My First Dish: A Simple Tomato Sauce
I cooked my first dish at age 14. It was a tomato sauce to go with my mother’s boiled yam; by yam, I mean West African yam. I remember trembling with fear as I poured the blended tomato paste into the piping hot oil. The oil was far too hot and some of the tomato paste burned as soon as it hit the pan.
I didn’t know how to control the situation in time (took a while to realize I needed to turn the flame down) so the sauce ended up with burned bits in it. Nonetheless, my mother liked the sauce and actually finished the meal.
My mother’s vote of confidence in my slightly salty, partly burned tomato sauce was the ginger I needed to believe that I could cook a meal that was edible.
I’ve never looked back since then.
University in England: A Culinary Awakening
My time at university was when I began to see food in a different light. I was studying in England, living in student halls which came with the perk of a refectory (it was included in the accommodation bill). We got a meal card that was loaded daily which we would use to buy food from the refectory.
This forced me to consider and try meals vastly different from what I knew in Nigeria. I was a teenager and excited to be in a new country so that made it easy for me to open my heart and mind to new culinary experiences.
It was at my university refectory that I tried cold wraps and sandwiches for the first time. I had grown up on piping hot food and switching to cold sandwiches was a bit of an adjustment. My mother often made cold salads (what we called Nigerian salad) during Christmas holidays but seeing the wide variety of salads at the refectory was intriguing and exciting.
I knew of fried potatoes and boiled potatoes that were chopped into small chunks. In the refectory I saw a whole potato baked and served with a filling. This puzzled me at first but with time I got to love it. By the time I was leaving England, baked potatoes with coronation chicken was a personal favorite.
My university refectory was more than just a building, it was a culinary eye opener and the door to my curiosity with food.
When I tried dishes at the university, I would pinch a bit of my allowance and go to the supermarket so I could get ingredients to recreate the dishes.
Some days I would recreate exactly what I ate, other times I would put a spin on the ingredients, and other days I would pull from what I learned from my mother’s cooking and use a different cooking method.
This has been the trail till this moment except now, I never recreate recipes exactly. I always put a spin on it or better still, create a fresh recipe from scratch.
Finding Connection Across Cultures
Cookbooks, cooking shows, and culinary technique research have expanded my culinary world and continue to do so. I am never satisfied; I am always curious.
Initially, I had a hard time because I struggled with guilt about not cooking enough meals from Nigeria but as I continued to experiment and explore, I began to see similarities between Nigerian foods and foods from other cultures.
I would cook Nigerian meals using a cooking technique from a Korean cookbook or cook a meal using ingredients common to a particular culture, borrowing cooking techniques from Nigerian cuisines. I began to see the interconnection of food and how it connects across cultures. Now I’m at a place where I’ve embraced that interconnection. I now see food as a gateway to experiencing cultures, honoring traditions, and learning about worlds different from mine.
Seeing the interconnection of food was what helped me understand food was more than just food. It was connection, and understanding this has broadened my approach to cooking. I also see food as a medium of creative expression. I am most alive when I’m experimenting in the kitchen.
“What happens if I put this spice with this spice? Can I brown the beef first instead of simply cooking it in the sauce?” All these questions force me to think and find answers. Sometimes it goes according to plan, other times it leads to discovering something even better. Either way, I answer a question and I create something fresh.
I have seen the interconnection of food and it’s now my culinary guiding light.