Lesotho

Lesotho, the mountain kingdom, cooks hearty highland food, maize-meal papa with moroho greens, sorghum porridge, and slow-cooked meat. Sorghum beer and communal eating warm the cold Maloti heights.

Lesotho is the only country in the world lying entirely above 1,400 metres, and the cooking answers that: everything is slow, everything is hot, and nothing is wasted. Likhobe, stamped whole grain boiled long, is the third staple alongside papa and sorghum porridge, and moroho is often finished with a splash of soured milk.

Trout is an unlikely highland speciality here, farmed in cold mountain reservoirs, and it sits oddly beside a diet otherwise built on maize, sorghum and mutton. Sorghum beer is brewed at home and shared from a common pot, and the cattle that graze the Maloti are wealth and status before they are meat.

Mashed cooked pumpkin beaten with egg, flour, a little sugar and baking powder, fried by the spoonful until golden and rolled in cinnamon sugar while hot.