When making food, especially food from other cultures, you will always hear the people who tell you "This is not the authentic way/recipe". And this is valid critique when you proclaim to make the authentic version, and you then veer off course and add something which is not authentic etc. But when you can get past this hurdle, I think the world of awesome food lies ahead of you. This is especially the case with foreign or uncommon ingredients and ways of cooking. When you amalgamate different cultures' food and techniques, your own cooking will drastically improve.

Today I want to introduce you to Umfino and Umphokoqo. Umphokoqo is in my native language "krummel pap", which translates directly to crumbled porridge. This dish, Umphokoqo, was apparently Nelson Mandela's favourite. The dish, which is called the "African salad", is basically the porridge with soured or fermented milk (not yoghurt). See a recipe here. Umfino, on the other hand, is also a porridge dish, but this uses the same technique as I used in my previous porridge recipe post. (See how to make South African porridge.) Instead of throwing in condensed milk and canned sweetened corm, you add spinach or amaranth leaves. In South Africa, amaranth is called marog or morogo which is also called African spinach. In this recipe, you boil the porridge and amaranth leaves/spinach together. See a recipe here for Umfino.

However, I combine these two different styles of porridge to make something which I think has more flavour, i.e. burned crispy porridge bits. I take some leftover crumbled porridge and fry this with the vegetables (onion, garlic, amaranth leaves, garlic chives and spinach). At the bottom of the pan, some of the porridge will stick and fry and turn crispy and caramelized. So, please see the recipe and photographs below and try this recipe or try one of the recipes above and share some South African food/cultural heritage!

Growing Your Own Vegetables

This step is obviously optional, but I think homegrown veggies are the best. Here are just some images of my amaranth and spinach!

Chopping the Vegetables

I love to use the spinach stems, I cut them with the onions and fry them as well.

Cooking My Umfino Recipe

In the first photograph, you will see me using the icecubed fat blocks from my previous posts. (See my Rendered beef tallow recipe) This is so versatile and useful. I fry the onion mix until well caramelized and then I add the crumbled porridge and fry it as well for a bit. I then add the chopped leaves and cook them through. In the last photograph in this section, you will see the fried pieces of porridge which stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Enjoy!

This is an awesome side dish for any meaty meal or you can make this for a lunch! I think it is really healthy (if you find leafy greens like spinach healthy). And it just really tastes so good!