Sidvudvu - Olympic Food Challenge : Swaziland

At least one member of Team Soup is from South Africa, which made finding a dish to cook from Swaziland (A tiny little country that borders SA, also birthplace to Richard E Grant, if memory serves) a bit difficult.  Every website we looked at for inspiration, I was informed that all the nice-looking dishes were South African.  Grrr, I gritted my teeth and pressed on.

Pretty much every African country seems to have a version of this dish - made with maize or other starchy floury thing, which can be prepared in a number of ways, from a soupy paste through to a solid dumpling to accompany other things.  I held off making any of these as they looked, well, a bit boring.  But as the Olympic Food Challenge barrelled to a close (One more dish to go after this one...) I finally gave in and made Sidvudvu, which we served with, ummm, boerwors (Yes, I know this is South African, but my search for Impala steaks bore no fruit, so to speak...)

Also on the sadly non-authentic side is the sour cream, which I am reliably informed should really be something called amaas, a fermented milk product.  I hope you will forgive these small inaccuracies as it's been a long 19 days and I am now hallucinating foods of the world...



Ingredients
1 Butternut Squash
150g Maize Meal (Or Polenta)
1.2l Water
60ml Sour Cream
1tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Cumin
Nutmeg
Pumpkin Seeds

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºc. Peel and dice the butternut squash, them place in an oven proof dish and drizzle with oil.  Roast the squash for 45 minutes, until it is starting to turn golden

2. Heat the water in a large pan until it boils.  Stir in the maize meal, cumin, salt and nutmeg, and simmer until it starts to thicken and take on a porridge-like consistency

3.  Remove the squash from the oven and mash it, then stir it in to the maize porridge, along with the sour cream and beat until it has a smooth consistency.

4.  Serve warm and garnish with pumpkin seeds.