Everyone can make these quick and easy recipes in a flash. Raw Enjoy like cereal with dried fruit and chopped up fresh fruit Muesli Mix your own…. Swiss Bircher / Overnight Oats With your homemade muesli mix, make the yummiest Swiss Bircher/ overnight oats with grated apple… Toasted oats One of my favourite ways ever to have oats. Great as a cereal, cooked or layered in a parfait. Oats with Peanut Butter and Fruit puree Or nutella. Or speculoos paste. Up to you really… Baked Quite the amazing thing…with a somewhat bruleed top…and soft, stewed apples. Oh deliciousness has a name,...
Mango Puff-Puff
There are ten thousand ways to eat mangoes and this is just one of them. Add chunks of mango, tossed in sugar to puff-puff batter just before you fry. How to cut mangoes into chunks Puff-puff recipe My go to would have been lime but I only had oranges, so I put some zest in the mix. And then combined just before frying and shaping the spheres into life…in hot oil. They emerged, sporting eyes of orange. And yellow. Firm mangoes gone soft and juicy and perfectly matched with the chewy puff-puff. Everyone loved them. At home and at the...
Shakshuka: Baked Eggs in a Spicy Tomato Sauce
It was only ever a matter of time before this happened. I’m glad I waited though ’cause I got to ‘launch’ my new cast iron skillet…and use my feta cheese (which had gotten lost somewhere in the treasure box that’s my deep freezer) . And flambe some of my green gin peppers. First tried in Dubai, this dish is somewhat like a deconstructed Nigerian omelette. You start with a sauté of onions and peppers – I save time by using leftover sautéed peppers. Then I add some roughly tomatoes from a tin. Virtuous tomatoes. Honestly, not all that’s fresh is...
How To Hold a Feast, of Snails
Wait till the rainy season when snails are in abundance. Don’t be tempted to pick their tiny cousins from gardens green as you did when you were this high…and call it a feast. Best find a market and prepare to shell out some dosh. I say find a market where they have snails and will do the hard, slime work for you. The picking, the cleaning and the bagging. Don’t buy from the deep freezer of a shop, supermarket except you were there when they were delivered :), fresh. Ask for extra Alum, if you like. So when you make...
Baked Snails with a Garri Crust
Snails are my latest obsession, can you tell? Well, they are in season so…yes, go for it I say to myself. Do new things. Embrace new combinations and textures. One. Slice them and place in pretty dishes. Don’t worry too much about whether or not you have enough snails. No one ever has enough snails. Ever. Move on. Don’t cry. By now, you should have the scent leaf sauce/dip in your rotation. Two, ladle spoonfuls of your gorgeous green dip over the snails. Stop. Stare. Admire some. And then, in a move not unusual, do three. Three. The topping of...
The Art, Science & Beauty of Kilishi
Work of art. Like lace. I mean just look at it. This long strip of meat, coloured brown with flecks of red and full of holes. I want this in a glass frame, hung up on my wall. I want to trace the rings and the lines, find out how and where it lay. Under what noon day sun, swimming in what bath of spices? I want to know if it likes its cousins of chicken and ram but if it considers itself king? I want to extol the virtues of this piece of meat, sun-dried then baked, loving wrapped...
Pretty in Some Pink – Coconut & Lime Cake
Which wasn’t very coconutty to be honest. Thing was, I wanted to make a cake without using dairy…and so replaced the yogurt with coconut cream. Except the beautiful cream with its sweet fragrance didn’t bake itself complete with the fragrance. I’m getting increasingly annoyed with coconut milk. I find the fragrance and flavour disappear in baked and friend goods…I might have to resort to ‘coconut powder’ in an attempt at preservation. Still, this cake was nice. The winner for me though were the dainty decorations on top. I baked it in a tart tin, one without a loose bottom. I made...
‘Epapa’ (Mokey Kola) Relish & Garlicky Snails
When I first discovered Epapa – Monkey Kola/ Cola, I was intrigued by its crisp crunch – part water chestnut, part carrot and its vegetal flavour, a cross between fresh green peas and young carrots. And then one night, with a wealth of it, I decided to make a relish of it. I blitzed pieces of Epapa with coconut, cilantro, scent leaves, ginger, garlic, chili, sugar, salt…Essentially the scent leaf dip sans water and oil. It was chopped and salad and sauce and fresh and crunch and everything at once. Enjoyed with Nigerian-French (:) snails – sauteed like for the snail salad, but...
Nigerian Sautéed Snail Salad
Because you can do more with Nigerian land snails than eat them and make Jollof. Because the peculiar chewy, crunchy texture lends itself to moreTo being sautéed in sweet butter and garlic and young scent leaves. Like strewn atop a bed of greens and herbs. Simple to assemble. And delicious. Think fresh and crunchy, chewy and spice, soft and juicy and all things nice. And here are a few tips you might need: Prepping snails for recipes Cooking snails for use in a recipe How to chiffonade herbs And yes, there is another ‘snail exploration’ coming up – think baked. You,...