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:...
The last cups are poured slowly, sipped with dreamy eyes. Eyes glazed with memories of mornings and glasses of juice – mostly orange, memories of heat at noon and refreshing drinks, full of muddled mint and ice. Holidays for me are mostly about the unhurried cups of tea at dawn, the fresh juices I down...
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.
Many years ago, I ‘met’ Dambu Nama and was fascinated. A cross between looking like steel wool shreds and candy floss, this ‘meat snack’ looked wispy but gained ground and flesh as you chewed. After wondering for ages, I learnt the mystery behind its texture. Typically, the meat is cooked in a mixture of spices...