One way to enjoy fruits and veg in season – carrots, agbalumo, oranges – is to explore a variety of uses – fresh, cooked, preserved. I especially like pickles – they add bright flavour to dishes – a bit sour, tart, sharp even, not to mention the burst of colour. Pickling isn’t an oft-used preservation...
‘Nigerian Seasonal Produce’ is a monthly column which will be published on the last Saturday of every month. In this column, a writer explores a specific seasonal fruit, vegetable or leafy green assigned by the editors of Kitchen Butterfly and based on the Nigerian Seasonal Produce Calendar. Our author this month is Osemhen of Eureka Naija –...
Mangoes. My favourites and this variety from Ogbomosho has me so stoked. It is pretty early though for these mangoes to be out. I mean, agbalumo is barely here and Nigerian mangoes, especially this variety normally show up in the first few weeks of February. Global warming? Climate change? For a fact, this harmattan season was the warmest...
There are many reasons I love technology and social media – hashtags are one of them. Hashtags are the strongest indication that we are similar in all the ways we are different. A few months ago, I hashtagged a photo on instagram, #starapple and then I clicked on it and discovered a whole world out...
It’s the season of my favourite ‘fruit to explore’ – Agbalumo aka the African star apple. The star apple is found in many Caribbean and South East Asian countries, including Jamaica. Around the world in star apples Around the world in star apple names Why am I so intrigued about this fruit one might wonder?...
Yayyy to progress…. Oh my word, the journey, to catalogue, standardize, document Nigerian cuisine never stops! After four years of cataloguing what’s in season and when across Nigeria, I’ve finally put together the first version of the first ever seasonal produce calendar for Nigerian fruits and vegetables. This is one of the tenets of the...
The rains are here – heavy with juice and thick with grey, thundery clouds. It seems like it rains every day. Green tea with orange has been my remedy for the running nose and itchy eyes the rains bring me – allergies of some sort. But that’s alright. This is life. For the last few weeks,...
So, a number of friends have told me about Iyeye, a particular orange fruit. Some have mistaken kumquats for it at first glance, similar as they are in colour, shape and size. One day at work, I had kumquats on my desk and T, my colleague came by. She tried one and was surprised it wasn’t...
…because we cannot go and die because tomatoes are outrageously expensive. Nigerians, praised for their resilience and ingenuity are currently seeking ways to do without Fresh tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes aren’t cheap for various reason but they are the bedrock upon which ‘stew’ is founded. In Nigeria, there is only one meaning of stew and that is a sauce...