Where do we start? With my fave beer recipe, obviously. Or fave two. Or ten. Shandy A delightful combo of Beer and ‘soft drink’ – from lemon-lime soda to Apple juice, also known as Radler. {Recipe} Chili Beer Sauce What more can I say? Beer and peppers in a hot sauce? Yum. {Recipe} Guinness Caramel Sauce A delightful, rich sauce that combines toffee flavours with the depth and slight bitter of stout. Great with churros. {Recipe} Guinness Bread Rolls The flavours of Guinness play up well in slightly chocolatey bread. Quite nice too. {Recipe} Beer Ice Cream Float Beer. Ice...
Recipes for Komkommertijd, Cucumber time
I was an adult when I learnt about Komkommertijd. I was an English-speaking adult in The Netherlands and so I thought of it as Komkommer time – a contraction of away and home. It was 2009, the year of my transition, my translation from grown-up to adulting. Or is it the other way round? Which one is the more mature, coming of age, coming into yourself reference? Which one is? I’m not sure anymore but all is progress, I think. Believe. In the United Kingdom and in some other places, the silly season is the period lasting for a few summer...
Friday Cocktails – Soursop with Coconut & Cardamom
This is beautiful. Really beautiful in a rich, creamy, totally tropical delight. A few ingredients and you’re well on your way to whipping up a delight. I’ve gone for fresh ingredients here – soursop, hand peeled; fresh coconut and lime juice but you could very well make your own cocktail with store-bought ones – cans of soursop juice, some ‘Malibu’ or other coconut liqueur. {How to process Soursop} {How to make Soursop cream} If you don’t have any Disaronno, add a drop or two of almond extract to your mix. Either way, finish with a squeeze of fresh lime juice. ...
A Talk – On Nigerian Cuisine
Yesterday, I gave a talk on Nigerian cuisine to a group of women at the 39th Nigeria Annual International Conference & Exhibition (NAICE) in conjunction with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, holding in Lagos, Nigeria. I thoroughly enjoyed myself but I almost always do when it comes to food, don’t I? First there was a tasting – we had a few dips, with plantain chips and pita crisps: Scent leaf dip Zobo pepper sauce Ube’camole Beer-Chili sauce (recipe soon) And then I shared my thoughts on Nigerian cuisine – its evolution from ‘sustenance’, to the present and future of documentation &...
Apple & Blueberry QuickBread
Here’s a sweet variation on the quickbread, with frozen blueberries and sauteed apples. You might need the following: {How to make quickbreads} (How to brown butter} {How to make vanilla powder} Don’t worry if you don’t have maple sugar – light brown would do. I don’t have much else to add. Just bake it. May your own variations – chocolate and bananas (Add chocolate chunks and cocoa powder? with bananas sauteed in rum or bourbon?) or pumpkin & spice with hazelnuts? Or a fruit cake version which would be awesome toasted with ice cream. Sigh, people, just go forth into...
How to Make Starch, Usi
Your foremost primer to making the best starch ever :). Starch. Usi to my Isoko heritage. Of cassava, like corn starch. Smooth, almost satiny on the fingers. And yes, this is the self same starch for stiffening clothes. Combined with palm oil, heated till a stretchy mass is formed, this is one of my favourite things to have with Banga soup. And fresh fish pepper soup. And other oily soups like Owho. A few things are essential: Good Starch The best starch come from the south of Nigeria. My Grandma used to make when she was younger, and stronger. At 93,...
Sunday Lunch – Starch & Banga
This is how you first eat starch, with your grandmother’s fresh fish pepper soup, thick with Tilapia and the noon day Isoko sun. Usi, she calls it – softly, slightly hissing the s . You are in your Sunday best – every mothers dream of a princess child – frilled hems and checked belts tied behind waists so small. You’re miles from home and you feast on the light starch, coloured orange and without seed/ koko. Served in an enamel plate, soup in clay pot. This is how you ‘cut’ starch. Balls pinched off the stretchy orange mass in take...
Banga Pottage
The mind wanders, not in defiance of boundaries but in search of meaning and truth. An exploration, not confined to history and culture and societal constructs. After all, the mind isn’t community, it is per person, per head, per brain to think and create and share. I’ve had Banga with ‘starches’ – pounded yam, garri, ‘starch’ and yes, the collective name for staples, the main accompaniment to soup is also a personal name for a specific type of starch, known simply as ‘starch’. Extracted from cassava, from shredded, fibrous flesh leaving the thickened white starch behind. For clothes, and eating. I’ve had Banga...
Amala & Ewedu at Nike Art Gallery
Now I know that my mum said ‘Never take food from strangers’ and all but when Nike offers you lunch, you sit down and eat. Don’t you? You don’t disobey your mother but you thank her silently for raising you well. For giving you the ability to make wise judgments – teaching you to know what to do and when. And so you sit down and remember what you know about this woman, who stood for a few minutes before you, crown on head and blue boubou. You remember your days in Ife, a few kilometres shy of fifty from Osogbo were the Nike...