Okay Vegetarians, looks away now. Lol. My #fitfam brothers and sisters, pay close attention. You may think oh dear, this is so wrong for you. No sireee. You see, this is actually healthier than a Pizza because there is no carb laden crust. Your body cannot discern between sugar gotten from carbohydrates, and that from even fruit and veg. Yes, fruit and veg are great for you and they contain nutrients and all that jazz, but at the end of the day, sugars whether natural or artificial are converted to glucose, because it triggers insulin production, and then your body makes glycogen from it, excess glycogen is turned into fat. Which is why carbs have gotten a lot of negative press, but they are still good for you in moderation. Now, protein on the other hand is converted to ketones, which are great sources of energy. Excess ketone is passed out via urine and not stored as fat. Quick dietary lesson. When my Dad needed to lose weight after his stroke scare, we put him on a protein diet and the weight came off quite fast. So, if you are #fitfam and reading this, don’t look away yet. This is a Paleo-ish kind of dish.

I found this dish courtesy Yahoo and I was screaming in my head. Oh my goodness, I am a carnivore and proud, it looked like heaven. You mean Nigella Lawson released this recipe ages ago and whyyyyyyyyyyyyy am I just hearing about it? Lol. Lots of recipes exist online and I knew I just had to try it. Especially for us Nigerians who loooooooove our meat. Oh yes we do. This is so simple to make, it borders on the ridiculous. I quickly wrote my shopping list and off to the stores I went. A bona-fide dinner every one will love. Imagine making this for your friends and family this weekend. Choose whatever toppings you like, and gorge on it as much as you like. You can keep the cheese, or leave it out, you can buy breadcrumbs or make your own just from toasting bread and grinding in a dry mill. Think of this like the Moin Moinlette, but with mince meat as your base and not beans. of course, you know I am going to Nigerianise it, why the heck not. All the flavours that we cook with, heck yeah!!!!!!!. I was salivating at the thought and couldn’t wait to go home. Pretty psyched that it turned out well. I will definitely be repeating this, and I hope it goes viral the way the Moin Moinlette did.

I posted this last week, or was it two weeks ago on Instagram and lazy me just got down to typing it up today. I can’t wait for the team of staff that will write, while I just cook. Anyways, here goes

Dooney's Nigerian Meatzza

 

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Prep time

35 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

55 mins

 

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Main Dishes

Culture: Nigerian Fusion

Serves: 3

You will Need

• Mince Meat
• Sliced onions
• Cherry Tomatoes - or you sliced tomatoes
• Oatmeal
• Parmesan Cheese - optional
• 1 or 2 eggs
• Red chili - or use ata rodo
• Sliced tatashe and green pepper -
• Dry Pepper
• Uziza seeds - ground
• Uziza leaves - you can use efinrin or Basil
• Mozarella cheese - or use local Wara, or use ripe plantain, or break 2 or 3 whole eggs on top
• Curry Powder - optional
• Dried Thyme - optional
• Leftover Stew or Ata din din - you can also use Ewa Aganyin sauce
• Salt
• Seasoning cube

How To

1. Place your mince in a bowl, and add all the spices and seasonings. Whatever you use often to season your meats, will work great here. Personalise this recipe, make it your own
2. Add the Oatmeal, about 1 - 2 tablespoons, the shaved parmesan cheese, if you are using, and an egg or two. The oatmeal is to bind everything together. Nigella used breadcrumbs but oatmeal is a healthier option. the cheese is just to keep it moist and stay true to the traditional Italian meatball recipe, but you can definitely leave it out
3. Gently combine all the ingredients until it forms a ball. Emphasis on gently, don't overwork the mince. if it is not holding up to a ball, either add another egg, or a little more oatmeal
4. Take out the mince and carefully lay out in a lightly greased pan, until all ares are covered. Again, do this gently
5. Spread out your stew or sauce unto the mince
6. Now add your toppings. I used onions, cherry tomatoes, chili, sliced tatashe, green pepper and of course Mozarella
7. Cover with foil, to keep moist and then place in a preheated oven at 200 degrees centigrade of Gas mark 6 and let it cook for 15 - 20 minutes. You will observe that the mince will shrink, but that is expected. You will also see some of the juices in the pan, but that is fine, you can always drain out at the end
8. before serving, top with fresh leaves
9. Don't be like me and keep chatting on your phone while your delicious food burns a little, but it was fine in the end. I served with a side salad, and it is hands down one of the best meat dishes I have ever eaten. The taste explosion was incredible

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The post Dooney’s Nigerian Meatzza appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

I actually cooked this last year. Roughly about early December. Over a month now, I really should not be behind on my work like this. Anyways, it wasn’t even a fitfam inspired dish, because I wasn’t focused on that last year, but I was concentrating on winter warming kinda soups. The way I thought to serve Egusi Ijebu like a soup, to be served with toasted baguettes. Recipe HERE. Anyways, the Italians have their Minestrone, The French have their Provencal vegetable soup, and I thought to make something like that, but oh so Nigerian. In hindsight, this is a fitfam dish. Yesterday’s recipe was all about the meat, today, give your digestive system a break, and be all about the veg. For someone who hates veg, I was pleasantly surprised. The richness and creaminess of the gbegiri, married nicely with the sharp, tart and sweet veg. I couldn’t believe it myself. It was so warm your cockles kind of comforting, and you can enjoy this whether you live in a tropical country like Nigeria, or a temperate region. I hear a Blizzard is about to hit the East Coast, wrap up warm guys and make a Veggie Gbegiri, the whole family will enjoy.

While I was racking my brains, to add ingredients that would bulk it up, the Italian Minestrone is made with rice or pasta, nah, that was too easy, so I used Yam, plantains and sweet potato. Trust me, you will just sit down with your bowl and not get up till your bowl is empty. You know how you would have paired gbegiri with Ewedu, with Buka Stew and most likely lots of meat, and then sat down with Amala. Not like aaaaaanything is wrong with that, but from a fitfam perspective, now count all those calories. Pause for a second, say Yikes!!!! and then look at this recipe again. Gotcha. Let’s cook

Remember, if you would like to save this recipe, Just click on the Save button, and it will be transferred to your Big Oven account.

Veggie Gbegiri

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

30 mins

 

Re-inventing Gbegiri. This is so simple, you can cook it in 10 - 15 minutes stat and you have a one bowl family style dinner

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Main Dishes

Culture: Yoruba, Nigerian Fusion

Serves: 4

You will Need

• Gbegiri - for recipe click HERE
• Sliced Yams
• Sliced Sweet Potatoes
• Sliced Plantains
• Tatashe - red bell pepper
• Green pepper
• Tomatoes
• Ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper: or use chillies
• Red Onions
• Spring Onions - you can also use Leeks
• Carrots
• This is a recipe you can go to town with. Use any choice of veg that you enjoy cooking with

How To

1. Prepare your veg by chopping into big chunks
2. Boil your yams and sweet potatos with a little salt. I used the orange sweet potato for colour
3. To your already prepared Gbegiri, add your chunky veg and stir. Depending on how thick your gbegiri is, you may choose to add some water Be mindful that some of the vegetables will leach out their own water content. Cook on low to medium heat, to prevent the veg from over cooking
4. When the yams and sweet potato have cooked, introduce them to the pot, and also add some chunky plantains. You may choose to add the plantains to the gbegiri, at the same time you add the veg
5. Allow the contents of the pot to come to a gentle simmer. Re-season with salt and some dry pepper if you want to get a little kick.
6. Once the veg have softened and the plantain has cooked through, take it off the heat and serve.

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The post Veggie Gbegiri appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

For weeks now I have been wanting to try an alternative to Egusi soup for a while now. Eva, our Czech honorary Nigerian wife cooked Egusi soup with Almonds. That girl can cook many Nigerian women under the table. Serious smack down, the kind she won’t even play. See why you should be following Dooney’s Kitchen on Instagram, you will see some of Eva’s posts and marvel at her Nigerian cooking prowess, which I shared as part of my weekly #cookcrush episodes. Anyways, using almonds came into my consciousness again because of #Fitfam and I moseyed down to My Fitness Pal to check how many calories one cup contains. Hot Damn!!!!! My eyes almost popped out of my skull. 823 calories. WHAT!!!!!, I checked Egusi too, 836. Yikes!!!!!. Now, you may say hmmmmn, that figure is doubtful, who verified the Egusi, but wait a minute and think back to all you know about Egusi. It contains a lot of oil. Like aaaaaa lot. Fact. it is very buttery too in taste, see where I am going.

Anyways, I thought to strike out almonds. Then I considered Sesame seeds, 825 calories. Ah ah, these nuts and seeds are just conspiring against me. Sad face. Then some lovely reader left a comment on Instagram saying I should try Pumpkin seeds. Of course, of course. They are very close cousins to Egusi. Yes people, on Sunday, I bought a packet of pumpkin seeds and of course I had to bring out the other seeds for comparison, so people can see all the options. These I posted on Instagram. From Left to right, and in order of number of calories; Pumpkin seeds, Almonds, Egusi seeds and Sesame seeds (benniseed).

All 3 can be used to make ‘Egusi’ style soup. To switch things up, you can try them, best of all if you live outside Nigeria, these 3 can be found in your local supermarket, and you may not have to visit the Nigerian food store, if you don’t want to.

Calories in one cup of Pumpkin seeds. Wait for it, wait for it. 285 calories. Digest that information for a second. Okay, now, do the happy dance. Hehehehe. Ignore the colour, believe me you won’t notice when you are done cooking. Have I led you wrong before?

As for the cooked soup, my goodness. I know how my Egusi soup tastes. I switch things up once in a while and it always tastes great. This tasted like a Badass Egusi soup that someone else cooked. Gosh, I loved it.

As for the Efo Igbo, my friend Funmi told me where to buy it. It is supposed to be this rare vegetable, imagine her delight in finding it at one of local Nigerian food stores.

It has a bitter tinge to it, so it needs to be given a good wash between your palms to get rid of the bitterness, just as you would bitter leaves.

Buuuuuuut, who has time for that. I brought out the food processor stat. 2 mins or under, it had done all the work for me. #TheNewNigerianCookery.

If you were not told that not a single grain of Egusi was used in cooking it, I am willing to bet top dollar, that you would not know.

Let’s Cook

Pumpkin Seed 'Egusi' style Soup and Efo Igbo

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

55 mins

 

An alternative to Egusi soup. Looks like it, tastes like it and 285 calories per cup.

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Traditional Nigerian Soups

Culture: Yoruba

Serves: 4

You will Need

• 1 cup of Pumpkin seeds
• 1 - 2 cooking spoons of Palm oil
• Ata lilo - fresh pepper mix
• Efo Igbo - eggplant leaves or any green veg
• Assorted Meats
• Smoked fish
• Meat Stock
• Ground Crayfish
• This is cooked Exactly as you would Egusi soup. I used the lumpy Egusi style method, but as pumpkin seeds contain less oil, it didn't form the giant lumps I was expecting, but I would be trying it again

How To

1. Mill the pumpkin seeds to a fine powder
2. Heat up palm oil in a pot, add chopped onions, fry, add pepper, let that fry a little too, add the assorted meat, beef stock, smoked fish and ground crayfish. Let the pepper stock reduce sufficiently
3. I didn't want to add this in powder form, so I took a little out of the pepper stock and mixed to form a paste. You can also use blended onions
4. Using a tablespoon or your fingers, add the pumpkin seed paste in lumps into the stock. Lower the heat and allow it to cook
5. In a few more minutes, just as it would Egusi soup, the paste would have combined well with the pepper stock. See, I told you the green colour will disappear.
6. Once the soup has thickened as you like it, add the green veg and stir
7. A few more minutes, and that is your soup done

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Here’s to alternative Nigerian Cooking. Here’s to making healthier cooking options.

The post Pumpkin Seed ‘Egusi’ style Soup and Efo Igbo appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Hello people, welcome to February. Phew, my one month Fitfam anniversary is approaching and I must say, I am very very proud of myself. Not just start I stuck with it, but most especially, the creative dishes that have come out from refocusing my inspiration. It makes me smile, to know that Dooney’s Kitchen is not just known for quick and stress free cooking, great recipes, but now I can add healthy Nigerian cooking to the list. Yaaaay for diversification, yaaay for expanding the net, Yaaay for The new Nigerian Cookery. 2015, Leggo!!!!!!

When I put up the recipe for the fit fam puff puff, I wrote that you can also make it in a waffle maker or sandwich toaster, just like the akara. My friend Feyi, did just that. How stunning is that.

That is good ol puff puff, made in a waffle iron by Feyi.

On Instagram, the post where I showed how puff puff can be made in a Masa Pan (recipe HERE), or Abelskiever pan, someone asked if this can be used for a “toad in the hole” kind of dish. If you don’t know what toad in a hole is, it is a traditional British dish involving sausages and a pastry kind of square casing. Anyways, while doing my research to see how it could work, I thought wait a minute, I can bake the batter in a Yorkshire pudding tin. Okay, another classic British dish is the Yorkshire pudding. Why it is called a pudding, I don’t know, but it is basically batter that is baked in a tin and puffs up to a traditional shape. Yorkshire puddings are mostly served with a Sunday roast, with gravy and all.  Number one, I have never even attempted a Yorkshire pudding before. I have seen it being made on TV, and the batter, isn’t exactly like that of Puff Puff batter, but hey, as they say “idea is need”. You guys already know that my Achilles heel is baking, so I called my friend Feyi and asked if it would work. She said sure, it could, and the next day she tried baking it in a Savarin tin.  Okay, another explanation. A savarin mold is basically a ring baking tin with a hole in the middle, just like a doughnut. See Feyi’s picture below:

I have a savarin tin at home but it is a massive one, so the plan yesterday was to go to Lakeland to pick up mini savarin tins and a Yorkshire pudding pan, but I left the office 1 hour later than planned (don’t ask, lol), and on the way home I thought, hmmmn, do I have time to go to Lakeland? It is not the kind of store you rush in and rush out. I had my 5K run at 7.15pm, I had to eat dinner too, so I decided to head on home straight. Now, my journey home is via the M25. It has a reputation for being known as the world’s longest car park. On Monday’s, it is especially notorious. As I was heading off my exit, the traffic news was reporting tales of woe at another exit of the M25, in London. I thought to myself, thank goodness, it wasn’t my section today, and I only have about minutes left to go. Then I remembered that exactly this time 4 years ago, I had quit my London job (end of January) and I was house hunting in Essex, by Feb 2^nd. I had totally forgotten, but flashing back, it was so surreal. I remembered the waking up at 5am, the 2 hr 30min one way train ride to work and even longer back home, how miserable, tired, grumpy and cold I used to be. I remembered the breakfast Muffin and cup of coffee, I rushed to buy at London Bridge, just before I got on the “cursed” Jubilee line, and then on to the Metropolitan line. That people, was when it hit me. OMG!!!!! I can bake Puff Puff in muffin containers and top with fruit and nuts. That was my breakfast almost every day when I worked in London. Of course, it would work. Suddenly I didn’t feel bad that I couldn’t get to Lakeland anymore.

This morning, I quickly made the fit fam puff puff mix, I didn’t wake up early enough to bake it at home, so I grabbed the bowl, wrapped in cling film and a napkin and headed out. 15mins later, I was at work. I also said a prayer of gratitude, for the job that has given me such privilege, to wake up at what I call “normal time”. Friday will mark 4 years, since my life changed for the good, in all ramifications, I can’t even begin to list how much. The microwave in our tiny kitchen has a convection function, so for my lunch break, I baked these, apologies to my colleagues, who had to queue up while these baked, but they all said it smelled great, and looked very pretty. I thought so too.

This post is dedicated to Londoners, waking up at odd hours in the morning, and to those commuting into London for, to earn a living. I salute you guys for the courage, and dedication. Have a Puff Puff muffin on me.

Let’s Cook

The Puff Puff breakfast Muffin

 

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Prep time

40 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

1 hour 10 mins

 

A quick way to enjoy Puff Puff for breakfast, getting your fibre and fruit in at the start of your day.

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Breakfast

Culture: Nigerian Fusion

Serves: 6

You will Need

• Fitfam Puff Puff mix - recipe click HERE
• Muffin containers
• Your choice of fruit and nuts

How To

1. Make your Fitfam Puff Puff mix. I would stress that you would likely need less water to mix this than the standard puff puff mix. This was feedback from a reader who tried the recipe. Just follow the recipe HERE
2. Give it the standard 35 - 45 min rising time, or you can cheat by pre heating your oven for about 5 mins, and then place the bowl in it. it speeds up the time. I mean, if you are rushing off to work, you need all the time you can get.
3. Pour into Muffin containers
4. Top with fruit and nuts, or raisins
5. I baked at 180 for about 30 minutes, but I would advise 200 for a shorter time. This is a get up and go kind of morning meal. Ta daaaa!!!!
6. If I had left it in for longer, it would have browned more, but hey, this isn't so bad. If you would like to know what the inside looks like, well just like fried puff puff

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

You can take this further by glazing the top with maple syrup, or honey. You can try other fresh fruits like banana, pineapple, apple or pear. You can add your choice of fruits and nuts as a topping, or incorporate into a batter. Get creative

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The post The Puff Puff Breakfast Muffin appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

This week, I am continuing the #stillonthebeansmatter ministry. Usually when I have to cook Moin Moin for people on the weekends, I end up with extra bean batter, which most of the time goes to waste. If I manage to steam the excess, I will either forget it in the freezer till it becomes dry, or in the fridge until it goes bad. Being a food blogger does come with a degree of food waste, sadly, but this year, I said to myself, enough Dunni. You come from a place where a lot of people are going hungry every day, you can’t be displaying ingratitude by wasting food. So, last saturday, again I ended up with excess bean batter, but this time I said nah, I will find creative ways to use Moin Moin. There is only so much Moin Moin and garri, or Moin Moin and Eko (if i can even find the Eko, lol). Eko is also called Agidi by the way. So, anyways, as I am over my smoothies now, yeah I got kinda bored, the next frontier to try is salads. Newsflash, I don’t like salads, never have, but my local supermarket manages to do some salad bowls/packs that are not half bad with the right dressing.

So, on Sunday night, I dunked a Mediterranean salad in a bowl, and added a few cubes of Moin Moin to it, and placed in the fridge. Of course, to get the shape I wanted, I had shavings of Moin Moin left, which I just added to the leftover bits of salad from the packaging, sprinkled on my favourite honey mustard dressing (which is evil by the way – 100g contains 571 calories, digest that information, lol), and it was a very yummy dinner. You couldn’t imagine that I was itching for monday, just so I could have a go at my bowl.

I wanted to give my salad some ooomph, and flash back to Nigerian parties, where you got served moin moin, salad, jollof rice/fried rice on a plate, and a side of diced dodo. I knew immediately, dodo was my answer, but you see, we are Fit famming, and frying is kinda persona non grata at the moment, so on monday morning, while i prepared for work, I grilled a plantain in my halogen oven (which makes the best grilled plantain by the way. FACT, lol). I sliced up a few rings, and it was out of the house for me.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, healthy lunch. I picked out the moin moin and grilled plantain, whacked in a microwave at work for about a minute to warm up, and the contrast with the flavours of the cold salad and the dressing, my bowl emptied in minutes. This salad can not just be used as a packed lunch, for work, you can make it for dinner, or a starter at a dinner party. I mean, our Western counterparts serve some form of salad as starters all the time. We have been consuming fancy pants salads, fro ages now, using varied western ingredients, how about we Nigerianise our salads, with our very own home cooked ingredients. The possibilities are endless. Choose your choice of vegetables for a salad, you can even add some smoked mackerel to it, boiled eggs, anything you can think of, trust me it works.

Last week, i was totally minding my business, looking for something else, when I scrolled down a page and found a picture of a mason jar salad. It jolted me. OH MY GOODNESS, how clever is that, how cool is that, wow, how come I am just seeing this. ideas were just zooming through my brain in seconds, oh wow, I am so late to the game with this trend, but hey, I am early in the game of the Nigerian Mason Jar Salad eh. I was already planning a Moin Moin salad, anyways, so I said that’s it. I am making this. On Monday night I decided to assemble my mason jar salad. This time for effect, I used diced fried plantain. I didn’t realise how much I have missed fried plantain. Crikey, I gobbled it up fast, didn’t care that it was approaching midnight. Yums!!!!! Anyways, by the time I got more than 3 quarters way up, I realised that I had gotten carried away with my stacking, and my jar, was also not tall enough. So, for the sake of pictures, I just piled on the leafy veg. You can bet that I went straight to ebay to order a tall Mason Jar. It should arrive this weekend, and I am going to be experimenting with all kinds of things. The internet is full with ideas about meals in a mason jar, desserts, breakfasts, salads, you name it. Nigerian food is about to throw its hat into the ring people.

Here is a quick tutorial from Two bited Club. Full details HERE

Here is my first try –

The Moin Moin Salad

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

5 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

Grab a salad to go, a meal in a jar. Combine the sweetness of the plantains, with the savoury Moin Moin, balanced with the tart and green crunch of a salad, and you have a bonafide healthy meal

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Salads

Serves: 1

You will Need

• Cucumbers
• Cherry tomatoes
• Boiled Eggs
• Moin Moin cubes
• Plantains - grilled or fried
• Sweetcorn - optional
• Green leafy veg
• Your choice of salad dressing

How To

1. You can choose to do this in a bowl
2. Or stack it in a jar. Follow the rules of dressing first, followed by half moon cut cucumbers, then the tomatoes, followed by chopped onions, chopped boiled eggs, diced dodo, moin moin cubes and the leafy veg

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

Be wary not to over stack, and plan ahead for what you will need for your salad

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My food photography mentor Lindsay, has mentioned a few times how you sometime need fresh eyes, for your pictures. I took these on Monday night at thought they looked crappy. I consoled myself by saying, at least another mason jar is on its way, I will try again. I was going to get something totally unrelated from my SD card, and glanced at the pictures again, oh wow. They are actually not as bad as I thought. Yeah, yeah, shooting at past midnight, I totally forgot the rule of lights and glass, so my pictures do have a glare, but I know how to prevent that for next time, so stay tuned.

This is what you call a meal in a jar. Did I mention again that the internet is full of ideas. Google Mason jar salads, and you will find yourself spending hours poring over all the creative, delicious goodness. Stay tuned for more from me, heck I ordered two tall Mason jars, and I am now on the hunt for the small and cute ones.

The post The Moin Moin Salad appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Today marks my one month Fitfam journey, and what did I tell you guys at the beginning of January? IT WORKS!!!!! Hand on heart, I have cheated a total of 10 times in the past one month, and yes I did fall off the wagon with Maltina and Plantain chips, which I have had 3 times, and then King Prawn Fried rice from my favourite takeaway which I didn’t cook, and KFC hot wings with McDonald’s chips. No coke for a month though. I have swapped the need for fizzy drinks with sparkling mineral water, and it works like a charm. I noted down all the times I cheated, just to get an average, and it has amounted to roughly 2.5 times a week, which is totally unacceptable. I want to go down to once a week, and even further down to once in two weeks. Healthy eating is not a diet, but a lifestyle. So, what have I been eating. Nigerian food, Nigerian food, Nigerian food, albeit some modified to be healthier. I am glad that the blog is gaining a reputation for healthy Nigerian food. I started the year saying I was looking for someone to contribute healthy meals, not realising that I had it within me, to develop myself. I tell people, cooking is not my greatest gift, not even close. My intuition is my greatest gift, and the knowledge of my faith has helped me hone it well. Re-reading The Secret has also helped and now I feel more alive and in tune with Creation than ever before.

Baked Buns

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

35 mins

 

Nigerian buns are traditionally fried, but this is Fitfam certified. The firm batter is baked instead and fortified with wholesome ingredients, as a snack or breakfast to go with a cuppa

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Snacks, Breakfast

Culture: Nigerian

Serves: 8

You will Need

• 1 cup of Self raising flour - or you can use half % half i.e. half oatmeal, wheat meal, almond flour etc
• 2 - 3 tbs Honey - you can use sugar
• 2 - 3 tbs cold milk
• 1 - 2 tbs coconut oil - or your choice of oil
• Warm water
• a dash of vanilla extract
• Trail mix - dried fruit, sultanas, raisins, nuts or you can use chocolate chips, fresh fruit, desiccated coconut

How To

1. Measure the flour into a bowl and add the honey
2. Add the milk
3. Add the oil
4. Add water gradually and combine. What you should be aiming for is a firm batter, that moves almost cleanly from the bowl.
5. Add the trail mix or your choice of toppings and stir
6. See how firm, and elastic the dough is. Also notice how it came together as a ball, and almost cleanly off the bowl
7. This was where things got tricky. I didn't want to bake in Muffin containers again. I tried to use a mini savarin tin, but that was a disaster, the dough was too firm. Totally frustrated, I looked at the bowl and realised the batter reminded me of cookie dough ice cream. It does, doesn't it, the contrast of the raisins against the creamy dough does look like chocolate chunks in cookie dough ice cream, so I brought out my ice cream scoop, and as if it was ice cream, I scooped out the dough unto baking paper
8. These baked in the oven at 220 for 25 minutes. 20 minutes in, I brought them out and gave the buns a milk wash, these helped to give it a golden brown colour

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

If you find that your dough is too watery, sprinkle a little flour on it, to firm it up, but don't go overboard, or your buns will be doughy. These buns are light and airy. Better still, place in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up. You can choose to fry these, but the baked version is sooooooo much better

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Try out this recipe this weekend, for your kids, for yourself, for a girls night out. it is so simple, and I bet you, it will make you feel good. Have a lovely weekend folks

The post Baked Nigerian Buns appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Music is my other passion, but errrrr, my passion for music lies far, far, far away from Nigerian music, and I kinda won’t apologise for that. A friend of mine Osagie says I am a living breathing oxymoron. “How you connect with Nigerian food and do it so well is strange, for those of us that know you well”. If you asked my classmates from school who was most likely to end up with a white man, all fingers would point to Dunni. They are still watching. Hehehehe. My parents definitely won’t be pleased. Despite being born and bred Nigerian, Osagie says you are not “one of us”, you mentality is definitely not Nigerian, you don’t belong here. LMAO. One of the first things he said when I was leaving Nigeria for school was, oh good, you are going to live among “your people”. You will acclimatise so fast, because heck, you are not Nigerian. Even when we talk, he keeps asking how are those “your people”. Well, my mother raised us drumming into our heads, especially when meting out discipline ” I am not raising a Nigerian”, you will not try that in my house. It is not acceptable, “I am not raising a Nigerian”, whatever the heck that means. It is her fault. Good, let us blame Big Oladunni. Hahahahahaha.

Moin Moin and Efo Riro Savarin

Music is one way, that my heritage doesn’t come into my choices at all. Right from living in Nigeria. No slight on Nigerian music at all, but it just doesn’t resonate with me. I was a huge country and rock music fan in my late teens. My father has a brilliant taste in music, and this is partly his fault. Not that many people my age living in Nigeria knew who Nat King Cole, Otis Redding, The Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James were. That was music I fell in love with. The Nigerian Music industry has made giant strides in the last few years, and I am doubly proud of them. They inspire me, to also push for Nigerian food to blow up too. Looking through my iTunes list, you will definitely go huh, should we check your passport? I was in Lagos last September and The Akintayomi (needs no introduction, lol), said I listen to “white people’s music”.

Then I hung out with Chef Fregz, for a dinner party he was cooking for, and played Paolo Nutini out loud from my Ipod. He screamed. I screamed back too, FINALLY!!!! I found someone who listens to my kind of music. Do you know how weird it is to go to a party with friends, and you have no clue what music is playing, and after a while you just tune out the music because they all start to sound the same after a while. I only found out what the dance “Shoki” was in October, and only watched the video in December. Looool. I mean Fregz and I were jamming to Paolo, the soundtrack of Rent, Michael Buble, Colbe Caillat, Sara Bareilles, Joss Stone, Emeli Sande, Prince and much more. That is my kind of music, and right now, it is leaning to even more British music, because at the moment, British music is HOT, I mean Sam Smith just won 4 grammys, and in heavyweight categories too.

Why is my taste in music coming up in a post about Moin Moin, well I listen to music when I cook. It helps pass the time quicker and makes me forget how tasking the process is. On saturday, I was on my feet from 8am to 8pm, and then on the road for a 50min drive. Did I mention that I barely ate anything. What kept me company was the music of James Bay, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and George Ezra. All British men, and their songs were on repeat. I had more cooking to do on Sunday, and it was the turn of the girls – Ella Henderson, Elle Goulding, Paloma Faith and Amy Winehouse. I am a lost cause eh, when it gets to Nigerian music. Loooool. Music also hones my creativity like you won’t believe. If I am stuck in a rut, creative cooks block, I play some music, and ideas start flowing in. That is how these moin moin savarins came about. I was doing dishes and cooking at the same time, when I looked at my leftover moin moin batter, I was just about to bin it when i thought oh wait, I can pour the batter into savarin tins. When they baked, I thought they were cute. I definitely wasn’t expecting the response I got when I shared it on Facebook and Instagram. Wow, the response was incredible. They did look like doughnuts. Honestly, I didn’t think what I did was a big deal, but hey, I have been accused of being too modest. My friend Kemi says Dunni, you have to own your talent. Own it, and “big up” yourself. Not to the point of arrogance, you won’t even get there, before I drag you by your ears, but you have to own your gift.

I was cooking Efo Riro at the time, so I immediately new I was going to fill the hole with it. Yesterday, on my way home from my 5K run, Lady Antebellum was playing on the radio. Gosh, I love those guys. They and the group ‘The Band Perry’, are huge favourites of mine. I cranked the volume up, and I was thinking of my Moin Moin and Efo Riro savarins, when my memory flashed back to a comment where someone wrote “see Moin Moin looking like Krispy Creme”. I don’t know where that memory came from, then it hit me, I am going to glaze Moin Moin, the way Krispy Creme doughnuts are glazed. Of course, I wasn’t going to use icing sugar. What looks exactly like the icing sugar glaze – Ogi (agidi).

Glazed Ogi and Moin Moin Savarins

I was 1 minute from home, I turned right back and drove straight to the Nigerian food store to buy Ogi. I was so excited, I could hug someone. Ogi in hand, while in the kitchen setting this up, I downloaded like 10 Lady Antebellum songs from Itunes, and they kept me company for the next four hours while I plated, took pictures, wrote this post. The songs on repeat were ‘I Run to You, ‘Just a Kiss – which was what was playing on radio’, ‘Somewhere Love Remains’, ‘Need You Now’, and other tracks from different albums. So, thanks to Lady Antebellum, we have Ogi Glazed Moin Moin Savarins. I may not listen to Nigerian Music, but I tell you that 8 out the 10 brilliant ideas you have seen on this blog came to me while listening to Western Music.

This is the Starter in the “My Nigerian Valentine Series. Let’s Cook

Moin Moin Savarins

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

25 mins

 

Moin Moin Re-defined

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Nigerian Fusion Cuisine

Culture: Yoruba

Serves: 4

You will Need

• Moin Moin Batter
• Savarin tins - on any small baking tin
• Efo Riro - or peppered meats, giz dodo, dodorishi etc
• For the Glazed version
• Ogi
• Ground crayfish or red prawns
• Chopped Ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper

How To

1. Prepare your Moin Moin batter, add any filling you want, preferably in small bits, I used corned beef here. Pour into savarin tins, or any small baking tin and bake at 200 for 10 minutes, or slightly more
2. Over turn the savarin moin Moin unto a plate and fill with any thing you wish. I used Efo Riro, you can use Peppered Meats, Giz dodo, Dodorishi etc.
3. For the glazed Moin Moin, dissolve Ogi into a bowl, you just need a little quantity with water.
4. Cook in the microwave for about 45 seconds. If the Ogi is too thick, add a little water and put it back for another 5 seconds or so.
5. You don't like Ogi, do this with custard or Oats. You are aiming for a consistency of icing sugar glaze for cakes or doughnuts.
6. Dip the moin moin into the bowl of Ogi, ensure that it is well coated.
7. Remove from the bowl, shake off any excess coating, place on a plate and sprinkle ground crayfish or ground red prawns, top with chopped ata rodo.
8. You can also make it more colourful by adding chopped green pepper and Purple onions. It is Valentines so I stayed with red. Who said Moin Moin can't be paired with something sweet. Dip it in chocolate too, and add sprinkles.

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

Make sure you don't over bake the moin moin or it will be dry. You can also steam if you wish

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The post Moin Moin Savarins – My Nigerian Valentine Part 1 (Starter) appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

The inspiration to cook Pasta Nigerian, and I truly mean Nigerian, has been on the radar for months now. A Facebook friend of mine Bola, put up a status update about how difficult it is to find Knorr seasoning cubes in her corner of the US. Comments were coming in fast, and as you would expect with any conversation about seasoning cubes, people come crawling out of the woodwork with their scaremongering tactics. Lol. Oh dear, I am not even going to go into that conversation at all. Even people who have boldly proclaimed that oh, they can’t tolerate MSG have eaten my food many times, and they are still alive o. All the “symptoms” they say they get from eating food cooked with MSG, I am still waiting to hear they got any. Like the “gluten free” trend, people sometimes just jump on the bandwagon of something. Not saying MSG is the bestest thing in the world, but people, give yourselves a break. Anyways, one of the anti MSG proponents came up with other spices and Nigerian seasonings that she uses, and how you don’t need “Maggi”. A counter argument from someone else was, “so are we supposed to use Iru to season spaghetti”? Comments after that found it funny, but it struck a chord with me. Why not? Why can’t we use Iru to season spaghetti? What would be so bad about it, so I decided then that I was going to make a Native Spaghetti dish. I wrote it down months ago, and with each week I say I am going to try it, something else takes its place.

The Nigerian elections were to hold on Feb 14^th and I thought oh goodie, I don’t need to come up with a Valentines Menu, well the elections have been postponed and suddenly I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know what I was going to cook. Last year, I did do something, and I felt I must continue the tradition. The starter Moin Moin Savarins didn’t occur to me until Sunday night. I thought phew, that is out of the way. I already knew what I was doing for dessert. I had posted it in December, but without a recipe, now the main course. It bugged me for hours, until I looked through the list of things I am yet to cook and Native Spaghetti popped out. I thought oooooh, I can try that, but Pasta for date night, isn’t so romantic is it, now this is where Jamie Oliver comes in. He has a show on Tv called Jamie’s 30 minute meals, and I was watching him make a roast peppers sauce with one of these funny shaped Pastas, and I thought whoa, that is what I need. His recipe said use sun dried tomatoes, if you don’t have, you can just roast the  cherry tomatoes with the peppers in the oven at once with some salt, and garlic. Oh yesssssss. That is the authentic Italian way of making a Pasta or Pizza sauce. I have seen that from old school Italian Chefs like Gennaro Contaldo, love that man and his sexy Italian accent and Antonio Carluccio, OMG, you need to watch their shows where they travel around Italy sampling old Italian cooking. Food network addict alert. I will still use my native spaghetti idea, but I will use pretty pasta, and what pasta is prettier than Farfalle – those cute bow shaped pastas.

Yes, the idea started as purely Nigerian, but hey Pasta is Italian, and I am using an Italian method of roasting the peppers and tomatoes for the sauce. Instead of garlic though, not sure how garlic will work with Iru, I will use Onions.  Italians use Basil in the sauce, but I wasn’t going to use Efinrin (scent leaf), too strong, but of course, what is the next best flavourful Nigerian herb, Uziza. Leggo!!!!

You will loooooove this, I promise. Valentines dining in is about simple, but classy and special food. The kind you will get at a restaurant, but this time more special. Your better half won’t see this coming, and you can create a lasting food memory this 2015 Valentines. Nigeria meets Italy, have I told you the story of my cousin Adun, saying Italians are our European cousins? Seriously, this is sooooooo true. We are so alike in so many ways. I will save the story for another Italian-Nigerian Fusion dish that I will be putting up hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Let’s Cook.

Remember, if you want to save this recipe, click on the save button and it will be added immediately to your Big Oven Account. If you don’t have a Big Oven account, sign up for one first, before you click on the Save button. Thanks

Farfalle a la Nigeria

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

Nigerians are a nation of Pasta lovers, but we tend to make our Pasta with a western flair. This is a very Nigerian pasta dish, with a fusion of Italian and Nigerian methods

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Pastas

Culture: Nigerian-Italian Fusion

Serves: 2

You will Need

• Farfalle Pasta - or any uncommon pasta shape
• 2 tbs of Iru
• 2 - 3 pieces of red bell pepper
• 12 - 15 pieces of cherry tomatoes - or 5 pieces of regular tomatoes
• 1 red onion
• 1 shallot - optional
• 1 - 2 pieces of ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper
• A handful of Chopped Uziza
• Palm Oil
• Softened Smoked fish
• Smoked red prawns
• Beef Stock
• Salt and/or seasoning cubes if you need

How To

1. You can choose to blend your peppers raw, or go the Italian way of roasting in the oven. Jamie Oliver's 30 minute pasta dish inspired this recipe, and he roasted the peppers, so I will too. 9jaFoodie also has a recipe with roasting peppers for our stew. Place all the raw peppers and onions on a baking try and sprinkle with salt. The salt not only adds flavour, but it helps extract the water. Jamie used black pepper too, but I wasn't convinced, so I left it out.
2. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes, you should see bits of the peppers blacken. Yes, that is what you want. If you have ever bought jar roasted peppers, you will see the blackened bits.
3. Transfer to a food processor. Blend till almost smooth
4. Heat up palm oil in a pan and add chopped onions. You only need about a cooking spoon of palm oi
5. Add the pureed pepper and fry
6. Before it completely fries, add the iru and smoked fish and beef stock. I boiled my smoked fish with my meats, so the flavour is quite intense, and I didn't need salt or seasoning cubes
7. While the sauce is reducing, boil some salt water, and add the pasta
8. Allow this to fry, and then add chopped uziza
9. Give it another minute or two for the flavour of the uziza leaves to infuse, and there you have it, the Nigerian Pasta Sauce. Hey, we are a nation of Pasta lovers too, high time we have our own unique signature Pasta Sauce eh
10. Now the sauce is ready, the pasta should have cooked al dente (firm but not hard). Drain it
11. Add it to the sauce and carefully toss around. You may choose to add some extra chopped uziza leaves, for added flavour.
12. Give it a minute or two, for the pasta to be well coated by the sauce, and you are done. The taste is amazeballs, trust me

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The post Farfalle a la Nigeria – native bow tie pasta. My Nigerian Valentine Part 2 appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

If you don’t know how much I hate Ogi, you haven’t been reading this blog for long, and may I ask whyyyyyy. Lol. Anyways, welcome to one of my life’s hates. Like haaaaaaaaate. So, why am I writing about something I detest, well I found a way to make me like it. My mother will proceed to fall off her chair when she reads this, because parts of her memory is raising moi, is tarred with battle of wills over Ogi. Even as a toddler I was stubborn. My mother used to tell me, I will just sit there and look at it as if it was poison, how dare you feed me this. Then I will proceed to crying, and wailing like my life was over. I learnt emotional blackmail early enough. When that didn’t work, I will gobble it all up, and then nicely throw up. Of course that would earn me smacking, but it did give me perverse pleasure to see her clean me up, and wipe everywhere. I would be crying and loving it at the same time. Thank goodness I didn’t grow up to be a Sociopath. Lol.

Maybe it is an age thing, or a food blogger thing, but my taste buds are now more open to trying new things. heck, I always said I hate cheese, until my friend Ade took me to Borough Market in London, and I am now a bona fide cheese lover. The expensive type though. Sorry, my taste buds are maturing, and they can sense cheap nasty supermarket cheese, a mile away. Nothing but the finest eh. I have been playing around with Ogi for a while now. I started with making it into an Ogi Brûlée (HERE). It worked, it rocked, I have tried it again with other flavours. The way we traditionally consume Ogi as Nigerians, is the reason why many people hate it. Ogi on its own with milk is super gross. I don’t like milk, sorry, even if it is from the cow raised for the queen, don’t like the smell or taste. But when you go beyond pairing Ogi with just milk, you will be amazed at the depth of flavour it can add to a dessert. It provided a tartness, that cuts through sweetness, balancing things out on your palate. With coconut milk, it is simply amazeballs, with fruit, hot damn. Blend Banana, Mango, or Pineapple with Ogi, which my friend Ade does, and if you still say you hate Ogi after that, I will wash your mouth with soap. Hehehehehehe. Funmi has fortified Ogi with vegetables too. She blended some green veg, yellow pepper, red pepper and even beetroot, to make a multi coloured Ogi wonder that was so beautiful. If our parents generation were unimaginative with Ogi, The New Nigerian Cookery is about to change that. Lol.

Shortly before Christmas, I came across a recipe for a parfait, and thought ooooh, I am going to try that with Ogi. I posted it on Instagram (see why you should be following @dooneyskitchen) and asked my followers to suggest a name for it.

Oh dear, the entries were hilarious. From words like Ogianola, Granogi, Yogranola, Pap Parfait, Granolagi, Ogigranola etc. I had such a good laugh. I kinda like Ogigranola, but this has Yoghurt in it so I will borrow the ‘Y’, and call it Yogigranola Parfait, or maybe Yogianola Parfait. Yogranola sounds perfect, but the Ogi is lost in the word, and you would think this dessert or breakfast is simply Yoghurt and Granola. Throw your hat in the ring and let’s christen this baby.

The Tribe has spoken – Granogi it is. This is with Passion fruit and Pomegranates. Let’s Cook.

The choice for dessert in the My Nigerian Valentine series was this Parfait. No question. I wanted to do this again, but the yellow version. I was going to stick with yellow fruits, but in the spirit of Valentines, I decided to throw in some red. I was up till stupid o’clock setting this up, taking photographs, editing, and all, plus the 5k run I did prior to that, to justify ending the day with this Parfait. I am very pleased with the results, especially the surprise at the bottom of the glass. The lovebirds sugar lumps gave it a nice touch. Thanks to Feyi who got them from Selfridges. You can make this dessert early, and place in the fridge. Shortly before serving, top it up with more granola, fruit, nuts, and chocolate swirls.

Granogi Parfait Surprise

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

5 mins

Total time

15 mins

 

Ogi is a good substitute for custard in desserts. Either as breakfast or dessert, Ogi, Yoghurt and Granola are a match made in heaven

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Sweet Cravings

Culture: Nigerian Food Fusion

Serves: 2

You will Need

• Ogi
• Yoghurt - preferably a fruit based yoghurt
• Granola
• Chocolate
• Fruit sauce - your choice of fruit
• Fresh fruits

How To

1. Dissolve Ogi in water
2. Cook in the microwave for 45 seconds to 1 minute, bring it out and stir. Put it back in the Microwave for another 45 seconds to 1 minute. You want this Ogi to be consistency of Ogi you are used to serving with Akara or Moin Moin. .
3. Now you have your Ogi sorted, get out the glass you want to serve this with. You can also use a small mason jar or a wine glass. Something that will fit in your fridge.
4. Now, to the surprise bit. Cut chocolate into chunks and layer the bottom of the glass. It is a surprise because you won't get to it until you have almost finished the parfait.
5. Add your choice of fruit. I used pomegranates, because they go so well with chocolate, plus the colour is so apt for the season.
6. Slowly pour in the Ogi as the first creamy layer. Be mindful of how tall your glass is, so don't overdo it. Follow that layer with your fruit sauce. To make fruit sauce, simply blend your choice of fruit(s), boil some sugar syrup, add the blended fruit and let it reduce till thick. I was using Passion Fruit Sauce. The fruit sauce will create another layer for colour and sweetness. This is followed by the granola, then Yoghurt with fruit chunks, or you can layer with Ogi again. Finish off with a topping of granola, more of the fruit that you layered with chocolate, in my case pomegranates, and then use a sharp knife or vegetable peeler to create chocolate swirls...... and that's it. Sorry I wasn't photographing as I added each layer, but the finished product is self-explanatory.
7. It will take all of 5 minutes, and you place in the fridge to chill.

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

You can use Muesli if you wish, or even your favourite biscuits in the place of Granola.

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……and this concludes my Nigerian Valentine Series, but wait, there is one more. It will nicely tie everything up in a pretty bow, trust me. Happy Valentines people. I hope you get what you wish for, and if love is not in your life yet, still have yourself a great weekend. You are NOT allowed to feel sorry for yourself. You hear me!!!!!!

The post Granogi Parfait Surprise – My Nigerian Valentine Part 3 appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

This post is dedicated to Funke Bucknor-Obruthe. I follow her on Instagram, and it is such a joy to see her posts. Her fun side just shines through, she is very engaging with her followers, and her enthusiasm for her job leaps off the screen. She is the mother of event planning in Nigeria, and does such an amazing job, her pictures make you stop and stare for a second. Gosh, a lot goes into what these people do. The way they transform an empty space is just sheer magic.

Like me, Funke doesn’t like the taste of water. I know, it is weird, but ugh, I don’t like drinking water at all. Like Funke too, I love me some coke. You know what has helped me battle with my struggle with coke? Mineral water. Sparkling mineral water to be exact. I tell you, it gives you that soda feeling, it doesn’t taste like water, and it tricks your brain into thinking you are not consuming water. I have lost a lot and I mean a looooooooot of belly fat since I quit coke in January.

Isn’t that so pretty

I am still struggling with Maltina, but my mineral water bottle is with me every day now, and I am drinking at least a litre a day. I will recommend it to anyone struggling with sodas. Buy mineral water, or it is sometimes called spring water. Don’t buy still, but sparkling. It fizzes like coke, it has this sharp taste on your tongue, it doesn’t feel like drinking water at all, and guess what it has zero calories.

I found this picture on Instagram, and I though whoa, I am so going to try that.

Image courtesy Yummy Life HERE

I know about fruit infused water, but ugh, it still tastes like water. This definitely doesn’t. It tastes like a carbonated drink, which is partly responsible for our addiction to sodas. It isn’t just the sugar. So, get the best of both worlds. A carbonated drink that is sweet, but instead of processed sugar, you are drinking fruit. Win-Win. I was working with frozen fruit, so I had to use my hand blender, and I also crushed the ice too. You don’t have to. Imagine the possibilities, and fruit options you can try with this. Let’s Mix

Fizzy Smoothie

 

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Prep time

1 min

Cook time

2 mins

Total time

3 mins

 

If your smoothies have become boring, throw some life into them with sparkling mineral water

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Drinks and Cocktails

Serves: 1

You will Need

• Your choice of fruit
• Ice cubes
• Sparkling Mineral Water

How To

1. Place your choice of fruit in the bottom of a glass. I used strawberries, pomegranates and raspberries. I wanted a red fruit soda, you can use whichever fruit combinations you like
2. Use a fork, or a hand blender to pulp to mush.
3. Add crushed ice,, or whole ice cubes
4. Pour over your bottle of mineral water
5. Voila, a pretty delicious fizzy drink that is good for you and tastes great too. It takes all of 1 minute. Think about it, a can of coke will take you 2 minutes to drink, but more than 40 minutes of brisk walking to burn off. Try a fruity soda instead

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The post Fruit Sodas/Fizzy Smoothie – a fitfam alternative to coke appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Happy Shrove Tuesday people a.k.a Pancake day. I haven’t made pancakes in ages because it is one of those things you have to eat with people. My Pancake memories are linked with people lining up and waiting for each Pancake from the pan, so to make a jug for just me or maybe my flatmate, just doesn’t cut it. Pancake is for sharing, pancake is communal, pancake is for family, pancake is for friends, and this post is about my friend Funmi. My personal, person, person, person. I tend to be friends with people much older than me, old soul my mother calls me, but in one of those very rare moments, I connect well with someone my age and Funmi is one of those people, and like I did with Labake, last year, I am doing this with Funmi. For the benefit of anyone who reads this, we are not cooking partners, we are great friends, friends who are direct and open with each other, no drama. If you have a problem with that, tough.

Funmi and I were talking about pastry, and she said ah, let me tell you about Nigerian Pancake. I said yeah, the kind of Pancakes my Mum makes. She said nope, this one is different, you will use seasoning cubes, crayfish, onions and pepper. I know about people adding onions and chopped pepper to pancake batter, but seasoning cubes and crayfish? On my way home, I thought hell naw!!!!! Seasoning cubes and crayfish with eggs and milk, what in the world. Seconds after, it gelt like my alter ego was speaking to me, saying, really Dunni!!!!, You of all people should not have that attitude to “weird ingredients”, in a traditional recipe. I remember laughing at myself, and with Pancake Tuesday approaching, I knew I was going to try it.

Like with making stew, the taste of the finished product, can be traced directly to the taste of the raw components. The second I tasted the batter, I thought whooooooa!!!! OMG!!!! This is soooooooooo nice. I fried the first pancake, and it disappeared in seconds, oh wow. I loooooooooooove.

My mother still makes the best Pancakes, oh yes she does. I mean, if I can make it for a Le Cordon Bleu trained Chef (who pancakes to him must be like boiled rice to us) and he said Dunni, that is one of the best pancakes I have ever eaten in my life. Anytime the talk of Pancakes come up, Chef Fregz still says mehn, Dunni those your pancakes, when are you coming back to Lagos to make them for me again. I mean, my head was swelling on my mother’s behalf, and when I told her, you should have seen the biggest grin on her face. So, let us agree that she makes THE BEST SWEET pancakes (recipe HERE), but this, is THE best SAVOURY pancake you will ever try. The fact that seasoning cubes and crayfish paired so well with eggs, milk and flour, you can imagine the other Nigerian ingredients I am going to be adding to Pancake. In fact, my head has been brimming with ideas all morning.

Let’s Cook

The Nigerian Crayfish Pancake

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

This is a savoury pancake made with unusual traditional Nigerian ingredients, that create a flavourful and tasty pancake

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Breakfast

Serves: 3

You will Need

• I used the recipe for my mother's pancake HERE (except the butter and lemon rind)
• 1 seasoning cube
• Crayfish - ground or whole
• Chopped Onions
• Chopped ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper

How To

1. Break the eggs into a blender, add milk and the crayfish
2. Add Sugar, Salt, seasoning cubes, dry pepper, flour and blend till smooth
3. Once the batter is smooth, pour into a bowl and add chopped onions and pepper
4. Heat up a little oil in the frying pan, add a ladle spoonful and fry
6. Because they are savoury pancakes, I though oooooh, I can make a simple sauce with chopped onions, chopped pepper, a little belnded pepper and whole crayfish. I tossed them around in a pan with a teaspoon of oil and poured over the pancakes.

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The post The Nigerian Crayfish Pancake appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

I love what I do. I love the interaction I get with you guys, I love that I have helped to spur on your creative tendencies. I was speaking with my friend Kemi yesterday and I said, my life is never boring, like never. Every day I get to read lovely comments, funny comments, inspiring comments, you guys are such a blast, many of you say thank you to me every day, but you don’t how much I say thank you for colouring my life. Confessing now, I have had to put my Mum on hold just to read, laugh and respond to a comment. Instagram has been the most fun. Before the account got very active, the blog was the only place I got to read back from you guys, now I have two outlets; the blog and Instagram. Facebook, not as much anyway, but that is to be expected, Instagram is the hottest social media environment right now. A new year resolution for me is to build my Pinterest page. I have created it, but it is not as active as I would like, so from henceforth, check out Dooney’s Kitchen on Pinterest. I will be Pinning images and creating boards. Such fun. If you are not active on Instagram, I suggest you open an account, and wander around. Instagram may have gotten a bad rep, but hey, you choose which account you want to follow, so if you don’t like to be pressured from all the flashy stuff on there, hey, don’t click the follow button of such people.

A snapshot of the accounts I follow on Instagram are; Wedding pages – and only 5 of them, 3 Nigerian related and 2 non Nigerian. Why, business reasons. Seeing the vendors showcased on those pages has helped me network like you won’t believe. Photographers – I guess that is self-explanatory, Other Food Bloggers – also for networking purposes. People in Business, Fashion and Lifestyle – again, networking. Event Planners – again, networking. Makeup artists (4 of them) – just because, i love their work. Food Businesses – again, networking. Healthy eating pages – for inspiration. 5 personal accounts I think, and that’s it. You can make Instagram work for you, and have access to people, ordinarily you wouldn’t have had access to, and guess what, it is FREE!!! As for the kfb requests, I must be old school because it took me ages to realise it meant “Kindly Follow Back”. I do apologise if I haven’t responded to your request, but please see it from my perspective, @dooneyskitchen is somewhat of a business Instagram account. It isn’t a personal account, of which I have decided to open a personal instagram account, where I can be all goofy and stuff, and not food related, and then maybe I can break my own rule and follow celebrities. Most likely not, because their lives don’t really interest me. The ones I sometimes manage to read about them when boredom calls is enough, don’t want to see pictures of them going to the loo or showing off a new car. Lol

So, that is a quick Instagram 101 for you. Now, back to the food. A reader Blessing tagged me on a picture on Facebook. She said after she tried my Moin Moinlette, she got the inspiration to make in her own words “coconut jollof beans”. I though ooooooh, now don’t I just love that. The idea was ruminating in my head, especially with my new Fitfam drive, and I thought wait a minute, coconut milk has natural coconut oil, when I cook this, I don’t need to use any palm/vegetable oil at all. Even better, I will make my Aunty Bukky’s Adalu, which is one of the best beans dishes you will ever cook. Trust me, Aunty Bukky’s beans dish is legendary. Cousins fly into London and make sure they stop by to eat her beans before they go back. Click HERE for the recipe. I adapted her recipe, only using coconut milk, but the steps are the same.

Let’s Cook

Coco for Adalu

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

40 mins

Total time

50 mins

 

A Fitfam dish of Beans and Corn, and coconut milk used as a substitute for Palm oil. Nutty, and very delicious. Enjoy as a Curry, or as a thickened dish with plantain, bread or garri

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Beans

Culture: Yoruba

Serves: 3

You will Need

• Brown Beans - or ewa oloyin
• Fresh corn - or canned sweetcorn
• Tatashe
• Ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper
• 1 can of Coconut milk

How To

1. For the beginning part of this recipe, click HERE
2. Following her recipe, when you get to the point of adding oil, add coconut milk stir, leave it to boi
3. Using your wooden spoon, try to mash the beans a little, this makes it very creamy in look and consistency. If I should add, lower the heat to medium just so the coconut milk doesn't start to cause the beans to burn. This is what you should end up with
4. Leave it to thicken, or you could eat the beans like a Coconut Bean Curry. I loved eating it as a soup with plantain rings. My grandma used to make this very watery beans when I was grwoing up, and we thickened it with Ijebu garri. I enjoyed re-creating that experience
5. By the next day, especially with being in the fridge, the beans had thickened further, and I enjoyed it again in a plantain boat
6. I enjoyed this so much, I was eating beans every day until it finished. I hope you try it out yourself and see. The aroma of coconut with beans, crikey, you will want to bottle it and sell it, and the taste too, oh wow, Yums!!!!!

3.2.2925

The post Coco for Adalu appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

A couple of months ago, I got a pingback notification. This means that another blog has tagged mine on a post. I followed the link and found this blogger in Australia that tried my Fish Imoyo (recipe HERE), I thought okay wow, all the way in Australia. Yes, I know my Google Analytics reports tell me that I have readers in Australia, but it doesn’t feel real until something like this happens. A few weeks ago too, someone emailed from New Zealand. Yup, New Zealand. A Nigerian who relocated to join her husband. She kindly passed me an old Delta recipe, that I can’t wait to try and share with you guys. Anyways, back to my Aussie blogger. She said she struggled with the recipe because she couldn’t figure out what “blended pepper mix” meant. In her words, obviously your blog is written for Nigerians, who would understand what I meant, but she would have appreciated if there was more detail. She further said Google did not help too. I don’t blame Google. Blended pepper mix doesn’t describe anything. I apologised to her and said I would put up a post about it, and explain all I need to. That was months ago, and I totally forgot until 2 weeks ago, thanks to Instagram. I was just extolling the virtues of Instagram two days ago right? Well, it has brought me more blessings than networking. The comments also provide golden food tips. Remember to follow @dooneyskitchen.

On this mat starting from the front line, you can see long red and green chilli, ata rodo (the one in between the red and green chilli). Second line – red onions (also called purple onions), Tatashe (red bell pepper), Green Pepper, Yellow Pepper Last line – Long Tatashe (Romano peppers), White Onions and a can of Plum tomatoes

Anyways, the “pepper mix” terminology ends today, well it kinda ended months ago but I didn’t publish the post. I dug this out of my drafts folder. After the interaction with the blogger, I thought Dunni, call it something Nigerian. I wanted to name this for posterity, after all the French have their Mirepoix, the Spanish have their Sofrito. The Haitians have their Epices. In fact the Cajuns and Louisiana Creole’s have something similar called “the holy trinity”. According to Wikipedia “The holy trinity (Onion, bell pepper & Celery) is the base for much of the cooking in the regional cuisines of Louisiana. Variants use garlic, parsley, or shallots in addition to the three trinity ingredients.” This pretty much describes our “pepper mix” doesn’t it?. It is the base of most of our cooking, from stews, to soups, to rice dishes, pottage dishes, eggs, you name it. We have different variants too, with ingredients like garlic, ginger and onions. The ubiquitous ingredient seems to be pepper, the hot kind, ata rodo (scotch bonnet/habanero pepper), which could come either as fresh or dried.

I was going to name this Nigerian Red Pepper and tomato Base, I thought against it, because tomatoes are left out in a lot of native soups, so I decided to try naming it in Yoruba. I came up with different combinations of Yoruba (the only Nigerian language I speak) words. I thought of calling it Ata Aise, ‘Ata’, the Yoruba word for pepper and ‘Aise’ meaning raw, because essentially, it is a raw pepper mix. Then I thought hmmmmmn, that may be difficult to pronounce, try again. The Yoruba word for mix is ‘darapo’, so the term Ata darapo came up, but I imagined how that too, would sound no a non Yoruba speaking person. With each permutation, I was googling to see what already existed. Then I thought okay, blend/grind, in Yoruba is ‘Lilo’, so I thought ‘Ata Lilo’. My grandmother and Big Oladunni have used the term “Ata Lilo” uncountable times, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me at the start. I typed that into google and Africuria came up. It took me aback, I tell you because none of my previous combinations existed in Google. I clicked on the link and squealed in delight. OMG, it describes this pepper base PERFECTLY. Whomever the writer of that blog is, we need to sit down for drinks. Cheers to you. So, people let us use this term and stamp it into the online history books. I like giving our foods the Nigerian name that it deserves, because it helps our food keep its identity. Anglicizing, our Nigerian foods, doesn’t make it stand out proudly, or calling it my least favourite term “African food”, is a crime against individuality. Dooney’s Kitchen sets a trend. It coins a name and it goes on people’s lips around the world. So, when next you see me refer to Ata Lilo, you know I mean this tomato, onions, red pepper and ata rodo (scotch bonnet/habanero pepper) mix. or whatever permutation of the pepper mix. So, let me define this properly, and create a Wiki entry for it:

Ata Lilo – can either be red or green

Ata Lilo (pronounced A-t-ah Lee-loh) – This is raw pureed tomatoes, onions, red bell pepper and ata rodo (scotch bonnet/habanero pepper). This combination is pretty much standard, and ubiquitous in Nigerian cooking. The puree can be smooth or rough, depending on what you are cooking. It is varied based on what you are cooking. For traditional Nigerian soups, the tomatoes, and sometimes onions are left out. For stews, rice dishes, or pottage dishes, it can be flavoured with ginger, garlic and green pepper. The best way to understand Ata Lilo is to see it as a base for most savoury Nigerian dishes. Think of it as a Béchamel. It is the mother sauce of which the flavours used in Nigerian cooking is built upon. Like Béchamel, the pepper mix is also quite individual, and varies based on taste.

Ata Lilo

Ata Lilo can also be Green – here the major component is Green bell pepper, and ata rodo (which can be red or green). This is the base for Ofada Stew

Before Ata Lilo is used in cooking, it is mostly boiled to reduce its water content, which will cut your cooking time in half, and if it comprises of tomatoes, boiling also helps to get rid of the sometimes acidic taste of the tomatoes.

When boiled, Ata Lilo can be referred to as Ata Sise (pronounced A-t-ah See-say). ‘Sise’ in Yoruba, means to cook or cooked, so Ata Sise is simply the cooked or reduced pepper base.

Boiling does take a very long time, especially if you have a large quantity of Ata Lilo. I have three cheat methods below, listed in order of quickest duration.

Cheat method 1 – Straining after blending

This tip was given to me at different times by my cooking sisters on Facebook. I had this knowledge months ago, but the opportunity to try it never came, until I was forced to last weekend. After blending, pass your Ata Lilo through a fine sieve.

This gets rid of most of the water, and you have a thick consistency which you can cook with immediately. Oh, you think this will take time or it is tedious, trust me, it doesn’t. If you have a large sieve, you can be done in under 5 – 7 minutes. Compare that with the time it takes to boil Ata Lilo. I had only a small sieve and it took me about 10minutes. You bet, I am going out to buy a large fine sieve, or even a large cheese cloth. This method is brilliant, when you only have a small – medium volume of Ata Lilo, and especially when you are in a hurry.

Cheat method 2 – Steaming before blending

This was given to me on Instagram first by @oyinlola_babs, and then other people echoed what she said, with someone even saying that is how her grandmother taught her to do it. See why you should be following @dooneyskitchen on Instagram? The golden cooking tips that people give out in comments, are worth their weight in gold. So, I tried it out too, and yes it is longer than method 1 above, it took me about 15 minutes, but it saved me the physical effort of straining through a sieve. This method is simple and ingenious really. Place your peppers, onions and tomatoes in a pot with very little water, and steam.

The heat will sweat them down, and basically cook them, when the water has dried up, the skin of the peppers and tomatoes should feel soft, and almost cooked.

you can even leave for longer, to have caramelised bits at the bottom of the pot. Yums!!

When you blend these steamed bits, the Ata Lilo is thick, smells like pepper that has been boiling for ages, and you can cook with it immediately.

……………..and there you have it

this red gorgeous ata lilo, all from steaming

Cheat method 3 – Roasting Peppers the Italian way

This is the longest of the three methods, but probably the oldest too. From our Italian cousins, who do this to make their pasta or pizza sauce, you simply place all the items for your Ata Lilo on an oven tray and roast in an oven for 35 – 45 minutes.

I used this method for my Palm oil and Iru Pasta dish – Farfalle a la Nigeria. Recipe HERE

Dooney’s Kitchen Tip – If I had to choose a favourite cheat method, it would be Steaming, because you can do a large batch of peppers at once, which may be prohibitive in the straining method, and with the roasting method, you will have to roast more than one batch, and considering it takes that long to roast a batch, you may as well use the boiling method.

FAQS – I have been asked multiple questions about Ata Lilo in the past, so I decided to add to this post, facts I have acquired from my mum and grandmothers, from friends, and also tips I have received from you guys, over time. So, here goes:

Facts you need to know about Ata Lilo

1. For certain dishes like stews, pottage dishes and rice dishes, where you need a bright red/orangey pleasant colour, you need to add lots of tomatoes. Very essential

2. For traditional soups, especially those involving vegetables, tatashe is key, and you will be better to blend roughly.

3. If your Ata Lilo is too hot (spicy), adding blended tomatoes does the trick. if you have already cooked it, add Palm Oil. Palm oil is brilliant for toning down the heat.

4. How do you know if your Ata Lilo has gone bad? Bubbles. Look out for bubbles. I had to do this deliberately to show you what I mean.

Fermentation causes gases to be released, which show up as bubbles at the top. You may taste your ata lilo or ata sise and it may taste fine, but bubbles are the first sign that it is going off.

What do you do when that happens? Boil immediately. This halts the fermentation process and you can cook with it, with no foul taste or food poisoning.

5. If you live in a region where power is not stable, this is how you store pepper without refridgeration. This is from the files of SYTYCC on Facebook, copied with permission.

The Nigerian way of preserving Ata Lilo without electricity.

1.Grind your pepper.

2. Boil till thickens.

3. Pour into air tight bottle while still on fire (e.g. big bama bottle).

4. Cover immediately & put into boiling water.

5. Leave for 2-3 mins.

6. Do not refrigerate, store anywhere in your kitchen either in the kitchen cabinet.

NOTE: it can last for months if not opened & as good as fresh. Once opened, use all

Additional Tips

• Glass Bottle = You can use any other bottle just make sure it is air tight & a wide bottle neck 2 make pouring d hot pepper in when hot easy.
• Before using bottle, please wash bottle and lid thoroughly, pour hot water in bottle and leave for 10minutes to sterilise bottle before you use.

6. Always taste your Ata Lilo. This will give you the best indication as to what your stew or soup will taste like. If you don’t like the raw taste, you will struggle with seasoning it when you cook. So, taste, taste, taste. If it is too sharp, add more onions or tatashe. Tomatoes are sometimes sharp, especially when it isn’t the right season for them. If it is too sweet, guilty party is most likely the onions, so add more tatashe first, then tomatoes if you wish.

7. What type of onions to use – red or white? I say it boils down to preference. I prefer red onions, my friend Funmi says they are too sharp, so she uses white. Let your taste buds guide you

8. You still would want to boil, how do you stop the pepper from boiling over? Weeeeeell, the first time I heard the wooden spoon over the pot tip, I tried it out and it didn’t work. See picture below, funny story. I tried it again another time, and it worked. Weird right?

For some weird reason, it didn’t spill over.

Anyways, the sure fire method I know is to add a little vegetable oil to it. Works like a dream. Picture below was of making stew, but surprise surprise, yes you can see some splashes as expected, but the presence of oil ensured that it didn’t boil over.

Ignore the splashy mess please, I wanted to display a real life scenario picture, and we all know this is what happens when you make stew. Well unless you are a clean every minute robot. Ain’t nobody got time for that, when you have 4 pots on the cooker and a million other cooking tasks to do. Lol

9. Can you use Ata Lilo directly for cooking in its raw form? Yes you can. Look at my recipe for Mama Adeola stew HERE. Olusola Sanni’s instruction was to pour the pepper directly from blending and it was fine.

10. Can you use canned Plum tomatoes? Sure you can. I do that when I can’t find ripe juicy red tomatoes. Sometimes the ones we get here have this weird pale orange colour that tastes so tangy and acidic, I opt for canned plum tomatoes as a substitute and it is fine

If I have missed anything out, or if you have more cooking wisdom to share regarding Ata Lilo, please let me know by dropping a comment and I will update this post, with due reference to you

So, after all this talk, here’s my recipe for Ata Lilo – I am sure every cook has their own unique blend

Ata Lilo

 

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The Nigerian Pepper base that comprises mostly of tomatoes, tatashe, ata rodo, and onions.

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Stews

Serves: ¾ - 1 jug

You will Need

• 2 pieces of medium red onions
• 5 pieces of tomatoes - or 1 can of plum tomatoes
• 3 pieces of ata rodo
• 3 - 4 pieces of tatashe
• Water
• This will serve for at least ¾ of a standard blender jug full

How To

1. Combine all the ingredients in a blender, and puree till smooth or a rough blend.
2. Use either of the 3 cheat methods I listed in this post, or go the old fashioned way of boiling.

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

This recipe is for a standard base of Ata Lilo, that will work in most dishes, but for some specialty dishes, I vary the the quantity of tomatoes, or take it out entirely, add more tatashe, or more ata rodo to make it more spicy, and so on and so forth.

3.2.2925

The post Ata Lilo – the Nigerian Pepper Base appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

I haven’t eaten fried plantain in what feels like ages now. Even before the fitfam drive in January, I had subconsciously been staying away from it, and now that I have bought a halogen oven that makes THE BEST Boli by the way, fried plantains have seemed like a distant memory. I did fry diced plantains for my Moin Moin Mason Jar Salad though (recipe HERE), but that was just about a quarter of a plantain. Does that count? Lol. Anyways, last night, I got my fried dodo experience without the frying, yaaaaaay. Well my yaaaay was short-lived because I only made 3 tartlets to take to a friend’s house, and it didn’t seem right to take less than two, so I sadly eyed the other two, and was tempted to tell her I wasn’t coming again, just so I could eat her share.

These gorgeous plantain tartlets are courtesy Funmi. She served hers with Efo Riro and while Kemi and I were talking and drooling over the picture, Kemi said imagine these with eggs, and I went on further to say yessssss, but imagine these with egg stew. Both of us paused for a second and simultaneously said ooooooooh. A dish resulting from a trio of ideas. Gosh I love my friends, and I love that they love food, and I love that we have a decent mature grown ass women relationship, that is free from bitchy back biting tendencies and bullying factions. My mum did tell me that the friends you make when you are older, are the ones you tend to keep for life, because y’all have come into your own, you have an understanding of who you are, and an acceptance of who the other person is, so there is a lot of mutual respect that grows and tightens your bonds of friendship.

What is better than food and friends, maybe men, naaaaah, the first two, FTW. Now throw into the mix lots of laughter and good chit-chat. This is what I had when I drove to Joke’s house to give her these, and I walked away with goodies too. Agbalumo, yes Lord, fresh roasted groundnuts from Lagos, and the cherry on top, the most luxurious shea body butter you will ever find. Joke makes these tubs of body butters, that look, feel and smell good enough to eat. The banana variant should come with a warning – this is not buttercream, so don’t eat. Joke makes and sells this from her home, and you can contact her on Facebook though her page Joxy’s Apothecary, or find her on Instagram via the account: joxys_apothecary. Organic shea butter with natural ingredients.

These tartlets are so simple, from following Funmi’s pictures, it was clear what I needed to do. You can use any small flat bakeware you have at home. These can serve as a bonafide starter for your dinner party, or even at home, a fun way to serve dodo and eggs, which was a childhood favourite dinner for me. Gosh the memories. You know what I was saying at the beginning about missing fried plantain? Because I gave these tartlets one whiff each of cooking spray, just before i place in the oven. While they baked, I don’t know what magic happened in the oven, but it came out tasting like fried plantain. Imagine enjoying fried plantain without deep-frying. Pretty and Fitfam too, what more do you want out of a meal. Let’s Cook.

Remember, if you want to Save this recipe, click on the Save button, and if you do that on a phone, you can have your favourite recipes, right at your fingertips for when you need them, rather than having to search.

Dodo and Egg Tart Shells

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

45 mins

 

Redefining the classic Dodo and Eggs

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Nigerian Fusion Cuisine; Healthy Nigerian

Culture: Yoruba

Serves: 3

You will Need

• 1 Ripe Plantain - the amount you need will depend on the number of tart shells you want to make
• Salt - optional
• Dry pepper - optional
• 2 Eggs
• Ata rodo
• Green Chilli
• Red Onions
• Ata Lilo
• Vegetable oil - or cooking spray
• Seasoning cube - optional

How To

1. Slice the plantain in half and boil until cooked. A good indication of cooking is when the skin starts to split
2. Peel the skin off the plantains, and mash until completely smooth. You can do this in a food processor, if you are working with a large number of plantains. You can add a little salt and dry pepper to the plantain dough
3. Now you have your plantain dough, tear out a small ball and place unto the tart shell, press down with a clenched fist. This helps to spread the dough evenly across the surface area of the tart shell
4. You can then use your fingers to gently pat down. Ensure that you don't tear the dough, and also try to get the dough to fit to the top of the tart shell because the dough will shrink a little on baking.
5. At the last minute, I applied cooking spray to the plantain dough tart shells. Just a whiff,, and I baked at 220 (uk oven) for 20 minutes. Watch these closely, so the tops don't start to burn.
6. While the tart cases were baking, I made a quick egg stew, which is nothing but, lightly fried chopped onions and peppers, of which I added 2 tablespoons of steamed Ata Lilo, which was seasoned with a little salt, and let to fry for about 3 minutes. After which I poured lightly beaten eggs over it, and allowed to cook for a bit before i used a fork to scramble.
7. Take out the plantain tart shells from the casings, be careful, those things are hot. Add your egg stew, or whatever filling you want, and serve. Se Fini. Quick and simple isn't it?

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

1 long ripe plantain will make about 3 small tart shells

Don't overcook the plantains, or they will become soggy and difficult to mould

3.2.2925

Will you be trying these out this weekend? I most definitely would but another variant.

I am having a chilled out weekend, probably the first this year. I hope you guys have a blissful one too. Toodles!!!!

The post Dodo and Egg Tart Shells appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Yes, pause to read that for a second, turn your head to one side, look up at the words again, and then remember that Dunni is crazy like that, and then you continue reading. Hahahahahaha. Yes of course, why not.

I am writing this on Oscar night, a few hours to the main event and watching one of these programmes in the run up to the event, and watching these people at the top of their game, watching their experiences, and hearing them tell their stories, is so inspiring. I laughed hard at some bits, some made me smile, and others darned near made me cry, some I found myself clapping for. Not to be arrogant or anything, but I could see myself in these people. I get asked all the time how I do what I do, and my default answer has always been “I don’t know”. After watching this programme, where past, winners, past and present nominees were interviewed, I can finally say I know how I do what I do. I push myself. I watched that show, and thought back to famous actors and actresses, that have never even been nominated before, and I can see why these select people have been. They are different, they aren’t just the MVP’s by luck, but sheer hard work and dedication to their craft. There is always going to be a select few at the top, that is how nature works. The Steven Spielberg’s the Martin Scorcese’s the Tom Hanks, the Meryl Streep’s The Judi Dench’s, The Daniel Day Lewis’s, I can go on and on. I mean to get to the pinnacle of your craft must be a very special thing. One thing that echoed through all of their words was, no matter how hard it is, it is so rewarding, and here I am, this 80’s baby, and I can finally say, this is the most rewarding thing I have ever done with my life. Of course when the roles of being a wife and Mum get added to my life, they hopefully will be equally as rewarding.

So, why am I cheesing over an industry that is so far removed from me, technically it is not that far of, because there are things we have in common, such as talent, lights, cameras, and connecting to large audiences, and just being a super star, hehehehehe. Even if you take away all that, the Oscars have always been inspiring for me. Last year was the year of Lupita, and I remember exactly what I was doing this time last year. I remember repeating those words, and 1 year later, I still find myself chanting it. When I get all these images of what I want to do with my gift and I get scared of how they will manifest, I say back to myself, Dunni, your dreams are valid. No matter if you are technically this not found person yet, outside the Nigerian environment, if Lupita can go from Shuga to Drama School to Oscar winner in such a short time, nothing is impossible. I woke up to hear the Oscar winners, and I was screaming for Eddie Redmayne. He doesn’t know me, but I wanted him to win. Yaaaaaaay, I am in a good mood today, because a BIG announcement is coming up this afternoon, like MAJOR.

Anyways, how did this cray cray idea come up. Quinoa. Yup, from the most disgusting of foods, came this sweet, spicy and salty baby. Please Quinoa is nasty, don’t even try selling me the idea. Someone dropped a comment on IG about Quinoa tasting like Pestilence and Grief, and It is the funniest thing I have heard so far this year. I put up a post on IG asking for ideas to like Quinoa, and everyone came back with a savoury option. I don’t like it when an ingredient defeats me, so I thought of my granogi parfait and said, okay, Quinoa, I will make you sweet, maybe just maybe I will be able to tolerate it. I searched on IG for sweet Quinoa ideas, and I came across this gorgeous picture of Quinoa porridge and candied almonds. My brain locked in, and looking at the almonds, I remembered that almonds are a good substitute for Egusi, and then I thought, wait a minute, what if I flip it backwards. If almonds can be used for egusi soup, then egusi can be candied, in the place of almonds. Oooooooooh, yessssssss. I did think it was crazy for a second, but hey, I do crazy. I do it weeeeeell. So last night, with oscar buzz going on tv, I pushed myself to try this out. Batch one burnt, because I wasn’t watching it, but batch two was so perfect, I wanted to scream, where is my food Oscar. Loooool.

What does it taste like? Like a nutty, buttery, sweet version of Egusi. The first few chews will confuse your brain for a bit, then when understanding sets in, you will not put this down, I promise. Make sure you make a decent portion batch, because once you start munching, you won’t stop. Let’s candy some Egusi, shall we.

Candied Egusi bark

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Egusi is traditionally used in savory dishes, but a seed, like any other seed, it can be candied into a bark that is butty, crumbly and delicious

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Sweet Cravings

Culture: Nigerian Fusion

Serves: 2

You will Need

• 1 cup of Egusi
• 1 tablespoon of cold Unsalted Butter - optional
• Salt
• Dry pepper - cayenne pepper
• Honey

How To

1. Melt butter and Egusi in a pan. I chose to use butter, because it provided some much needed moisture. My first batch was without butter, and the Egusi burned much quicker, and the candy was drier. You can use margarine or leave it out completely. If you do, watch it closely on low heat
2. Once the butter has melted with the Egusi, keep stirring, and add dry pepper and salt. Keep stirring until well combined, and you will also hear and see the Egusi start to pop in the pan.
3. Before the butter gets completely absorbed and the egusi seeds starts to burn, add the honey. I wasn't measuring the honey, but pour enough to cover the egusi seeds
4. Keep stirring and you will notice the honey starts to deepen in colour.
5. At first, it will look like the Egusi is swimming in the honey, but as the colour of the honey deepens and thickens, it starts to coat the Egusi. This is also when you should turn down the heat to medium
6. Keep stirring and the egusi will bind with the honey, such that you can scoop up without any drizzling, then you need to turn down the heat further and watch it, because it will go from golden brown to burnt so fast.
7. Pour from the pan unto a baking sheet and spread out as much as you can. Bake in the oven at 200 for 10 - 12 minutes. Slightly longer if you wish, but not more than 2 - 3 minutes.
8. Take it out of the oven and allow to cool. Be careful, this will be very hot. The honey will melt in the oven pooling across the Egusi, and as it cools down it will harden. You can leave it to harden and break out into barks, like this
9. Or, before it totally cools down and hardens, mold it into small bite sized balls
10. Or you can have a bit of both
11. While it is still warm, you can also roll in some desiccated coconut, for extra flavour
12. Serve as a snack, or with your oatmeal porridge, tapioca porridge or quinoa porridge. That is if you can wait, because as soon as these pop into your mouth, the chewy sweet goodness is unstoppable

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

Your Egusi must be dry and devoid of moisture.

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Now breathe, and remember again that Dooney is a gangster cook, nothing is off limits. You can accuse me of many things, not having original ideas, is definitely not one of them. The End.

The post Candied Egusi bark appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

I love coconut milk so much, it can make me like anything, including my dear old Quinoa a.k.a pestilence and grief. Despite the many suggestions for Quinoa, in the savoury direction, I decided to head to the other side of the taste bud scale – sweet. I mean, if Granogi parfait can make me tolerate Ogi, something I have hated for over 20 years now, Quinoa is a recent addition to my food dictionary, and I was determined to conquer it.

Food Fusion at its finest. Quinoa and Egusi

When I paired this with Candied Egusi (recipe HERE), I finished a glass full. Never happened before. All my experiences with Quino have never gone beyond two spoonfuls, well, not entirely correct, I did enjoy a savoury Quinoa dish prepared by a colleague, but it was paired with rice, and just like with coconut milk, anythig paired with rice is a sure winner. This is very simple to make, so if like me you detest Quinoa, cook it with coconut milk, and serve with something sweet, like fresh fruits, raisins, or even candied Egusi.

From Pestilence and Grief to Sweet breakfast. Stranger things have happened. hehehehe

Coco for Quinoa Porridge

 

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Prep time

1 min

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

26 mins

 

Quinoa is a healthy grain, with many added benefits. If cooking it savoury is not agreeable with you, cook it sweet.

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Breakfast

Serves: 1

You will Need

• ½ cup Quinoa
• Coconut milk
• Milk - optional
• Sweet toppings - your choice

How To

1. Heat up coconut milk in a pot
2. While it is boiling, place your quinoa into a sieve and run under a cold tap for a few minutes, to get rid of any bitterness.
3. Allow the coconut milk to come to a boil
4. Add the rinsed Quinoa and then lower the heat.
5. Quino needs to cook on low to medium heat for about 20minutes. It is also very absorbent like oats, so you may need to top up your coconut milk. I ran out, so I used milk. Cook until the grains are tender and almost transparent. Serve with a topping

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The post Coco for Quinoa Porridge appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

A little history. When I started the blog in 2013, months later, I asked people to contribute their own recipes. I called it Foodie Community recipes, and it didn’t take off at all. The only two people that submitted recipes were Grace – a meaty vegetable sauce HERE and Ms Socially Awkward HERE. I wasn’t too happy about that, but i just let it slide because back then, recipe sharing, food picture sharing wasn’t something that was practised fervently in the online Nigerian food community, unlike now, that it has grown into a movement on its own, which I attribute to SYTYCC on Facebook. That group is beast, and I mean that in a good way. Someone else that definitely needs to be mentioned here, one of the greatest influences of pop culture in our time, Bella Naija. My friend Kemi and I can never forget the explosion that happened in November 2013 when on a post I shared on Bella Naija, I mentioned the group, and as they say, the rest is history. Since then, the steady rise of Nigerian food on social media has grown tremendously, that popularity has birthed many new food bloggers. Progress!!!!

When I was going to design the site, one of the questions I was asked was, what features do you have that you want to improve. The foodie community was very high on the list. With a bit of research, to see what is out there, the thought to create a sub site of the blog, so it is a fully fledged site, not connected to any social media platform came to mind, and the web developer said, sure it is very possible. Hundreds of such sites exist, Dunni I can give you this. See that picture? See Date last modified…

That is how long this has been ruminating. Since June. That date wasn’t even when thoughts of the idea started. That was just the last time I modified that post, and I haven’t looked back since, because everything, and I mean everything that could go wrong, went wrong. At some point, I thought okay, maybe this isn’t just meant to be. You know like a horrible relationship that isn’t going nowhere, and despite trying to make it work, you just admit this isn’t working and you call it quits. Yup, I gave up on this and decided to focus on just custom designing the site for the blog. When that one too goes live, I will share my horror stories. I don’t know which sounds worse or even more interesting.

When I thought there was some hope of the site being designed, I hired a graphics designer for the logo. Here’s to you Johnny. Yeah, you probably wanted to wring my neck a couple of times, but see what you produced after the millionth iteration. The logo was ready, hopes for the site were dashed again, money was wasted again. I thought, what is this now? There is a phrase my parents live by, and it has passed unto me because of our faith. “When your need is greatest, help is nearest to you”. Just like that, in fact, faster than the snap of a finger, a solution came across my path. You know how you’ve been in a crappy situation for a long time, and suddenly the clouds just lift. It definitely felt like that. I look back at the time now, time that I thought was time wasted, and I know now, that I was given that time to learn, to observe, to dream up more functionalities for this site, in fact even time for obstacles to be taken off my path, time for this to rise out of the ashes, when the time was right. I want to encourage anyone going through a crappy situation right now. I may not be able to tell you when those clouds will lift, but hold your head up, and hang in there. They WILL lift. That one, I can assure you.

So, what is this site about, well it is the online community of Dooney’s Kitchen and beyond. I have received many emails of your recipes, your pictures of dishes, your feedback, and I had wished I could file them all somewhere, but there was no way to do that through the site. Someone was definitely thinking in that direction too, because on Feb 4th Jola from Imperial College, who initially emailed me to discuss food for a party emailed me and said “So off the top of my head, not like there’s a real structure I had in mind, it’s just to bring foodies together, where people can sign up and join. So people who just love to eat good food, people who know how to make good food etc. and it seems everyone is passionate about Naija food. So why not harness the energy?” Jola was talking about a cooking club, but without knowing, our thoughts had connected somewhere. She said “There can be various groups depending on location. U don’t have to be in all the groups but they coordination is managed from your site…a section on your site. They have to sign up and join. Maybe each group has a maximum number of 10 women. Meet up once a month. It’s still sketchy in my head sha”. I smiled and told her, I had something in the offing, something even bigger that that, but of course, I couldn’t give details, because I didn’t have any, not even a page designed. See when I said, the time I had been waiting, wasn’t wasted. I was being prepared for how amazeballs this site is going to be. Yes, people, it has features that will just blow your mind. The first of its kind. The logo of Dooney’s Kitchen Tribe says – connecting people through food, and that is exactly what it is going to be.

Where did the name Tribe come from? The very first developer I hired in June. She was to start with designing the logo, which was such a huge joke really, but something good came out of it. She said oh, maybe you should show this logo to your Tribe, and see, because they may have a different perspective from you. I asked what she meant by Tribe, and she said oh your friends, your followers, your readers, your community in general. You have built up a “tribe” of people that read your blog. Their input in the logo may be helpful. That is how the idea locked in, and somehow, I kept seeing inferences of Tribe everywhere. Sometimes it made smile, at other times it just hurt, because my tribe site was nowhere even near starting. 8 months on now, and Dooney’s Kitchen Tribe has launched. Where is this site you say…….. head on down to tribe.dooneyskitchen.com. No, the www is not needed, because it is a sub domain. Click HERE.

Look around and don’t forget to hit the Sign up button and become a Triber. We are going to rock the Internet. Imagine if a manufacturer wants to run a campaign or research on food in Nigeria, or Afro Caribbean’s living anywhere around the world, or a news story is developing, or something. When we get large enough, where do you think they will go? You guys have been talking about how we need to put Nigerian food on the map, trust me food bloggers can’t do it alone. The world needs to hear from you guys, from the perspective of home cooks. It may have started from Dooney’s Kitchen, but the grand picture is something so much bigger. I hope you will support this initiative, and support en masse. Tell your friends and family. A Tribe of Nigerian Cooks has formed online. Sign up and let us grow into a juggernaut that cannot be ignored. If you live in the UK, think of MumsNet, If you live in Nigeria, think of Nairaland. If you live in the US, think of Humans of New York. Get it now? Nigerian food can just be as influential. Welcome to Dooney’s Kitchen Tribe.

The post Introducing Dooney’s Kitchen Tribe!!!! appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Continuing from The Moin Moinlette (recipe HERE), we now have The Indomielette. The idea for this came from Instagram. I was discussing with Kemi just the other day that IG is where the action is right now. She recently joined Instagram and has been amazed at the food out there, from both bloggers, and seemingly every day cooks. Liz from @illfeedyourface face was on my feed, and she posted a dish she called Ramlet. She used Ramen Noodles. It made me smile, because I thought, ooooh that is so pretty, I want to try that. …..and try it I did last night.

A few minutes past midnight, I was making this simple but pretty dish. One pot wonder. Indomie and eggs are a dish as old as the inception of Indomie noodles in Nigeria. Instead of using two pots, just cook all in a pan, with your choice of veggies.

Using plantains was so last minute. I spied one piece of plantain on my kitchen cart going bad, and I thought ooooh, dodo, Indomie and eggs, is a thing, so why not just add it.

When it started to cook, I was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. Imagine serving that to kids on Saturday morning. Indomiezza with eggs as the base, but I kinda like Indomielette, sounds cuter. You know the next progression of this right? Yoodlelette, using yam noodles, or better still, Indomie egg cups. Ali of inspiralized.com has a recipe for potato noodle egg cups. Potato noodles at the base of a muffin tin, pour eggs on top and toppings. I saw that recipe last week, and I thought oooh, okay, time to move on from Yoodles, to Sweet Potatoodles, and I was going to try that, but with this Indomielette, if you don’t have a spiraliser, you can get the same experience, but with noodles. I chose to go the frying pan way as it will be the most common kitchen utensil, compared with a muffin pan, but you betcha, that I will try that too. Imagine Indomie egg cups for breakfast. Leggo!!!!

I am sharing this close up picture so you can see the base. You need yo use enough eggs, otherwise, the noodles will just take over, and you won’t get that frittata effect, if you know what I mean

Indomielette

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

25 mins

 

Indomie and Eggs as a one pot dish, with your choice of toppings, for a fun and exciting breakfast. Re-inventing the wheel. Redefining Indomie and Eggs

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Breakfast

Culture: Nigerian Fusion

Serves: 4

You will Need

• 2 packets of Indomie
• 2 - 3 eggs. I want to make a note about the eggs here. Use too many, and this dish will be soggy, because the volume of eggs, compared with the amount of Indomie noodles will be skewed
• Your choice of toppings - from mixed peppers, onions, dodo, ham, sausages, fish, chicken, beef, etc

How To

1. Prepare your toppings, I will suggest you do this first, because this dish happens so fast, you don’t want your noodles soggy. .
2. Fry the plantain cubes, if you are suing plantain
3. Place your noodles in a pot and pour hot water on it. The idea is that you want the noodles to soften and lay out, and not cook. If you let the noodles cook, by the time yo take it to the pan, pour the eggs on top, it may end up soggy.
4. Now, that the noodles have softened, drain all the water.
5. This is very important, and then transfer to a well oiled pan, on a lit cooker. Sprinkle on the seasoning from the packet, or leave it out, if you have your reservations about the seasoning.
6. Beat your eggs in a bowl, season with salt, dry pepper and seasoning cubes, if you wish
7. Pour it on top of the noodles, followed by your choice of toppings. . You can then choose to cover the pan, to allow the toppings to cook, or transfer to the oven to cook through. I tried this on the cooker, and it took about 10minutes. When the egg had cooked, I took off the cover, to allow steam escape, and get the toppings on top crispy. I used medium heat, because I didn’t want the bottom of the eggs to burn.
8. and that’s it. Put some fun back into your noodles.. This can serve 3 - 4 people

Dooney's Kitchen Tips

I will advise that you choose toppings that have been cooked, well with the exception of the veg, so you don’t introduce liquid into your Indomielette
As you can see from the pictures, the egg cooked through the noodles. What does it taste like, Dodo, veg, Indomie and eggs

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 A slice of Indomielette. I hope you will try it, and send me pictures. Better still, don’t send it to me, Sign up for Tribe and post your Indomielette for your fellow Tribers to see. If you are on Instagram, tag @dooneyskitchentribe, with the hashtag #Indomielette, and your picture will be reposted.

I will be expecting your pictures guys. Saturday morning breakfast should be EPIC. Lol

The post Indomielette appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

I hope I can safely address you guys as The Tribe. For those who have signed up, thank you very much. The Tribe is getting busy now, people are posting amazing pictures, with recipes too. There is one fantastic Agege Bread recipe on there by Ifeyinwa, the best I have seen so far. The forum is heating up with intelligent discussion. The Tribe site is just over a week old now, and I am happy about the progress and grateful to you guys for your support. As for those that are yet to join, I am giving you major side eye. Loooool. My anniversary giveaway this year is going to be done via The Tribe site. For the major reason being that it provides some transparency and accountability.Last year, the process was shrouded in secrecy, not intentional, but there was no other way to do it than to send me an email, but this year, it will be free, fair and open. I have a looooooot of items to give out this year. Let me repeat, a loooooooot. The gifts I am giving out, reflect the growth of the blog in the past one year. The progress made has been phenomenal, and I am a flag flying carrier of Team Pay it Forward and Team Give Back. A blog is nothing without its readers. To sign up for The Tribe site, click HERE

So, to Yamaroata bakes. This is something that has been on the list to try since the January fit fam drive started. For some reason, it never got done. It came to me when I cheated with KFC chicken in January and I actually felt sick. My body is the kind that loooooves clean eating. Trust me, I know. I sleep better, my skin glows, I am full of energy, and when I dirty up my diet, my stomach is the first thing to revolt. After eating it I felt really really sick, all the fat and flour, ugh!!! So, I sadly said to myself, looks like KFC and I may have to part ways, but I loooove the crunchy skin, crying fat tears. Lol. It reminded me of Yamarita fries, so I googled how to make healthy crispy chicken, and saw recipes with Oats. OMG!!!! No freaking way!!!!! That’s it. I am going to use oats and bake it too. Foodie Honour, I swear, I loved this. It was sooooo crunchy, in fact, almost too crunchy, and you know how white and double cooked Yamarita fries is like when you break into it. Same thing, no difference, and no deep frying. I must confess, I was very naughty in February, and it looks like the weight I lost wants to creep back in, and I am getting tired and irritable again, my body is saying alirghty missy, time to go back to clean eating, still my Nigerian food, but none of that using style to eat out again.

Welcome to a new world, welcome to a new term, welcome to Fitfam Yamarita fries now to be christened, Yamaroata Bakes. Leggo!!!!

Yamaroata Bakes

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Yamarita fries is a national favourite, but not the healthiest of foods. Yamaroata bakes, is the much healthier version, coating using oats, and baking instead of frying.

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Healthy Nigerian

Serves: 3

You will Need

• Yam batons
• Eggs - you can also choose to use just the egg whites
• Dry Pepper - cayenne pepper
• Salt
• Seasoning cubes - optional
• Oats
• Cooking spray - optional

How To

1. Cut your yam into rectangular strips and boil in salted water for about 5 minutes. Timing will depend on how much you are boiling. What you want to achieve is an almost cooked yam. If you over cook, the yam will get soggy. You still want it firm. As soon as a fork goes through with just a little resistance, take it off the heat and drain immediately. If you leave it in hot water, it will just continue cooking. Once drained, lay it out on a plate, and leave to cool.
2. Beat your eggs, and season with salt, dry pepper and seasoning cubes. Pour oats unto an empty plate
3. Dip your yam batons into the eggs. You need to let the yam cool down a little, because if you dip hot yam into the eggs, it will start to cook the eggs.
4. After dipping into the eggs, then place on the plate with the oats and roll around until the oats have coated the yam. I must tell you, this isn't as fast as with flour, just roll until you can cover the yam as best as you can
5. Lay on an oven tray, and you can decide to give them a squirt or two of cooking spray, or brush lightly with oil.
6. This helps to make them brown and pretty, you can decide not to. Bake in an oven at 220 (UK oven), or until browned. If you use too high an oven setting, the oats will burn, and you don't want that.
7. These are so good, like you won't believe. Visually, spot on, crunch, spot on, taste, spot on, calories, waaaaaay less than using flour.

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The post Yamaroata Bakes appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.

Welcome to Monday. The past few months have been a lot, in fact 2015 has about; The New Nigerian Cookery recipes, and I must say a very big thank you to all of you for the feedback and support. You have really cemented this blog, as one that has brought a new wave to Nigerian Cooking. I see it from your comments, feedback, tagging family and friends on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. When it gets to food, we are not so adventurous, and I tell you, each time I put up a picture or a recipe, I do it with bated breath. Honestly I do. I don’t delude myself and think oh, because it is from you, they will lap it up and accept it. Even though people tell me such, I haven’t yet come to that recognition myself. It is not being too humble, or not having enough confidence in my abilities and the blog, I just haven’t yet lost my sense of wonder, and I hope I never do, at least not in what I consider early days. Ask me in 2020. Lol. I am still filled with amazement and wonder when I put out a new recipe and it is very well received by you guys. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. It encourages me like you won’t believe, to see my own special brand of food crazy out there. From The Akara toasties, to the Moin Moinlette, that didn’t exist in 2014, to the Puff Puff Pops and hopefully very soon Spiralised Nigerian food. You guys are the best, honestly. I couldn’t have asked for a better Tribe.

So as not to get carried away with inventing new things, this week, I am going to be bringing you good old down to earth home cooking. Nigerian recipes that have been forgotten, I am going to be re-awakening them. So this week is the #DKOldSchoolSeries. What gave me the inspiration to do so, I received an out of the box request. Dunni, I want some good old proper Urhobo dish that I haven’t had in a while. Please tell me you can make it. I said what, and she said Okro Peppersoup and Starch. I said sure, I can. A few weeks ago, I made Egusi Peppersoup. The recipe which was provided by Nancy Agbagbara in January. Sorry Nancy for just blogging about it now. At the beginning of the year, I asked for anyone with old classic recipes to send them my way. I am using this post to remind you guys again. Dishes your mum taught you, your grandma, your Aunties, share with me and I will try it. Hopefully not 3 months after. Thanks Nancy!!!

To make Okro Peppersoup, you just substitute the Egusi for Okro. Not just that, I have the real Starch from Lagos. It had been sitting in my freezer unused, so it felt great to bring it out. If you or anyone you know has any food special requests, or even a general request for good old home cooked food in your freezer, that you didn’t have to lift a finger for, send me an email. the_experience@dooneyskitchen.com. Locations – London and Essex. If you are visiting too, and you are tired of the takeaways, give me a shout out. It would be my pleasure. You want to see samples of packed food, check my Instagram page @dooneyskitchen.com. I have got loads. So, while I was able to record a brief video of making Starch, I didn’t have time to plate and shoot the Okro peppersoup, so I had to make another small batch yesterday. Kicking off my DK Old School Series week, as a #DeltaPikin, I am presenting a classic from  Delta State, from Urhobo and Itsekiriland – Igbagba Ofofo: Okro Peppersoup. Let’s Cook

Okro Peppersoup

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

40 mins

Total time

1 hour

 

A savoury, spicy Okro dish with high notes of peppersoup spices, and fresh crunchy greens of Okro and vegetables

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Traditional Nigerian Soups

Culture: Urhobo, Itsekiri

Serves: 3

You will Need

• Goat Meat - you can also use fresh fish
• Crayfish
• Smoked fish
• Smoked red prawns
• Dry Pepper - cayenne pepper
• fresh ata rodo - scotch bonnet/habanero pepper
• Okro
• Green vegetables
• Peppersoup spices - powdered or whole spices which you grind
• Salt
• Seasoning Cubes

How To

1. Rinse your goat meat with salt, seasoning cubes, dry pepper, and smoked fish, add enough water to the pot, as if you are making peppersoup. Bring it to the boil and let it reduce till you get to that peppersoup taste, and consistency
2. Once you are happy with it, add ground crayfish, to introduce another dimension of flavour. Let this simmer and interact with the other flavours.
3. Meanwhile, give your okro a rough chop with the fresh pepper. I used a mini food processor for this, saved me a lot of time. With your peppersoup now simmering away, add the chopped pepper and okro, stir and add your choice of green veg. Crank up the heat a bit, to flash cook the okro and veg. You want to keep it green and crunchy. Serve immediately. . Igbagba Ofofo is traditionally served with Starch or Eguoo (starch and plantain). Go to the next post for a recipe

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The post Igbagba Ofofo – Okro Peppersoup appeared first on Dooney's Kitchen.