sausages, but the dough recipe I followed quite exactly, obviously adding some spices, like garlic powder, nutmeg, red pepper powder, etc. which make the dough different and special every time. I found the egg, though typical for Zanzibar, not really necessary when one adds plenty of cheese (which also fills all the crevices). Thanks to this lady and an article on BBC News online I discovered another delicious preparation which I will surely repeat, in different variations, in the future.

    • Vanessa Mehri says:

      Hi Giorgio, Yes you can certainly skip the egg. I experiment with different cheese as well and love using gruyere with a little parmesan. Adding smoked sausage sounds like a brilliant idea. Thank you for that

  3. Muznar says:

    Lovely

  4. Maura says:

    Made these last night except we replaced the flour with gluten free flour because my mother is allergic to gluten. The dough turned out weird, it was crumbly, not elastic at all, and broke easily, still we went ahead and used it. We used some left over steak, some cream cheese, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and mayonnaise, and even though the dough definitely strayed from what the normal dough should be like, it was amazing. Since our dough was crumbly, transferring the pizza to the pan was stressful AF, one broke, but it was worth it. The mayonnaise was the shining role in this though, you can’t have this without the mayonnaise.

    • Vanessa Mehri says:

      Hi Maura, ohhhh thank you for letting me know how it went with the gluten free flour. A tip I have for you is roll it on some baking paper, when its time to cook just carry it to the pan with the baking paper

  5. Kris says:

    Attempting this now, past tries have gone badly so we’ll see lol.

    When I was in Zanzibar the ones we got were a little different. They used laughing cow cheese instead, no mayo, and add shredded lettuce. I’m using cream cheese like yours since we couldn’t find laughing cow yesterday, but keeping the rest of the filling from memory.

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