What to Eat in Malawi, From Nsima to Chambo Grilled by the Lake

Nsima and its relishes

Nsima is the centre of the Malawian meal: a stiff porridge of white maize flour, stirred in the pot until it holds its shape and served in smooth, rounded portions. For many Malawians a meal without nsima is not a meal at all. It comes with ndiwo, the relish: beans or pigeon peas, leafy greens such as pumpkin leaves (nkhwani) cooked with tomato and onion and often with pounded groundnuts, a stew of chicken, goat or beef, or fish from the lake. Along the northern lakeshore, nsima is also made from cassava flour instead of maize, and goes by the name kondowole.

Nsima is eaten with the right hand. Hands are washed before the meal, often with water poured from a jug over a basin; then a piece of nsima is pulled off, rolled into a ball, pressed with the thumb into a hollow and used to scoop up the relish.

Fish from the lake

Chambo, the tilapia of Lake Malawi, is the fish every visitor meets: served whole, grilled or fried, with nsima or chips and a relish of tomato and onion. Along the southern lakeshore around Cape Maclear it is grilled on the beaches and in the lakeside villages, often the day it was caught. Kampango, a large catfish of the lake, comes in thick pieces, fried or stewed.

The fish most Malawians eat are the small ones. Usipa, no bigger than a sardine, and utaka, small fish of the open water, are spread to dry on raised racks along the beaches and sold by the heap in markets across the country. Fried crisp or cooked into a tomato relish, they are eaten whole, heads and bones included.

The roadside and the market

Mornings start with mandasi, rounds of fried dough sold warm from stalls, often with a cup of tea. Along the main roads, sellers hold out cobs of maize roasted over charcoal, bags of groundnuts, lengths of sugar cane, sweet potatoes and fruit by the season. At town stalls, chips are fried in wide pans and served with a salad of shredded cabbage and tomato. On some main roads, sellers also hold up field mice roasted on sticks, mbewa, a snack many Malawians buy. The market of Lilongwe's Old Town shows the rest of the larder: dried fish, beans, groundnuts and maize flour, sold by the heap and the bag.

Tea from the south, coffee from the north

Malawi grows both. The tea comes from the estates of the south, whose fields of clipped bushes cover the hills of Thyolo and run to the foot of Mount Mulanje; in the country it is drunk sweet, at breakfast and through the day. Coffee is arabica, grown by smallholders in the hills of the north — in the Misuku Hills and around Mzuzu, the town that is also the base for the Nyika Plateau and Livingstonia.

Beer, gin and thobwa

Lager brewed in Malawi is the drink of the bars and the lodges. The country's other beer is an opaque maize beer, thick and slightly sour, sold in cartons that are shaken before they are opened. Malawi also distils its own gin, poured with tonic at the lodges at the end of the day. Thobwa is the drink without alcohol: sweet and slightly sour, made from maize and millet and lightly fermented, brewed at home and sold in the markets.