Kisii food: matoke, millet and the Gusii highlands

Drive into the Gusii highlands from Kisumu or the Mara and the land turns green and crowded: tea bushes, maize, avocado trees and, on almost every farm, a stand of cooking bananas. Those bananas are the heart of Kisii food. Picked green, peeled and stewed with beef, tomato and onion, matoke is what a Gusii family cooks for a visitor and what students from Kisii miss most in Nairobi.

Kisii and Nyamira counties are high, cool and wet, with rain in most months, and the food reflects it: bananas, finger millet, beans, greens and milk, all grown on some of Kenya's most crowded farmland. Our Gusii people page tells the history, the Tabaka soapstone and the obokano lyre, and our Kisii town page covers the visit. This page is the food.

The dishes that define the table

Matoke is cooked green banana, never the sweet yellow kind. The bananas are peeled (oil your hands first, because the sap stains), then cooked in a pot with onion, tomato, a little meat or beans, and enough water to make a sauce. Some families mash them smooth, others leave the pieces whole. It is filling, mild and slightly tangy, and on a cold Kisii evening it is the right food.

Obokima is ugali, and in the Gusii highlands it is often brown. Finger millet, a crop the Gusii grew long before maize, is mixed into the flour, sometimes with sorghum, which gives obokima a nutty, slightly sour flavor and a dense texture. Older people say white maize ugali does not fill them the same way.

Chinsaga and rinagu are the greens. Chinsaga (one leaf is rinsaga) is spider plant, slightly bitter; rinagu is African nightshade, managu in Kiswahili. They are boiled, drained, and simmered with onion and often with milk or cream, a pairing that runs right across western Kenya. Eaten with obokima and a cup of sour milk, they make the classic Gusii meal.

The ingredient: the banana

Bananas are food, cash and landscape in the Gusii highlands. Families grow several varieties: cooking bananas for matoke, sweet bananas to eat raw, and others for brewing. Bunches are carried to the markets on heads, bicycles and motorbikes, and trucks take them on to Nairobi and Kisumu. If you see banana stalls stacked along the road between Kisii and Keroka, that is where the matoke on Nairobi's menus comes from.

Milk, tea and ceremony

• Sour milk: fermented in a gourd or a container, drunk with obokima or on its own, given to children and guests
• Tea: the hills of Kisii and Nyamira are tea country, and smallholder tea from here goes to the factories and the Mombasa auction. At home it is boiled with milk and sugar
• Weddings and dowry visits: beef, chicken, matoke, chapati and rice in quantity, with the bride's family as hosts
• December: the month families gather, the diaspora comes home and the big celebrations happen
• Christmas Day: chicken, beef stew, matoke and chapati, often all on one plate

Words for the table

Where to eat Kisii food

Kisii town is the center, and its local restaurants serve matoke, obokima, greens and beef stew at lunch. Daraja Mbili market on the edge of town is the region's big open-air market, best on market days, with bananas, greens, millet flour and the soapstone you will see again at Tabaka. Nyamira, Keroka, on the road toward Narok, and Ogembo are smaller towns with simple places to eat. Tabaka, the soapstone carving village, makes a good half-day with lunch in Kisii.

Kisii sits between Kisumu and the Maasai Mara, so it fits a western Kenya trip or a road transfer from the lake to the Mara. In Nairobi, matoke is on the menu at many Kenyan restaurants, but obokima with chinsaga is mostly home cooking. If you have Gusii family, ask to eat with them.

How the plate is changing

Land in the Gusii highlands is divided again with every generation, and many farms are now too small to feed a family. More food is bought, and white maize flour, rice and bread are common. Banana diseases have hit some areas, and farmers have moved toward improved varieties. Finger millet and the traditional greens, meanwhile, are enjoying a revival in Kenyan cities as health foods, which helps Kisii farmers who still grow them.

A home recipe: matoke with beef

• 8 to 10 green cooking bananas or green plantains (from African, Caribbean or Latin grocers)
• 500 g (about 1 pound) stewing beef, cubed
• 1 large onion, 3 tomatoes, 1 green pepper, all chopped; 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons oil, salt, 1 teaspoon curry powder or a stock cube, coriander

• Simmer the beef with salt and a cup of water for 45 minutes, until tender
• Oil your hands, peel the bananas and cut them into chunks. Keep them in cold water so they do not darken
• In a large pot, fry the onion and garlic in oil, add the tomato, pepper and curry powder and cook to a sauce
• Add the beef and its liquid, then the drained bananas, and enough water to almost cover. Cover and simmer 20 to 25 minutes until the bananas are soft
• Mash a few pieces into the sauce to thicken it, or mash it all if you like it smooth. Finish with coriander