Egg Noodles Pasta with Fish and Mushroom Sauce

Pasta is a quick and simple side dish, and it offers loads of variety in the different forms it comes in. There's Penne, Macaroni, Spaghetti, and some even come in rainbow colors. I love all the types and usually have a selection available. For today's menu idea, it is simple boiled Egg Noodles Pasta and Fish and Mushroom Sauce.

PASTA

1. Boil water in a large pot until it is in a roiling boil.
2. Put in a little salt for more flavor and a drop of oil. The oil helps the pasta not to stick to each other and the water not to boil over the pot.
3. Add your pack of egg Noodles pasta and stir immediately
4. Leave the pot open and stir every now and then.
5. There is usually cooking directions on the pasta package, but bite one after about 10 mins and remove from heat when you like the texture.
6. Strain immediately and if you want, run cold water over it. I'd rather eat like that.

How to Cook Fried Rice 1

Fried Rice may not be as ubiquitous as Jollof is in Nigerian households but it has its own place which is somehow classier, it is used for special occasions and parties. In prep terms, fried rice is barely cooked rice stir-fried into a vegetable and meat/seafood  mixture. For each making, even for myself, the ingredients and the method of preparation differs. On this occasion, I used diced cooked beef as the meat accompaniment to the chopped vegetables.

Ingredients
3 cups of long-grain rice
1 pack of Chicken drumsticks
3 ladles vegetable oil
1 pack of frozen mixed vegetable - defrosted
Cooked Beef - diced
2 small fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 medium size onion, chopped
2 Teaspoon of dry pepper
4 Knorr Chicken cubes
Salt and Spices to Taste

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 to Make Squash Salad - Serve with Roast Beef

This is related to my carb-free menu ideas, sometimes I just want to load up with vegetables and protein and stay away from carbohydrates for a meal or two. Squash is a great vegetable and when it is roasted, it has a deep flavor that stands and gives your salad so much more personality. I made this with roast beef, but chicken and other meats or fish will suffice too.

Ingredients

One large green pepper
2 medium sized green or yellow squash
5 medium sized tomatoes
1/2 a large onion
a small pack of mushroom

How to Make Couscous and Shrimp Salad

Couscous is one of those side dishes I go for when I want a quick and easy dinner. Like rice, it goes with most soups, stews, and sauces and better than rice, it cooks in just 5 minutes. It is also lighter than rice and much healthier, unless you're using brown rice.

For those who are not familiar with couscous but may know semolina, they are one and the same. Couscous is semolina in grains rather than floury as we use in eating our soups. In the grainy couscous form, you serve with vegetables, stewed meat and lots of spices, as couscous can be a bit bland otherwise. Put on top, or mix together to make a salad, like this recipe.

Roast Pork Ribs with Cheese and Lettuce Salad

A. THE PORK RIBS

This is similar to how I prefer the Beef Ribs

1. Defrost the ribs in the fridge
2.  Cut into single pieces and rub all over with the spices
3. Put cooking spray on your oven-proof tray and place the ribs side by side
4. Grill in the oven on low heat for 15 minutes on each side.
5. Your meat is ready.

How to Make Chin-Chin with Eggs and Milk

Chin Chin is one of Nigeria's favorite pastries. It is made from short crust pastry mixture and then deep fried. The result is usually crunchy, but you can switch up the ingredients to have a more textured and soft outcome. I prefer mine not too crunchy, so I use eggs, and more milk, butter and sugar. There is no rising, or baking, rolling and cutting the dough is the only complicated part of the process.

Ingredients
2 eggs
500g of Plain Sieved Flour
75ml of 2% milk
150g of sugar
150g of butter
1/2 a teaspoon of salt
1/2 a teaspoon  of baking powder
1/2 a teaspoon  of Lion Curry mixed spices
Vegetable Oil (enough to deep fry or half your pot)

Boiled Potatoes With Celery and Tomato Stew

I love vegetable sauces, I like that between 15 - 25 minutes I have a ready meal when I need it. I can either stir-fry, fry, steam or just saute a mix of my choice of vegetables and voila! Food is ready. Celery is one of those vegetables I got introduced to after I left Nigeria, and I fell in love with it's refreshing taste and flavor. I had to be sure how it is cooked, and unlike most vegetables, this actually requires 15 - 20 minutes to be well cooked.

To make this stew, you need the following;
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.

Grilled Beef Ribs with Vegetable and Mushroom

Most of us, myself included, believe it's not a proper meal if there's no carbohydrate involved. So most of our meals feature a starchy element either as the main meal or a side. If you're a typical Nigerian like me, it had to be the main dish jare, at least by size.

So the eba/poundo/amala has to be bigger than the efo, the rice has to fill the plate, then you'll add a jot of stew or sauce to the top, if you're eating moi-moi or beans, there has to be akamu/ogi/custard or you drink garri with plenty sugar. If you've seen the moi-moi post you'll know I really have a ways to go myself on this issue.

But last year while on the Bouari program, I made a realization. The program promotes healthy eating and calorie counting and wherever possible, all their menu and recipe samples asked for me to quit the carbs. While on the program I did, afterwards, I regressed. But I had learnt some things and they stuck.

How to Make Moi-Moi and Corned Beef - Eat with Pap

Moi-Moi is one of those meals I forget to cook because I think of it in my head as too difficult to prepare. This is because when growing up, and for a long time after that, we used fresh beans and had to clean it by hand before making moi-moi. When I tried that here the first time, it broke my blender, and since then, my wariness of moi-moi increased. I do cook it once in while a with bean flour, but either the taste doesn't come out the way I want it, or the texture is off.

My mom reminded me of the meal during her last visit, and at our visit to the African store, I bought a pack of the ground bean flour. This one had a recipe and method of preparation on the label and turned out to be the best moi-moi I had prepared in years. I've since bought several packs more of the same kind and moi-moi has more regularly been on the menu.

How to Make Jollof Rice With Chicken and Plantain

Jollof Rice is one of the staple meals eaten in most Nigerian households. Put simply, it is rice stewed in tomato sauce. The method of preparation differs, and even I personally have about two ways I prepare Jollof Rice. In one method, I mix the tomato stew with stock and then cook the rice in the mixture. In the second, I cook the rice in plain stock with some chopped tomatoes, and mix when done with pre-fried tomato sauce. Using Chicken for my meat and stock, I'll outline the first method which I think is simpler.

Ingredients
3 cups of long-grain rice
1 pack of cut Chicken drumsticks
3 ladles vegetable oil1 can tomato puree - small size
4 small fresh tomatoes, chopped
2 medium size onion, chopped
2 Teaspoon of dry pepper
2 Knorr Chicken cubes
2 fingers of very ripe plantains
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...

Holiday Cooking - With a Side of Brussels Sprouts

Because we traveled over the holidays, I tried not to do anything too adventurous in the kitchen with my cooking. I planned to bake a cake but scrapped it in favor of store-bought pie, buns and chin-chin for dessert. The main meal was whole roasted Chicken and I played it safe with plain Jollof Rice as the primary side dish.

For veggies, I decided to go with Brussels sprouts. This is not the favorite vegetable to grace my table neither did I grow up eating it, but since spending a few years in the UK with a couple of Christmas Lunches with natives, I hardly think 'holiday' without thinking of the small sized cabbage wannabes.

I hear that Brussels Sprouts are not very well loved, and truly on their own, they don't taste that great. However... however, they do have some things going for them. For me, first and foremost is that they're veggies and so obviously, the calorie count is relatively low. They also provide some variety to the usual suspects of lettuce, carrots, spinach, cabbage, etc.

Spaghetti and Tomato Sauce with Green Lima Beans

Spaghetti and Tomato sauce is a regular in these parts but the Green Lima Beans addition was a first recently. Frozen vegetables were on a half-price sale at the store so I decided to pick a few new ones I had never tried before, one of those was green Lima beans. I wasn't too sure how it would turn out, so on the day I tried it, I decided to use it as a side to a more familiar meal.

How I make Egusi Soup with Spinach

Egusi soup is one of my favorite soups and I usually have it in the freezer after making a big pot. Sometimes I have to wait for a trip to the African store in order to make it, or I use what I have at home. Of course the basics have to be there, like the egusi itself, but most of the other ingredients can be improvised. This particular recipe is quite simple and traditional, as you'll see.

I cook two types of Egusi, one with bitterleaf and with the egusi boiled in the meat stock, and the other type with a more bland vegetable - ugu, kale, spinach, waterleaf - and I fry the egusi in the oil I'm using. This difference in preparation makes for a change in taste, flavor and texture and I love the versatility it gives me. Below is my recipe for the Spinach Egusi Soup.

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

Home Cooking - How I make Puff-Puff or Buns

Quick-rise Yeast

I try not to eat a lot of fried foods or pastry but sometimes I get nostalgic for Nigerian snacks and buns and puff-puff are some of the easiest to prepare. Puff Puff is a deep fried snack made from plain flour, yeast, sugar, and water. The main difference between puff-puff and buns is that you add eggs and/or milk to the buns. They are both simple to make and can keep in the fridge for up to a week. My recipe is a cross between buns and puff-puff as I add just milk and it comes out not too soft and very chewy.

Ingredients: My apologies for no measurements, I usually go by sight and feel. There's some trial and error too :)

Plain Flour
Yeast
Mixed Spices
Granulated Sugar
Salt
Milk
Water
Frying Oil

Happy Thanksgiving and my Meat Pie Recipe

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone, especially those in America. I made some Meat Pie yesterday for Dinner and I want to share the recipe with you this thanksgiving.

Ingredients

*Dough - Plain Flour – 1 Kg, Margarine – 500g, Salt – 2 pinches, Dry spices - 2 pinches, Cold Water - a quarter cup

*Filling - 500g of minced meat, 1 medium-sized onion, 2 medium-sized tomatoes, Seasoning - 2 Maggi / Knorr cubes and 1 teaspoon of mixed spices, Cold water – 1 cup

*1 egg yolk