RERCIPE: Eshabwe : The Bahima’s culinary gift to the world

Made from unprocessed matured butter and salt, eshabwe, is a delicious creamy-rich, thick, white sauce unique to the Bahima, cattle-keepers of Ankore. It is also their culinary gift to the world.

Eshabwe is made from mature butter and not ghee, as is wrongly assumed by many. Ghee is clarified butter, which in simple terms means butter which has been heated to remove impurities. This is not the case with the butter used to make eshabwe, which as a rule is never heated.

Traditionally, clean, sieved, milk is poured into a gourd and hand-churned by agitating it through rhythmically shaking it back and forth, until butter is formed. The buttermilk is then poured off and the butter set aside for three weeks or so, to mature and develop its characteristic flavour. The mature butter is then washed to remove any impurities before it is ready to make eshabwe.

Ingredients
250g clean, mature butter
1 level tsp powdered rock salt
½ level tsp cooking salt
150 ml water, boiled and cooled

Method
Ensure that the butter is clean and has no traces of water or any other impurities. Dissolve the rock salt powder in 130ml of water. Pour the salty water in a cup, ensuring that no sediment enters. Dissolve the cooking salt in the remaining 20ml water and put aside. (Use a different coloured cup so you don’t get confused.)

Put the butter in a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon that has a very thick handle, using the handle-end to stir, until butter is soft and smooth. Add about three tablespoons of the rock salt water and continue stirring while adding in more a little at a time, until the butter turns thick and white. Should mixture curdle do not panic, simply add a little of the rock salt water and continue stirring.

When the mixture has doubled in volume, stir in the water in which cooking salt has been dissolved to get desired thickness. It should be the consistency of whipped cream. Finally, sieve eshabwe into a white porcelain bowl or sauceboat. Eshabwe is served cold and never heated. It can be served with millet bread, matooke, cassava or sweet potatoes which must be steaming hot.

Important: You must be sure of your supply of mature butter as the milk it is made from is not pasteurised and could transmit many dangerous cattle-borne diseases. Use butter only from farms where cattle are regularly treated and properly looked after.