…are in season and I am stoked. Mangoes are in season across oceans and continents, from India to Pakistan, Australia to Nigeria. How fragrantly we’re joined. For me, the first fruits of the season are always eaten out of hand. We spend the first week or so re-acquainting ourselves with the familiar scents, part-ambrosia, part...
The truth is when I happen upon a new ingredient, I like to explore as much as I can. So I’ve done the soup and the salad and this time, it’s the deep-fried chips. I figured that would work better than roasted but that’ll be explored as well. Here, I deep-fried the chips for a...
With my huge batch of cooked cassava chips, I wondered what else I could do. I considered making Aipim, a traditional Brazilian cake – dense, moist and apparently delicious. We, after all share histories of food and more with them. However, I wasn’t sure my cassava was of the right texture, as it was in...
My obsession with re-imagining Nigerian cuisine often begins with street food. The end? Dishes with de- and re-constructed ingredients, new techniques applied to familiar flavours and more. Last August, I discovered cooked cassava shreds/ chips, also called Bobozi, Mbrakasi in the east and south of Nigeria. This popular street snack is sold with chunks of fresh coconut. This version sold...
I love the fact that I can smoke fish anything at home, with tea, or coals or with an incense mix my sister brought back from Dubai for me yonks ago and long before my trip. It’s a fairly simple process with no special equipment required. All you need are: Smoking mix – homemade or store-bought...
Harmattan – the season of dry and dusty, of conjunctivitis and freshly pressed mosquitoes (is this just at my end?) Of orange fruit and vegetables – carrots, agbalumo, oranges and tangerines. This season past, I noticed a few things – the regular fruits on display, but a little bit more as well…Read on. In Season:...
This has to be one of my greatest discoveries of 2014 – that frying boiled yam, cut up in little chunks is an adventure in textures. A couple of months ago, my children wanted fried yam but what we had was boiled. So I lightly greased a pan, seasoned the yam and fried away. The results? Golden...
I’m a yam fan – fried, pounded, roasted – all and every way. I’m a fan of waffles. Plain, with squash and pumpkin, many ways. And then…why not Yam waffles. 1. one/ a good way to use leftover boiled yam (another is in a hash…awesome) 2. an exploration
This is a simple salad with a bit of sweet and spice. Follow the ‘guidelines’ in ‘The Art of The Savoury Salad‘, I went about building.