Tag: How to

Techniques

The First Pancake Problem

First pancakes.  And the First pancake problem. First pancakes often turn out weird. Bad. Annoying and fit only for the bin. I learnt that many years ago.  If you think you’re the only one prone to bad first pancakes, well…you aren’t.  The internet is littered with complaints and tales of composting first pancakes. Google has about 30,600,000 […]

Nigerian Cuisine, Techniques

How to Peel a Mango

The best way?  Depends.  On what? How ripe the mango is. Unripe and just-ripe mangoes are easy to strip of the skin with a vegetable peeler. This minimises the amount of flesh/ pulp discarded with green skin. Ripe ones are a whole other story. They give when you peel. I find some varieties yield to the […]

Food News

New Discoveries: Amazon Kitchen Shorts

As part of Amazon’s Video Shorts. And please, don’t get it twisted – this isn’t about cooking lingerie and the like :). Yes, it’s nine months since Amazon, my favourite online store launched it’s Video Shorts program – think of it as YouTube for Amazon. Yes, that’s the same amount of time it takes to conceive […]

Techniques

The Art of Maceration

Or how to macerate fruit. What is Maceration? Maceration. Not to be confused with Marinating though similar. Maceration is the ‘art’ (barely) of softening fruit – fresh or dried, in liquids or sugar. Similar to marinating but subject here is fruit not meat or vegetables. Why Macerate? To soften the fruit, amplify flavours and prepare them […]

Techniques

How To Make Some Kind of Peanut Brittle

Making toppings for desserts like brittles and pralines are relatively easy. They involve nuts and caramel. But easy doesn’t mean you should hurry through the process which might lead to ‘caring less’, it means a few steps with utmost care to accomplish great results. Brittle is a type of confection consisting of flat broken pieces […]

Nigerian Cuisine, Techniques

How To Process Agbalumo

Another look. Consider this the follow-up to The Anatomy of Agbalumo post. In the last few months, I’ve learnt more about agbalumo than I ever though, from its versatility as an ingredient to its nutritional qualities, its provenance across West Africa from Nigeria to Ghana, where it is known as Alasa, Alansa, Adisaa in Twi. The […]

Techniques

How to Chiffonade Scent leaves & Other Herbs

Soft herbs with wide leaves like scent leaves, basil, mint make great chiffonade. Chiffonade, French for ‘made of rags’ is an easy technique with beautiful results, like in the scent leaf bits which garnished my Tuwon Shinkafa in pepper soup. Here’s how to chiffonade soft herbs Wash leaves. Arrange in a pile. Roll length ways into a […]