Okwu-oji is a spiced peanut paste served with garden eggs. One day at work, one colleague, P brings a rather large tub of Okwu-oji for another colleague, O. O is sure he’ll never see the bottom of the tub and so was glad to gift me some (that huge tub emptied out sooner than we...
Category: Nigerian Cuisine
Nigerian ‘Concept’ Dish: ‘Plantain’ & Groundnuts
The Concept This concept is as much about visual as it is about taste. In this dish I wanted to highlight: how street food – plantain (bole) & groundnuts can be translated to fine dining how to bring balance to a dish through food pairings how textures and flavours can be repeated in a dish in...
Failure & Success – Goat Confit to Dambun Akuya
Because sometimes, in spite of your best intentions, things will fail spectacularly. All that’s important then is what you learn and what you decide to do with it. The idea for a goat confit came after a discussion with a friend, B. I don’t remember the exacts but I know I was at a store...
Nigerian ‘Concept’ Dish: Beans & Dodo
The Concept I said my next concept dish would be plantains, so here we are. When I was growing up, we ate beans on Wednesday and Fridays, afternoons only. We ate beans with fish – fresh, fried, smoked…mostly fried. Dodo, fried yam and garri were accompaniments sometimes. Though I loved the beans my mum cooked,...
Ideas in Puff Puff: Easy Twists
I love Puff Puff and trying out new versions is what I love to do – not to say how easy it is to actually do. Some ways Make a new base for the batter So instead of making your puff puff batter solely out of flour, you can add fruit or vegetable purees, like...
Eight (8) Nigerian Foods that are Double Double
Puff Puff. Chinchin. Garau Garau. Fio Fio. Moyin Moyin. ChukChuk. Kuli Kuli. Goody Goody. Double double. Or reduplication if you want to be proper and all linguistic. Because duplicated words, repeated words carry weight. There are things you aren’t conscious of, till somehow you become conscious of them and the patterns emerge. It all began with Deepa,...
The Soup(s) Called Federal Character
Four soups, One bowl, Supreme mash up = Federal Character. The first time M said ‘Federal Character’ I was behind my desk at work and I went ‘What? Why? How?’ He proceeded to talk about how the major tribes were represented, in the bowl – a new dimension to Geneen Roth and her belief – mine too,...
Garri-crusted [Chicken] Scotch Eggs
When your goals are soft, jellied yolks, you know you’ve hit a home run with this chicken mince scotch eggs, coated in a yaji/suya-spice, garri crust. Garri makes a delightful crust instead of breadcrumbs. Gluten-free too. These gladdened my eyes and heart. To make this, you’ll need to: 1. Boil your eggs to perfection. And perfection...
Ram-stuffed Plantains
This year I begged for got some ram as a gift after the Sallah break. Thank you SS. So, what did I do with it? Well, I braised it – in a flavourful mix till it was tender. Then I took it out of the braising liquid, let it cool down before shredding. The shredded bits...