Vitumbua

Ingredients

• Rice — soaked overnight400 g
• Coconut milk300 ml
• Sugar120 g
• Dry yeast5 g
• Ground cardamom1 tsp
• Grated coconut60 g
• Vegetable oil120 ml
• Salt1 pinch

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Drain the soaked rice and grind it with the coconut milk into a smooth, loose batter.

   15 min

2. 2

   Stir in the yeast, sugar, cardamom, salt and grated coconut.

   6 min

3. 3

   Leave the batter to ferment four hours in the warm, until it is covered in bubbles.

   20 min

4. 4

   Stir the batter and check the body: it should pour in a ribbon rather than drop in a lump.

   5 min

5. 5

   Heat the dimpled pan and brush each well with oil.

   6 min

6. 6

   Fill the wells three-quarters full and cook three minutes, until the edges set.

   12 min

7. 7

   Turn the cakes with a skewer and give them three minutes more, to a browned sphere.

   18 min

About the dish

The rice soaks overnight and is ground raw. Cooked rice gives a gluey mass; what is wanted is a loose batter that settles into the well on its own.

The batter ferments four hours. The tang and the bubbles come from that fermentation rather than from soda, and without them vitumbua are flat.

They cook in a dimpled pan and are turned with a skewer halfway. Each cake should come out a sphere, browned all round.

Worth knowing

• — The dimpled pan can be replaced by an æbleskiver or appe pan. An ordinary pan gives flat cakes rather than spheres.
• — The batter should be noticeably thinner than for pancakes. A thick one will not settle into the well and leaves hollows inside.
• — Vitumbua are eaten warm with tea at breakfast. Cooled they lose their softness, and a dry pan reheats them best.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

320 kcal

Protein

5 g

Fat

12 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Tanzania

• Zanzibar pilau — Rice with beef on the island's spices: clove, cardamom, cinnamon and black pepper, and no turmeric at all.
• Ndizi na nyama — Green bananas stewed with beef in coconut milk. A Chagga dish from the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
• Mchuzi wa samaki — Tanzanian fish curry on coconut milk with tamarind and curry powder.