Cooking with Dona Lídia

Dona Lídia is our maid who comes to clean our flat every Monday and Thursday. She lives in a poor neighborhood near the airport of Maputo with her husband, a taxi driver, and their 4 children. One of the strongest women I have ever met, certainly physically but also emotionally, Dona Lídia is a blessing. She cleans unbelievably quickly, is willing to help with any task and, in contrast to 95% of the Mozambican women I've met that are maids or waitresses or servants of any kind, Dona Lídia is outspoken and proactive and self-assured.

I knew immediately that we would get along well when, on her first day here to clean the flat, Dona Lídia let me know straight up that the place was full of cockroaches, that I needed to buy Cobra floorwax, that she'd like a uniform to work in, and that she'd like her salary on the last day of the month. What a welcome change from Dona Margarida and Dona Gina, our maids back in Chimoio, who despite our kind gestures (like financing D. Margarida's house) and generous salaries, never outgrew the subservient patterns pounded into women from years of a colonial regime and male-dominated tribal traditions. Our relationship always smacked of white and black, rich and poor, hope and hopeless. I felt endlessly guilty every day they'd scrub our floors and iron our clothes.

Dona Lídia, however, is different. From day one we got on really well. I asked about her children and her home and her favorite foods. She wanted to know whether I had ever been an actress in a novela in Brazil, and why Rico and I lived so far from our families. Despite our significant language barrier (Dona Lídia speaks Shangaan as a native language and thickly-accented Mozambican Portuguese, while I speak English as a native language and carioca accented Brazilian Portuguese), we manage to tell each other stories and laugh quite a bit at the misunderstandings that arise from the different versions of Portuguese we've each learned.

The main way that we've bonded, though, is through cooking. I feel guilty for the low wages that maids in this country get paid, so one of the ways that I compensate is by including Dona Lídia in our lunch on the days that she cleans for us. This way, at least, I know that she has a good nutritious meal and I often send things home for her children to snack on. This is practically unheard of in Mozambique, and it sure came as a shock to Dona Lídia, albeit it a pleasant one, that her senhora would cook for her and not vice-versa. When I make lunch, Dona Lídia always hangs around the kitchen interested in what I'm cooking, watching me with an amused expression, wondering what new and unusual recipe I will come up with for her to try.

One day we came up with the idea that we would teach each other recipes and use food as a means of cultural exchange. Our first session was a couple of weeks ago, when Dona Lídia taught me to make one of the most traditional Mozambican dishes, a type of stew called matapa. Dona Lídia brought the main ingredients already semi-prepared because of the lack of proper kitchen implements at our flat, namely a 2-foot tall mortar and pestle for smashing leafy greens into a pulp, and a special kind of grater that looks like a washboard and is used for grating coconut meat into shreds.

The main ingredient in matapa is cassava leaves, the namesake of the dish, kindly mashed beforehand by Dona Lídia. The first step is to boil down the leafy greens until they are tender and you have a thick green glop in your pot, as seen below.


The next step is to take several cups of shredded coconut meat and put them in a big bowl with some scalding hot water. Dona Lídia then instructed me to mash the coconut and water with my hands for about 5 minutes until a milky liquid was produced. Then she showed me how to scoop out the shredded wet coconut, press it firmly between my palms to get out all the liquid, and then discard the squeezed-out coconut bits for later use in a cake or another dish. The result was a rich white liquid that smelled divine. It ocurred to me that I'd just made coconut milk by hand, the kind I usually buy in a can imported from Thailand! Here is Dona Lídia supressing a giggle as I try out my awkward coconut squeezing technique.

After making the coconut milk, the next step is to pour it into the pot with the bubbling matapa greens and add in several cups of raw peanuts pounded into a fine powder. Lucky for me, Dona Lídia had already put in the hard work required to smash the peanuts and all I had to do was pour the nuts into the pot.

At this point you have to stir like crazy so the oil from the coconut milk and the peanuts doesn't separate from the rest of the ingredients. After everything turns a creamy, smooth green you add in some raw shrimp, a boullion cube, and some mashed garlic and let it all simmer away for about 30 minutes. At this point the smell is beyond delicious and I couldn't wait to try out our matapa. Here is the final presentation, along with some rice and brazilian-style black beans.

The whole time as we ate, Dona Lídia laughed and kept repeating, "A senhora fez matapa! A senhora fez matapa!" I think it was quite literally the first time she'd ever seen a white person, much less a foreign white person, ever attempt to make matapa. She certainly got a kick out of being my teacher for the day, and I loved learning how to make my first traditional Mozambican dish.

Last week it was my turn to teach the cooking lesson, and I showed Dona Lídia how to make a Lemon Pound Cake with a lemon syrup poured on top. She loved it, and took home half the loaf to share with her children, assuring me they would never believe that their mom had really made that dense, delicious cake.