Australia has been switching up their nut spreads in recent years. We now have options like organic, healthy nut butters, cocoa spreads, and of course, the classic, sweetened peanut butters that we all once enjoyed slathered on white bread for school lunches.
However, there is one type of nut butter that we are missing from our supermarket shelves: mamba.
Mamba, or spicy peanut butter, is an everyday condiment in Haiti, and having it slathered on traditional Haitian breads (any crispy flatbread will do, though) or cassava is a common snack.
According to by Jon Krampner, the making of peanut butter in Haiti supposedly dates back to the Spanish occupation in 1697.
Krampner also writes, "In addition to being sold in jars, it's also sold by street vendors; most neighbourhoods in the capital of Port-au-Prince have their own peanut butter vendor. Shelled peanuts, raw or roasted, are pounded into a pulp with a mortar and pestle and spooned out to customers at street-side stands, either alone, on bread, or with casaba, a honeydew-like melon".
The spread is not sweet, like common peanut butters here in Australia - mamba is savoury, and can often be extremely fiery. It's sometimes topped with a dollop of jam or molasses.
A mild form of the spread called medika mamba ('peanut butter medicine' in Haitian Creole) has also been used to fight malnutrition in Haiti. The medicinal version of the spread contains, along with the traditional peanut paste, powdered milk, oil, sugar, vitamins and minerals. reports a 90 per cent success rate of treating malnutrition using medika mamba, with severely underweight and undernourished children showing enormous improvement after only six weeks on the treatment.
To make mamba, raw peanuts are roasted in a cauldron over an open fire until they are toasty and golden-brown, and then a large winnowing tray or hands are used to seperate the dried skins from the nuts. The nuts are then ground until a buttery, creamy mixture forms - it's . The peanut paste will then be turned with a Scotch Bonnet chilli pepper, or a habanero pepper.
While traditional recipes are , some simpler, non-traditional recipes will (such as cayenne pepper and smoked paprika) to maximise the butter's shelf-life. To deepen the spice of the mamba, dried spices will sometimes fried beforehand with hot coconut oil, to bring out that punchy heat.
Montreal resident Stanley Dumornay, who grew up in Haitian captial of Port-au-Prince,that mamba is one of those fundamental tastes of home that many Haitians miss after they've moved away.
“When they move away, Haitians often settle for bland North American peanut butter. Or they get people going back to bring jars and jars of it back for them," says Dumornay.
Now, Dumornay is the co-founder of , a Montreal-based company that distributes the spicy spread throughout Canada.
While mamba is becoming more readily available in Canada and the US, it's still extremely uncommon in Australia.
Source: Lufa Farms
Haitian-Australians agreed with Dumornay's sentiment - mamba is strongly missed after leaving home.
, a Canadian-Haitian creole singer currently living in Sydney, says that Haitian-made mamba is unique in taste, and she finds it's extremely difficult to find it - as well as a number of other Haitian ingredients - here in Australia.
"Mamba is hard to find in Sydney for sure! I should say maybe impossible! I don't know if it's the same thing in Melbourne or in Canberra where other Haitians are living."
"Peanuts in Haiti taste differently, it's like an explosion of this amazing condensed peanut taste. Mamba is spicy and is made with Scotch Bonnet peppers, something also very hard to find here in Australia. I did a Haitian BBQ party at my house with some friends and it took me months to find all the ingredients for the traditional Haitian dishes that I was cooking!"
Fingers crossed that mamba appears on Australian shelves ASAP.
