Ode to Nigerian Cuisine: Bean Croquettes and Other Culinary Adventures

        

There is something special about Nigerian cuisine. Perhaps it is the pungent aroma. No matter what dish you are cooking, the smell floats from the kitchen like a savory cloud and can even be detected from outside. Especially stockfish, the smell of which is particularly unpleasant. Then there is the labor of love. Every meal requires some level of precision and process--of sweat and tears, especially if you are cutting onions. Whether it is scrubbing the coating off  black eye peas to make Akara or as British colonial wives living in Nigeria in the early twentieth century called them--"bean croquettes."

 The quintessential tomato stew requires a clever boiling of a raw tomato mixture to make the tart rawness disappear so that the oil rises to the top without burning the dish. Science, my friends. All great cooks are also scientists. Yes, even the woman living in an area void of technology that manages to produce a scrumptious meal using the simplest of instruments: firewood or a clay mortar/pestle.

There is a magic that exists in pouring the precise amount of boiling hot water into a cold bowl of watery corn starch so that when the bowl is covered, the mixture congeals to form smooth velvety Akamu. After some time, I realized that not everyone possessed such magical powers and resolved to cook it manually by placing the bowl straight into the boiling pot and letting the mixture solidify that way. 

I can't forget one of my favorite soups--Ogbono, and if my mother is feeling extra creative she'll mix it with okra, which again requires a level of hard work as I grate the okra into small pieces, each stub after the other. There are always those pesky ones that refuse to grate crisply and cleanly. Instead, they burst open like green tentacles ready to attack. 

 The delicate balance of ingredients--water, palm oil, Ogbono seed, among other things, makes for a great addition to pounded yam. If even one part of the process goes wrong, you could end up with a bland greasy sludge, or worse, watery soup that doesn't draw. Ogbono soup that doesn't draw as the morsel of pounded yam travels to your mouth, is like a mute bulldog that doesn't bark, no matter how agitated it gets because of the annoying child who lives across the street.  Both are likely to garner a side-eye from passerby.

Pictured above, is a snapshot of a few recipe suggestions for the wives of British colonial officers living in Nigeria, circa pre-independence. The recipe book titled Living off the Country was published in 1942. Notice how the writer suggests that "natives" should be enlisted to help the colonial wives grind the black eye peas to make bean croquettes. That's because removing the skin coating on these beans is a hassle requiring elbow grease. In fact, soaking them overnight (as the writer advises) would only make it ten times harder with modern species of beans. Someone should invent a machine to simplify this process.

  Of course, the Brits could not part with their fish and chips but when in Rome you do as the Romans do unless you want to go hungry. So, they settled for  Green Banana Chips (Plantain).

One interesting thing about this type of cuisine is that there are no measurements for expert mothers whose usual mode of taste testing is to tap the contents of a piping hot soup spoon onto the palm of their hand. A method I too have adopted. You just sprinkle in a dash of pepper and magi and blended crayfish, and voila! Dinner is ready. If any ingredient is missing, the expert tongue (i.e my mom) is bound to notice. 

 Nigerian cuisine isn't just known for its comforting vibe, charming qualities, nuanced flavors, or its prominent role as a nexus between tribes and the pulse of any party or social gathering. It is also one of many criteria for women across the cultural spectrum that desire to become "wife material". As the glaring cliche goes, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Such advice is often chanted by doting mothers who desire for their daughters to learn how to cook by all means.

You know that you have done well and have passed the "potential wife" test when the plate looks like the one above. The event proceeding the empty plate was a big test of culinary ingenuity. Try making an improv stew with a tiny hotel room kitchen, a can of watered-down tomato sauce, a few random vegetables, and lemon pepper seasoning, since the CVS nearby did not have any maggi cubes. Imagine me and my cousin's disappointment. Luckily the dish was edible--so edible that the taste testers insisted on demolishing the chicken legs even down to the brown marrow inside the bones. What a great source of calcium, or so I am told. That would explain this: