December: Ambulo
Serves 4
Estimated time for preparation and cooking: 1 hour
A young man from Somalia shared this simple but very interesting dish called Ambulo during a Brent youth club session! The main star of the dish is red cow peas, paired with sugar. It is described as comfort food and the young man learned to cook this dish, among many others, because he wanted to learn how to provide for himself.
Ingredients
2 cups red cow peas
1 cup basmati rice
Salt
White grained sugar
Sesame oil (not necessary, but well liked with the dish)
Recipe
1) Cooking ingredients
a) Boil a pot of water (measuring 2 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice you plan to use later). Once bringing to the boil, add your red cow peas and leave on a medium-low heat for 40 minutes. This is because red cow peas are very hard and need to soften.
b) After 40 minutes, take a red cow pea out and squish it with your fingers to see if it is completely soft. If not soft, continue to cook it until it is soft.
c) Once the cow peas are soft, add basmati rice to the peas and water mixture (top up the water if needed). Cover pot.
d) Boil for 10 minutes and check after this if the rice is done. If not , continue to boil and check the rice in 3-minute intervals.
e) Once the rice is cooked, add a bit of salt and mix in.
2) Plate up!
a) By this point, all the water should be gone from the pot.
b) Plate your ambulo into a bowl.
c) Add a little sesame oil (if you would like to) and a teaspoon of sugar. Usually this dish includes a few spoons of sugar, but use one at first to check if you’re happy with the sweetness level or want to increase it (or counteract the sweetness by adding salt/sesame oil).