My Guide to Food – Exploring and Mapping intersections between Nigerian Cuisine and Foods of the World
These don’t need no introduction or explanation. Take fresh groundnuts, in season – add sugar and spice (fresh ginger, cardamom, 5-spice) and boil away. I promise, you’ll want to bathe, sleep and wrap yourself in the fragrance of the liquid and the taste. We enjoyed this on a Saturday night, with tall glasses of Coca-cola […]
My advice on tomatoes may test ye, o virtuous cook for who fresh is best. Stay with me. Yes, it is the season of fresh corn and African butter pears, Ube; African walnuts, fresh dates, mosquitoes, sugar ants, guinea fowl eggs, yellow pepper and soursop. The season of rain storms and cottton wool clouds, of sunrise and sunsets, […]
I’m so thrilled that this season of corn and yellow peppers, ose Nsukka is the one which follows mango season. This is the season of monsoon rains, nights lulled to sleep with drizzles and mornings rudely awoken with pounding drops, thunder and Lightning. Here are a few things in season – Sweet Potatoes These purple-skinned […]
This is the season of waking up to storms – skies thick with grey and streaked with silver. Thunder, lightening, all are part of the rainy season. I need to equip myself well – ditch blue flannel blankets for tartan ones. Find good books to bury my head in, not necessarily buy but dig up […]
Its been two weeks or three even since I spotted pepperfruit, ‘shaded’ in small piles of green and red, set on the corner of a busy street on the Marina. The Lagos Marina. I’m heading to a buka lunch with my besto, D who is visiting from Port Harcourt. I spot this ‘mama’, seated on […]
…are in season and I am stoked. Mangoes are in season across oceans and continents, from India to Pakistan, Australia to Nigeria. How fragrantly we’re joined. For me, the first fruits of the season are always eaten out of hand. We spend the first week or so re-acquainting ourselves with the familiar scents, part-ambrosia, part […]
Hollandse Nieuwe Haring. Dutch new herring – of the season. Hollandse Nieuwe is the season’s first herring, which starts appearing at the beginning of June. Only Herring caught between May and July can be called ‘nieuwe‘. Yes, its the season for and of many things, home and abroad. And nowhere in the world is Herring […]
It’s raining, its sunny, it’s freezing, it’s snowing, it’s citrus season, baby! Talk about my favourite season because it’s also agbalumo season, and though I’m far from home, away from the source of that joy, I can bask in the joy here – of juice oranges and ugli, sanguinello and kumquats, tangerines, tangelos, mandarins and […]
I’m a rainy day girl, anytime, any day, anywhere. Sometimes I think of rain – of the drizzly sort as light water from heaven, an excess of morning dew. This season has been one of new discoveries, albeit a few and I’m glad to share them with you, by the month. June Chio In June […]