Cooking tool: Mbuzi ya nazi

Mbuzi ya nazi

Many cultures located in the tropics often cook their rice with coconut. This can be a laborious process as you must husk the exterior, open and remove the coconut from the shell, then finally grate and extract the flavor from the flesh.

For those of us from the temperate world, the coconut in itself is a mysterious fruit, probably most commonly seen on a beach resort hosting a tropical fruit drink. They are more of a novelty in American supermarkets and certainly not used to the extent of those in the tropics. I was first properly introduced to coconuts in Jamaica where they enjoy drinking the sweet juice from the immature coconuts (jellys) as well as grating "fit" coconuts for the staple of "rice and peas". Due to my adequate climbing skills, I was easily able to trade coconuts for cooking lessons and I have Mama Marva to thank for teaching me how to properly husk, grate and prepare coconuts.

An awesome hide-away mbuzi ya nazi. Doubles as a small table.

Tanzanians equally use coconuts in their preparation of rice. I was quite pleased when one of my friends wanted to come over to show us how to make a local dish though she was disappointed when we didn't have a mbuzi ya nazi. Literally the "goat of coconut", mbuzi ya nazi is a simple tool used to simultaneously remove and grate the coconut from its shell. After breaking open the coconut (in a method which I refer to as "monkey style" aka smashing it on a rock) you simply sit on the stool and scrape the coconut over the sharp metal piece attached to the stool. Women sit sideways while men can straddle the stool (though you won't see many men rushing to grate coconut).

A plate catches the grated coconut. 

I had seen this style of bench before in Nigeria (see picture below) which is a simple design and folds up quite nicely to save space.

A Nigerian Chief relaxes on his chair and enjoys a cigeratte. 

After some initial adjustments and the natural resistance one has when trying a new technique for something in which one is already proficient with a different methodology, I began to fall in love with the mbuzi ya nazi. It was so easy to use and saved so much time and labor. And best of all, it is simple and combined with another functional tool (a stool)!