When hot and smoky asun (goat meat) meets sweet, soft, ripe fried plantains, sauce and onions in a quick, delicious mix. A bit like the diasporan gizdodo – a delightful combination of cooked gizzards and dodo – fried plantain. Here’s how to score major points: One: Buy ready-made asun – because who has time to cut the […]
Month: May 2017
Stockfish: The Nigerian – Nordic Connection
Stockfish – pungent, fishy and a strong fave in Nigerian cuisine comes from Norway, a Nordic country in the north of Europe where cold water loving-cod surface in the winter, and birth their babies on the coast, putting them within easy reach of fishermen. To be very honest, in Nigeria, we call all dried cod […]
Nigerian Seasonal Produce: Pepper Fruit, #5
‘Nigerian Seasonal Produce’ is a monthly column published on the last Saturday of each 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 Ramon – serial experimenter, documenter, eater with a le cordon […]
Nigerian ‘Concept’ Dish: Dry Fish Skin-Local Jollof ‘Sushi’
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 […]
Version 1.2: Nigerian Seasonal Produce Calendar
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 […]
The Anatomy of The African Walnut
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 […]
The Nigerian Mother Sauce
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 […]
Pepper Fruit Scones
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 […]
How to Make The Bestever Zobo
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 […]