Everyone was so excited to see Leo that both his grandfather’s each slaughtered a cow for him. In the Shona culture, other than money and property one’s wealth is measured by the size of his herd, so slaughtering one is a big deal.
When a cow is slaughtered every part of its body is eaten and the hide is used for sitting mats known as dehwe. Usually, people will slaughter themselves and cut the meat by themselves and use an axe to break the bones or take the beast to an abattoir where there will cut it all up for you. For families that stick to tradition, certain parts of the cow will be eaten by certain members of the family like the liver is reserved for the men I think. The daughter-in-laws are responsible for cleaning the tripe and intestines. It sucks being a daughter-in-law! Especially if you have to fetch the water from the river, which I am terrible at. By the time I get home, I am all wet, I never mastered carrying water on my head.
The head and the feet are not skinned, the hide is the meat. You need to remove the hairs. There are two ways of doing this, you can use fire or you can use hot water and a blade. I prefer the fire method as it results in a smoky flavour after cooking the feet. Plus it is faster than using the hot water method.
You need to build an open fire outside, the burning hairs smell awful. You also need to have understanding neighbours, in Zimbabwe, it is not a problem because a lot of people eat cow feet.
Place the feet on the open fire to burn the hair.
Use a knife to remove the burnt hairs.
Place the hooves facing down in the fire.
Use the knife to pry the hooves. Be careful not to hurt yourself as the hooves do not come off easily.
This is what the feet will look like when they are “clean”.
Use an axe to break the bones or take the feet to a butcher and they will cut them for you for free. To cook mazondo use this recipe: Mazondo
