All I can think of in this weather is my bed. Sleeping in it. Morning, noon and night. Waking up to cuddles and soup. Forget pots of tea and freshly-baked cookies. Love and soup are errthang. Err single thang. Sigh. There’s something about rainy season that brings out the romantic in me. But I’m going...
Winter and spring flee cooler climes, bringing warmth in their stead and we, here in Nigeria embrace the cool wetness of our rainy season. We celebrate corn, ube and days tucked in bed. We welcome steaming bowls of pepper soup, of fish, chicken and the like. Fish pepper soup, for life on the coast. Fresh...
One of the things I love the most about scent leaves is the fragrance and aroma when bruised – fresh, clean and citrusy. I’m from Edo state where Egusi is king. I’ve heard that there’s a soup, black soup is its name but I’ve never had it babe. One week day I came home from...
Lunchtime Capers is a series chronicling my hour-long lunch break and the places I venture to – a store, markets, a roadside restaurant. Home. —–00000—– This lunchtime caper is from months ago, when my friend, Osemhen and I visited a market close to our office. She wanted to learn to make a soup I had heard...
I grew up eating yam and pepper soup, or plantain and pepper soup. That was and is one of my mom’s favourite meals ever. Well, that and my peanut butter chicken sauce with Chinese fried rice or noodles. Then in 2001, I went to Youth Service camp in Bayelsa. One afternoon, my friend took me...
The first time I fainted, I was thirteen and I passed out halfway between the kitchen and living room of 4 Ihuo Street, Port Harcourt. It was a Sunday and Daddy had just come back from Igarra. The second time I fainted, I was thirty-seven and at a dental surgery in Port Harcourt. Back to...
‘Mehn, soup get level’…and this is up there with the best. A pot, choc-full of the freshest seafood – crabs, lobster and fish. I like to cook it in a shallow pan so the fish doesn’t ‘scatter’ :). I start off with making a quick stock – a combination of fried lobster shells in palm oil...
With my huge batch of cooked cassava chips, I wondered what else I could do. I considered making Aipim, a traditional Brazilian cake – dense, moist and apparently delicious. We, after all share histories of food and more with them. However, I wasn’t sure my cassava was of the right texture, as it was in...
Egusi soup, in which I channel my inner ‘Edo‘ girl. My ‘Igarra‘ heritage. For this is the soup by which we are woken up on many a morning, ladled into yellow enamel bowls, motiffed with green leaves and rimmed in red. Covers clanging, hiding the pungent, fried scents of une, what we call locust beans and...