Day 6: Mandazi
As I was munching on a mandazi, enjoying the aroma and taste of the slightly sweet cinnamon and cardamom wedge of piping hot bread, I thought to myself, by Jove*, (I think I speak with a British accent in my head), I shouldn't just sit here enjoying this scrumptious treat, I should learn how to make it! And with that, I walk over to the woman who made the best mandazi in town and asked her to teach me. I think me gushing about how wonderful her mandazi were and how none other could compare loosened her right up, because she readily agreed to show me how to cook them. She gave me the list of ingredients and we agreed to meet one early morning the following week. Her name is Badria.
I bustled into Badria's small compound, a sturdy house which she shares with her husband and six children, and plopped my arm load of flour and sugar, amongst other things, down on the cement bench which she uses as her counter for crushing herbs and spices and rolling out dough while not sitting on it. Anyways, here's what she taught me.
100 grams Cowboy (cooking lard/butter)
1 kg. Dola white flour
200grams white sugar
1 tbs. Freshly crushed cardamom
1 tbs. Yeast
2 coconuts scraped and milk extracted into first milk and second milk
Melt Cowboy and mix by hand in bowl with 3/4 package of flour. Add sugar, cardamom, 1/2 tbs. Of the yeast and 1 and 1/2 cups of the coconut milk (second milk to begin with). More mixing with hand for about a min. then add rest of yeast, first milk, knead, add more milk, knead, add a little more milk and rest of flour as you go except for a little flour to use during rising. Then knead a lot more! The dough should be very smooth and not sticky when you finish kneading. Then prepare the dough for rising by pinching a good handful of dough and smoothing it by pushing the middle of the dough ball with your thumbs and then pinching the dough pocket you’ve created by squeezing the bottom of it between your thumb and forefinger and pinching it off from the rest of the dough ball (bakers do this a lot with breads, turning the edges of the dough under and forming it into a smooth ball so it rises well, this is just on a way smaller scale). The dough balls should be a little bigger than a golf ball. Dust the bottom of the newly rounded dough balls with flour and cover and let rise on a cookie sheet for one hour (my batch made around seventeen balls, so you should be pretty close to there).
After rising, roll dough balls out, each ball into a 6 inch circle, then cutting the circle down the middle and across the center so you have four pies shaped pieces of dough.
100 grams Cowboy (cooking lard/butter)
1 kg. Dola white flour
200grams white sugar
1 tbs. Freshly crushed cardamom
1 tbs. Yeast
2 coconuts scraped and milk extracted into first milk and second milk
Melt Cowboy and mix by hand in bowl with 3/4 package of flour. Add sugar, cardamom, 1/2 tbs. Of the yeast and 1 and 1/2 cups of the coconut milk (second milk to begin with). More mixing with hand for about a min. then add rest of yeast, first milk, knead, add more milk, knead, add a little more milk and rest of flour as you go except for a little flour to use during rising. Then knead a lot more! The dough should be very smooth and not sticky when you finish kneading. Then prepare the dough for rising by pinching a good handful of dough and smoothing it by pushing the middle of the dough ball with your thumbs and then pinching the dough pocket you’ve created by squeezing the bottom of it between your thumb and forefinger and pinching it off from the rest of the dough ball (bakers do this a lot with breads, turning the edges of the dough under and forming it into a smooth ball so it rises well, this is just on a way smaller scale). The dough balls should be a little bigger than a golf ball. Dust the bottom of the newly rounded dough balls with flour and cover and let rise on a cookie sheet for one hour (my batch made around seventeen balls, so you should be pretty close to there).
After rising, roll dough balls out, each ball into a 6 inch circle, then cutting the circle down the middle and across the center so you have four pies shaped pieces of dough.
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Badria rolling out the dough
Dust each triangle with flour on both sides to keep them from sticking together and then stack on top of each other. You'll want to roll and cut all the dough balls before you begin frying. Boil a whole lot of oil in a wok on high heat. When the oil is fully heated, drop the dough triangles into the boiling oil and deep fry the little suckers! Great fun to watch them puff up and expand. Make sure to keep turning them with a large cooking spoon ( the ones with holes in them) so they don’t burn.
me having fun cooking over a wood fire
They are ready when they are a wonderful golden brown (see pics). Badria uses a strainer to put them in when she first take them out and then moves those out into a huge bowl lined with newspaper, putting the next batch into the strainer.
Badria and me with the fininshed product, 68 mandazi!If any of you are brave enough to try this at home, I'd love to hear how it goes! But for those more timid in the kitchen, I'd be happy to show you how to cook these delicious Mandazi when I get home. Good luck!
*By Jove!: Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter) or Jove was the king of the gods, and the god of sky and thunder in Roman mythology. It was once believed that the Roman god Jupiter (Zeus in Greece) was in charge of cosmic Justice, and in ancient Rome, in their courts of law people swore by Jove to witness the oath,[11] which lead to the common expression "By Jove!", still used as an archaism today.
I didn't realise i was swearing by a mythological god until spell checker said I needed to capitalize "Jove" and I looked it up. I wonder what else i accidentally swear by in my British accent thoughts?
Those look good, and judging by the ingredients probably taste really good too. They actually look like some food I had in Brazil all the time...
ReplyDeleteFor the ignorant, what exactly is first and second milk? Is second milk just "light coconut milk" (store name here) which is more watery, while the other is normal?
Anyway, maybe I'll get adventurous and try this. You can't go wrong with fried sugary dough.
Hey Matt! So you get first milk by straining the coconut meat and getting the thicker milk (so yeah, just go to the store, buy a can of coconut milk and use just a little bit of it un-watered down). Second milk is very watery, its where you run water over the sieve with the coconut meat inside and then press the remaining milk out of the coconut meat into the water. I don't think using whole coconuts in the states will work though, they are all too dry, so just use coconut milk from a can. I told Badria I would have to use canned milk when I got home and if she had been in her grave she would have rolled over in it! She just couldn't believe all the women back in the U.S. didn't go around scraping coconuts all the time and getting their own milk. I say, bring out the cans! Anyway, cool that maybe the mandazi are like the fried sugary dough you ate in Brazil, maybe mandazi are more universal than I thought. Happy cooking!
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