My Guide to Food – Exploring and Mapping intersections between Nigerian Cuisine and Foods of the World
The Concept This concept is about sushi, Japanese rice rolls. Years ago, I attended a sushi workshop in the Netherlands and fell in love with the perfect bites of rice wrapped in seaweed sheets. Here, I’ve combined ‘traditional’, palm-oil based flavours using gorgeous dry fish skin instead of the nori sheets, smoky rice and fresh […]
Becoming comfortable with progression is one of the best things to happen to me as an adult. Starting a thing and then making periodic changes to improve it. Often, we are loathe to begin because we don’t have it fully fleshed out and we believe the world might not be as accommodating of our step-wise […]
I’ve always associated these walnuts with road trips since I was a child. Now, I see them on trays, little bags tied in cones, part black, part glistening. While in traffic a few weeks ago, I purchased a bag, tore it open and cracked a shell after ‘cleaning” it. It split in half, and I […]
Tomato. ‘Stew’. The mother. If ever there was a mother sauce to define Nigerian cuisine, this is it – this blend of tomatoes, red onions and peppers. It is the base of a lot of things to come out of the Nigerian kitchen. You’d be hard-pressed to find a sauce of more importance to the Nigerian […]
I wanted a way to ‘trap’ the sweet and spicy flavours of the pepper fruit and I dreamt up scones. I felt as though the slightly sweet dough could work well with the spice and scent of pepper fruit. I got a mix of green and red pepper fruit and blitzed them – seeds and […]
After a few months of getting family members addicted to my Zobo, my friend M came round one Sunday. All excited to serve a Hausa person my version, I poured her a cup. I wanted her thoughts on my combination of zobo calyxes, ginger, cloves, and sweetener (some people add pineapple skins). She tasted and […]
‘We need to diversify the Nigerian economy’, our Minister of Industry, Trade & Investment, Mr. Okechukwu Enelamah says in many places – on CNN, at global meetings, etc: “Necessity is the mother of invention,” he says. “Given the very negative consequences of the drop in oil and commodity prices…we must make good on our commitment to diversify […]
The first time I heard of a fruit with a name prefaced by ‘Monkey’ was in 2011, when I encountered ‘Epapa‘, which turned out to be one local name for Cola lepidota, aka Monkey Kola. It didn’t seem peculiar to me – I put it down to ‘things monkeys also ate in the forest’. Till […]
It is the season of pepperfruit. It is. I find them on trays all around Warri – my birth city, where I spend Easter. I’m a fan only of the red ones – sweet tooth and all. But back in Lagos, I spot the green ones and buy some to compare. What I find is […]
Hi. My name is Ozoz. I’m a Nigerian food explorer who’s on a quest – to find and share the sweet, sweet nectar that’s food
