Sudanese Potatoes, Okra, Rice and Salad

It's amazing to me that a dish from so far away, from a country so different from the U.S., could be so outright familiar. Batatis, from Kuli Papa, Southern Sudan, is a basically a beef stew, featuring peeled round baby potatoes. But John Yanga's story 0f how he came to cook it here, in Portland, Maine, is anything but familiar. Click at right to get the story, the recipe, and how-to photos.

The Story

Cooking Standing Up

By Lindsay Sterling

I’m heading into a public housing duplex. It’s two stories: red bricks on the bottom and cream vinyl siding on top. I’m looking forward to a Sudanese cooking lesson. Inside lives the Yanga family: two young kids, one tween, four teenagers and their parents, Rebeka and John. It’s John who teaches me how to cook batatis, his favorite dish from Kuli Papa, a village not far from Juba in Southern Sudan. Batatis is surprisingly similar to beef stew, only it features peeled baby potatoes and is not served in a bowl, but on a plate with white rice, okra, and salad.

For the salad, he uses iceberg lettuce but says he’d prefer arugula. “Arugula?” I ask. I didn’t think people who lived in public housing ate arugula. John says it’s what he’d serve in Sudan. It’s also what he’d serve if we were cooking together in July because he’d get it straight from his farm. “Your farm?” Two years ago, Cultivating Community, a local nonprofit, helped him start Yanga Family Farm on 2 acres they leased from a retired farmer in Lisbon. John drives a van forty minutes back and forth between home and the farm, and on Saturdays to the Deering Oaks Farmers Market where he sells local, organic produce. But since the farm is covered in 3 feet of snow now, he fetches baby potatoes and a garlic head he grew last summer from cardboard boxes in his basement.

John’s dream for his retirement is farming full time. Right now he still works five days a week at an engine parts factory. He wants to grow Yanga Family Farm to provide jobs for his children. Even though the economic future of small farms in America depresses me, it doesn’t appear to bother John. His business is growing. Last summer, Yanga Family Farm allowed John’s family to cut their food stamp usage in half, eat local, organic food, and make a profit. John is so thrilled with what he’s learned about the farming business here that he’s going to Kuli Papa for a month to help clear land and teach. “If you have a farm,” he says, “You help the country itself.” He knows all to well that the country needs help.

He left Sudan when he was a teenager because he won a college scholarship in Egypt. His parents encouraged him to go, not for the opportunities education would bring, but because Arabs were killing the most educated in their village first. Indeed, after he left, civil war exploded. Much of his family died. Rebeka described what John missed in her severely limited English: “planes flying low, bullets coming down.” She couldn’t tell me how many people she saw die. John translated that she didn’t see because she was hiding.

John and Rebeka married and lived in Egypt where he finished his bachelors and masters degrees in geography and theology and had five kids. They also raised John’s sister’s three children because she was murdered in the chaos in Sudan. When John was told he couldn’t work in Egypt because he lacked citizenship, they applied to become refugees. They arrived in Portland, Maine, ten years ago. At 51, John laughs at many of the shocking culture gaps his life straddles. I must have made some comment about his kitchen, that he needed more pots or Tupperware because literally every single pot he owned was holding leftovers in the fridge. He laughs and says he’s happy to be cooking standing up – in front of a stove. In Sudan, he cooked bent over a fire.

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2011

See How To Do It

Sudanese Potatoes -Batatis - with okra, rice and salad

First we collected his farm's summer bounty from the basement. What do we have here? Beautiful small potatoes (the perfect size and shape for batatis), shallots and garlic.

He got this okra from the store, but tells me he grows it in Maine no problem with help from a black tarp. Look how beautiful those peeled potatoes are! Like mini suns.

Okay, now lets get cookin'. Saute onions in oil.

Add the beef and let cook until onions disappear

We'll add garlic, peeled, chopped, and smashed with the bottom of the glass to really get those oils flowing.

Add tomato paste, oregano, cook, and then cover beef with water. I'm kind of snobby about bouillion - why use it? - but he told me that they used it because beef was too expensive. It was a way to get good flavor when you couldn't afford meat. Here's how it's lookin'.

Divide the sauce into two pots - one for the potatoes, and one for the okra.

Add peeled potatoes to one...

... and Sliced okra to the other.

When he was living in Egypt, John picked up this great salad trick: marinate shaved onions in white vinegar, water, and lots of salt and pepper. Let sit while you cook and then top the salad with them.

I was surprised that he'd use arugula for the salad in Sudan. It's too expensive here this time of year. He'll grow it for his family and his farmer's market stand this summer.

Print the Recipe

Sudanese Potatoes - Batatis -

with okra, rice, and salad

As John Yanga, from Kuli Papa village, Southern Sudan,

taught Lindsay Sterling, in Portland, Maine, January 2011

Serves 4

active time: 2 hours

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

2 yellow onions, rough chopped

1 pound beef, cut into bite sized pieces (bone-in for best flavor)

1 Tbsp tomato paste

5 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp oregano

1 bouillion cube

1/4 red onion or 1 shallot

water

salt

1 cup rice

1 pound baby potatoes, peeled

2 Tbsp white vinegar

2 cups sliced okra (pinwheel shapes)

6 oz arugula

2 tomatoes

1 large cucumber

salad dressing (lemon and oil)

salt and pepper

ground chili

Coat bottom of soup pot with oil. Saute onions until soft, and add beef. Cook on medium until onions disappear (literally, they will over time!). Smash garlic cloves, remove skin, chop and then smash to a paste with the bottom of a glass. Add to the pot: tomato paste, garlic, salt and oregano, and stir. Cook for a while, and then cover everything in the pot with water, add boullion cube and simmer on low for 30 minutes. Shave onion/shallot super thin and cover with white vinegar, water, salt and a shocking amount of pepper, in a small dish.

Cook rice as you normally would. Split beef-sauce into two pots. Into one add the potatoes, and into the other add the okra. Use separate spoons for each so you don’t mix flavors. Avoid stirring either too much by keeping the heat medium low. The okra is done when it loses its crunch. Potatoes are done when you can push a fork into one without resistance (about 15 min.) Turn off heat.

Cut cucumber into rounds, then quarters, and tomatoes into wedges and then in half. Assemble plates: rice in the upper middle, with piles of potatoes and okra on either side, not touching one another. On the bottom half of the plate make big salad of arugula, cukes, tomatoes and marinated onions. Serve with any salad dressing you like. He says they usually use lemon because they have lemon trees there. Serve with ground chili pepper and/or hotsauce, and salt for people to add as desired.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2011