We were recently hosted to dinner by my husband’s clients. The husband was a naturalized British man, born and bred in Northern Nigeria and spoke English, French and Hausa fluently. The wife was from the Niger Delta and hundred percent home grown.
Dinner, when it was ready was a choice of French fries and ketchup or Egyptian rice and oregano flavoured meat sauce with vegetable salad and chicken kebab.
Predictably, I concluded that the variety was in deference to her husband’s palate but was assured by the wife that her he could down ‘eba’ and ‘ila asepo’ with the best of them. It was her love for change that made her surf the internet for different recipes to prepare for him. He had already sampled her boeuf stroganoff and loved it.
It got me thinking that since information is so easily exchanged nowadays, so much so that we have now coined the term ‘global village’ for the world, food, like information now comes without borders. So there is certainly nothing stopping me from presenting the same or similar fare to my family once in a while.
So, why not give your family a break from the same old, same old of rice, beans, eba and amala, and try simple recipes like chicken nuggets with rice or chips or spaghetti bolognaise. Some useful websites are:
www.allrecipes.com
Some of the ingredients needed are optional. Some are also not common but can be obtained in any of our larger supermarkets. Besides, it’s only once in a while so go ahead and spoil your family.
By Toyin Puddicombe
