Tips On Choosing The Perfect Kitchen Tools For Couples

Selecting a kitchen tool is as important as is the art of cooking. Without the proper tools, you will not be able to cook your favorite dishes properly. If you are a newly wed couple or a couple shifting to a new house, you should definitely check if your kitchen is equipped with all the necessary tools required.

When Does Garnishing a Meal Cross The Line? See This Nigerian Man's Food Presentation!

I regularly share pictures of my dinner or weekend brunches on Instagram and Facebook, and today, one of my male FB friends shared a picture of his dinner for last night, saying he had made it himself. He tagged me in the pic, saying I had inspired him to eat more fruits and vegetables. He captioned it;

All these women acting like if they dont cook i will starve. Well, i made me a balanced diet. Low fat.

Now, I am happy that Nigerian men are still cooking, and that I've inspired someone to make their food more healthy, but I want to think I present my plates better than this! Without the carrot and oranges to garnish the meal, the Indomie with dodo and fried eggs actually looks yummy.

On food garnishing or plate presentation, I don't usually do that when I'm just about to eat. But sometimes when we have guests and I'm dishing in a bigger serving dish, I might make more of an effort. 

How to Make Beef in Celery and Mushroom Sauce

Theis sauce is very similar to this celery recipe, but there's no tomatoes, it is replaced by mushrooms.

Ingredients

A pound of Beef
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
A small bunch of celery stalks with some hearts if possible. Washed and sliced
Four medium sized tomatoes, chopped
Half a medium sized onion, sliced
Ground pepper,
Salt and spices to taste.

How I Cook Ogbono Soup with Okro

Ogbono is a taboo for Asaba people, according to my dad. My dad was a traditional man, though a Christian, and I loved that he kept us grounded to our culture. The story goes that back in the days, Asaba people could eat whatever they liked including Ogbono. Most of them followed traditional religion, and were worshippers of Onishe, a river goddess.

Onishe treasured purity, and her color was white, which meant that all her followers only came to her shrine wearing akwa ocha. On a certain day, a man ate Ogbono, unknowningly stained his clothes and still came to worship. Onishe was not happy, and banned the drawy soup ingredient since it made her worshippers sloppy and dirty. Since then, a lot of people discarded it from the menu.

We grew up in Enugu, but my parents, from their own parents, were used to not cooking or eating Ogbono. My mum made her okro soup with enough okro and vegetable to thicken the sauce. So ogbono was not something I was used to until I went to boarding house, where without it, our soups would have become rivers of water with oil floating on top. Of course I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

Boiled Plantain with Afang Vegetable Sauce

This is a picture heavy post since I assume most people know how to boil food? This is a simple meal using some leftover soup from my Afang recipe. I love unripe plantain because I tend to stay away from fried foods and ripe ones mostly lend themselves to dodo, their sugary sweet taste means they don't play too nice with most sauces, in my opinion anyway.

I fell in love with that tangy [Atala calls it bland] taste of unripe plantains after a family member became diabetic and had to adjust their menu. It makes sense to me in the well being journey not to wait till you're sick before taking measures to be healthy. So I look at the menu of diabetics or those with high blood pressure and borrow a leaf.

My Afang Soup Recipe with Okazi and Spinach

This was my first time of cooking Afang soup, ever, and I'm very happy at how it turned out. On one of our irregular trips to the African store, I picked up Utazi for my Nsala and when I saw a dried vegetable pack labelled Okazi, I also picked it up. I knew it was used in Afang soup, I had eaten it before and remembered it was a bit similar to Edika Iikong soup. I had made the latter before and thought, hey, I can make Afang with that recipe too.

To give kudos to whom it is due though, this would have been a disaster if not for coming across Eya's Afang recipe post before I made my soup. She mentioned that her Afang was pounded/ground. I was confused, but almost overlooked it. Her Afang was fresh and leafy, while mine was dry, store-packed and already cut. Still, that stuck.

Thank God for the internet. When I was ready to make mine, I googled ground Afang, and up popped some other Nigerian recipe sites. One specifically mentioned that when you buy dry, cut, store-packed Afang, you had to soak it in hot water for at least an hour, and then blend like a smoothie. And so the cooking began, with my adapted recipe below...

Recipe for Spicy Lentils with Spinach

Lentils was one of the foods I discovered when I moved to the UK from Nigeria and faced the scarcity or exorbitant prices of Nigerian foods in Scotland. Lentils were available in the shops and the price was right. When I made it too, the taste was right. Lentils, I believe are Indian by origin and the best I ever ate was by an Indian friend with loads of curry. Since then, I also make mine with all the spices I keep around, just not too much.

Ingredients

1 bag lentils, picked and rinsed
3 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium sized Onion, chopped
2 or 3 large tomatoes, diced
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon ground oregano
2 cubes of maggi or knorr (optional)
I bag of frozen cut-leaf spinach leaves, thawed
Salt to taste

Pictures of Some Foods I Cook

Sometimes I cook. I usually cook enough to last a couple of meals or more. Sometimes I remember to take pictures, but usually at the end of everything. And having thought about blogging about home cooking, I have found that I may never like to take pictures step by step. I don't think I'll make a good tutorial blogger, but I'm working on better camera skills to back up recipe posts, coming your way soon. Below are some so-so pictures of food I cook. The bigger images are below these small ones:)