The theme for One World Week 2014 is ‘Living Differently’ and this year our series of One World Week guest blogs promote the 90kg rice challenge. We have challenged ourselves to sell 90kg of rice three times over to change the world for farmers and their families: so they can live differently and break the cycle of poverty.
Each guest blog takes up the rice challenge – to encourage you to get involved and change the world as you eat delicious fairly traded rice.
Today’s Rice Challenge Rice Recipe blog is from Liberation, the UK’s only farmer owned Fairtrade nut company!
“Hello from Liberation Foods on our favourite day of the year – National Nut Day! We freely admit to being biased – we are a Fairtrade nut company and we introduced National Nut Day to the UK having discovered that it existed in the USA. We hope you will agree though that National Nut Day is a great opportunity to appreciate nuts in all their glorious wonder – tasty, nutritious, delicious, easy on the environment and, in the case of Fairtrade nuts, easy on your conscience.
So what have the fairandfunky Harvest Rice Challenge and Liberation Foods got in common? Malawi! Specifically, smallholder farmers in Malawi who are a very hard working bunch and are represented by NASFAM, the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi.
The fairandfunky Harvest Rice Challenge is all about selling rice produced by smallholder farmers in Malawi to enable those farmers to send their children to school. At Liberation Foods, we are all about selling nuts produced by smallholder farmers in Malawi and their smallholder nut farmer colleagues in other countries around the world. Selling nuts on Fairtrade terms provides a secure and stable income for families from Brazil nut gatherers in the Amazon rainforest to cashew nut farmers in India to our peanut farmers in Malawi.
Allegra and Tesa Phiri
Even better in Malawi, growing peanuts provides nutritious food for farmers to feed to their own family as well as selling nuts to export. Peanuts are a very important part of the diet in Malawi, as discovered by Fairtrade supporter, chef, author and long-term friend of Liberation Foods Allegra McEvedy when she visited Malawian peanut farmers on our behalf – she was amazed and impressed by the variety of delicious meals made with peanuts. On her return from Malawi, Allegra was inspired to produce this recipe and even to especially recommend that it be made with Kilombero rice! And of course with Liberation nuts – available from Traidcraft, selected Waitrose branches and Oxfam food shops.
Mtedza Savoury Rice
This Malawian dish makes for a very yummy and simple supper. Mtedza is the Malawian word for groundnuts, which is what they call peanuts due to the fact they grow in the ground.
125g thick-cut streaky bacon, cut into 1cm cubes
2tbsp ground nut oil or light olive oil or rapeseed oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced (I used red for colour)
Half green chilli sliced
2 cloves garlic rough chopped
1 large breast chicken (250g) (marinated overnight in lemon & thyme if you fancy) cut into med sized chunks
400g cups of rice (if you ever see it use ‘Kilombero’ rice from Malawi as it’s very specially fluffy, but otherwise basmati works fine)
700mls chicken stock
Handful of coriander, rough chopped
4 tbsp roasted nuts, try Liberation’s Oven Baked Salted Cashews & Peanuts
1 green pepper, sliced small
Half a spring onion, sliced
Squeeze of lemon
Salt if you like
Pineapple to serve in if you fancy a retro moment
Blend the nuts, leaving a few to garnish the top.
In your fave large cooking pot, heat the oil and fry off the bacon until golden. Stir in the onions and sweat down for a further 5 mins, then add the garlic and green chilli.
Stir in the diced chicken and rice and fry everybody for a few minutes making sure the rice doesn’t stick, then add the stock and a little salt and put a lid on it.
From when it comes to a simmer it takes about 10 mins like that, then turn the heat right down and leave for another 10 mins.
Stir in the ground nuts, half the pepper and coriander and give it a good taste for seasoning.
Do the pineapple thing if you want, otherwise just serve hot or cold, finishing with the remaining three greeneries, a squeeze of lemon and a final scattering of nuts.”
To find out how you can take part in the fairandfunky rice challenge and change the world for farmers and their families in Malawi click here!
To take on the 9okg rice challenge for yourself – please get in touch with Just Trading Scotland.
Tweets by @fair_funky
