Malian food

We ate some Malian food this weekend and I remembered to snap a few pictures before it was all gone. The food in the sahel is not as interesting as other West African cuisine like Ghana, but a tasty break from the mostly European fare we've been eating at the hotel. On Saturday evening, Max and Fred walked to buy some bread and pastries for Sunday breakfast and stopped at a vendor on the side of the road who was making "aloko" - yummy fried plantain and fried dough whose name I don't know. The dough, to everyone's surprise, had sliced onions and hard boiled eggs tucked inside. It was delicious and tasted a lot like a chinese egg roll. The sauce it came with was a bit too spicy for me and the kids but Fred enjoyed it. Then for lunch on Sunday we ordered 2 Malian dishes at the National Park restaurant (pictures above). We all enjoyed it, particularly Lucy. One dish was called "Widjilla" and the description in French was "sauce a la tomato avec pate de pain suite a la vapeur." It was a tomato based sauce with steamed bread. Our favorite between the two dishes. The other dish was "Soupoukondia" and was "sauce combo mule de palme poisson fumes avec riz blanc." This dish sauce was okra based with palm oil and some fish and it came with white rice. As okra dishes go, it was a good one though I still have difficulty with the sliminess of the okra texture. It's the yellower of the sauces and shown in the picture with Lucy. Also pictured above is a replica of the green minibuses you see all over the streets here - packed tight with people and their goods. It was right outside the restaurant at the National Park so the kids checked it out and let me take a quick picture. They were fascinated by the people inside made out of paper mache.