SEKELA JUGU

                                                                                                                                SEKELA JUGU & SEKELA JUGU MAWE

 

those of our friends who have lived in Tanzania will all I am sure have succumbed to the roadside sekela karanga or sekela jugu and jugumawe  Karanga or Jugu are the swahili names for peanuts and sekela simply means roasted in Gujarati

Most people would  buy these to take into the cinema, or eat with the sekelo mogo and a fizzy pop.  I recall the school kids buying bottles of pop during break and then pouring the karanga into the drink.

These karanga are a speciality of the street vendors and they are served warm and mostly in a paper cone. The locals heat up some sand, yes, you read it right, sand as it grains of sand! This sand is heated to scorching point and then the karanga which have been soaking in salted water are immersed in this hot sand and roasted. There is an art to roasting the jugu this way without burning them and only the most skilled vendors can do this properly.  Looking back at those days, perhaps the sand method sounds unhygienic but that sand used to get pretty hot if you ever caught your finger in the roasting karai.  Eating from a newspaper cone again doesn’t feel great any longer but that is how things were back then.  Of course, Manu would not touch those karanga from the vendors, we Vithlani’s are a particular bunch and so guess who had to roast these at home?

Full marks then to those who thought “Sandhya”.  Indeed, I had to devise a method of karanga roasting without the sand and in a matter of minutes   Manu and the boys enjoy these with a cold beer or two.  Here is how you could get a taste of the TZ karanga in your own Jikoni.

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Jugu

2 cups peanuts

2 cups water

4 tea spoons salt

Boil the water in a sauce  pan, add salt.As soon as the water starts to boil add the peanuts.Let it boil to 2 minutes,turn off the heat and cover the pot.Let that rest for about 5 minutes.Drain all the  water , Place in a  microwavable plate   for 3 minutes ,take the plate out and mix the peanuts and place back in microwave for 3 min again. Repeat again for one minute. Let it cool and Enjoy!!