Technique: How to Juice a Lime

To juice a lime…with ease, you’ll need the greenest, smoothest-skinned, most fragrant limes. Ever. Well…..even yellowing, gnarled limes would work. Moving on. You’ll need a sharp knife and thus your wits about you. And a beautiful handheld citrus press, or you could be here all night. Don’t forget you’ll need a cup too, a receptacle to catch the juice. For isn’t that the very point of this tutorial? The juice. Which once done is set aside for a lime marmalade and a recipe that will follow. But first, how to juice a lime.

#Video: How to Cut a Mango

I didn’t grow up cutting up mangoes into pretty chunks for food. I didn’t worry about how to get my chunks all lined up in a row. I didn’t find my days and night taken with thoughts of salsas and salads Limed-fruit and whatnots. It wasn’t till adulthood beckoned… That I learnt how to cut a mango.   So, I hope you find this video useful….How to cut a mango on Vimeo.

Quick & Easy: Lime-Pickled Onions

It’s the transformation that gets me. The beautiful change of colour in the purple onions to almost magenta. It’s the acid in the fresh limes that result in this. That creates this thing of beauty. The bite of the onion is tempered, and the texture is slightly softened. The acid in the lime juice sets the colour and creates this vibrant pickle in a matter of minutes We know the effect of citric acid on fruit and vegetables – think of how acidulated water slows down browning in bananas and artichokes and most other fruits. It maintains and sets the colour and brightens...

Take Two: Catfish Ginger Curry from Songhai Farms

I post this, long overdue……from Sunderland, in the northeast of England where I’m putting my feet up, enjoying single-digit temperatures and reveling in the stunning views of the North sea. —–00000—– To say I brought back evidence of my trip to Songhai Farms would be right. Evidence in photos, and in food. I brought back a few bottles of fruit juice, some fish  – both Tilapia and Catfish and some fresh sweetcorn. On the farm, there is a huge pond with thousands of fish. And a wonderful viewing hut with holes in the floorboards through which you can feed the...

Passion Fruit, Carrot, Ginger & Papaya Smoothie

For when you can’t eat. Two pains I cannot fathom or explain – heartbreak and toothache. Are they really necessary for life, growth, healing? I wonder. I had an impacted wisdom tooth extracted last Monday. It’s not something I’d like to repeat. Or wish on my worst enemy. Now I understand what my friend Joy told me once, when I was much younger about being hurt and hurting. She said ‘…because I know how much it hurts to be treated like this, I don’t want even my worst enemy to go through it (the same kind of pain) so I’ll...

Travel by Plate: Saminaka & Its Yaji-spiced Fried Yam with Crunchy Chicken Skin

Travel by Plate is a series exploring food, culture and travel, from Nigeria to South America and beyond. Please welcome my friend, the wonderful Adetoun of Finding Uhuru who wrote this post. A few weeks ago, I cried out on Twitter, desperately seeking someone, anyone who’d been to Saminaka in my yaji-craze, someone who had experienced the piping hot yam, fresh out of hot oil and served with chicken, spiced and crunchy to high heavens. And ‘Toun responded. @Kitchnbutterfly I have. — Adetoun (@kinffeosi) January 3, 2014 The rest is history. And the present – here. Now.