How To Prepare Pancakes

Pancakes are those delicious and soft snack we call diet in Nigeria. I use to love them when I was young, I still do.
They are really delicious and easy to make. You can enjoy them as snack with a glass of soft drink or serve with tea or pap.

It could serve as a perfect breakfast or as dessert. I think the name ‘diet’ suits it better because it is actually a blend of protein, carbohydrate, vitamins and fat and oil. It is more balanced than most simple Nigerian snacks.

Pancakes are served as snack with anyone of jam, honey, ketchup, butter or a blend of two in Europe and America, but here we enjoy it as it comes. I did however throw in a spoon of ketchup and it was super delicious.
Ingredients: Serving: 4
2 cup of plain flour
3 medium eggs
Half cup of evaporated milk
2 tablespoons of margarine
¼ teaspoon of salt
Teaspoon ground red dried pepper
1 cup of water
Vegetable oil
1 Spoon of thinly sliced onion (optional)
3 Tablespoons of sugar

I would suggest that you get evaporated milk; they are those in tins. like peak milk, three crown, choice, etc. You will need just about half a cup – 150mls.

You might wanna start by melting the margarine in a heated oven, use a ceramic plate, add two spoon of margarine and allow to melt under heat. You can also place the bowl in a bigger bowl of hot water to melt the margarine.

Break the two eggs into the melted margarine and mix together. Transfer to a bigger bowl and add your liquid milk, pepper, salt, sugar, half cup of water and stir all together.


Add the flour and mix well till there are minimal lumps, you can use a wooden turner for this, add more water, 100ml and observe, the batter should be watery enough to flow around the bowl. But not too watery. The image below would give you a hint.


You can blend to achieve a finer consistence if you like, I don’t do that. Add the thinly sliced one spoon of onions, stir all together and commence with the frying part.

Set your frying pan over medium heat, non-stick frying pan makes perfect pancakes; you might wanna look that up at http://allnigerianfoods.com/kitchen. Add a few drops of vegetable oil, about a tablespoon would do and make sure they are evenly spread to cover the surface of the pan.

Allow to heat for few seconds and pour some pancake batter into the frying pan. Make sure they are evenly spread too, you don’t want your pancake to be too thick or too thin.

Fry and flip the other side, one minute each for the sides, you will learn as you go. If it stuck to the frying pan, just try to shake the frying pan, a good frying spoon would also come in handy. Check to see that it is properly cooked the way you like it.

Repeat for the remaining batter and serve as snack… with your favorite soft drink or as breakfast with tea or coffee. This is how to make pancakes in Nigeria. There are slight variation in the Nigerian version and American version of pancake

Voila! Don’t forget to leave a comment via the form below. tell me about your favorite Nigerian food or snack.

How To Prepare Nigerian Vegetable Salad

The Nigerian vegetable salad is number one on the list of Nigerian healthy foods. I realized that most Nigerians shy away from these natural foods and chose to spend more money on processed foods
probably because they are often wrangled in extra sweetener and ready to be taken.

I made a decision at some point to have at least a plate of vegetable salad in place of one meal weekly. Vegetable salads will detoxify your body, improve your digestive capability, make you feel lighter and even make you think smarter.

I have noticed that vegetables, when eaten in large quantity sought of awaken my neural pathway.
I am talking about raw vegetables and also some less sugary fruits, like cucumbers and water melon.

There are basically two types of salads that are popularly eaten in Nigeria, Salads happens to be one of the healthiest sets of foods that I know, especially the vegetable salad, I also like the fruit salad but this is by no means in comparison with the former.

What you find below is a plate of vegie salad, it looks delicious right? You can serve it this way or serve with any one of the rice meals.

Below are the ingredients used in making Nigerian Vegetable salads, you can double or reduce it, depending on the number of people you are looking to serve.

Ingredients For Nigerian Salads
Medium size cabbage
4 medium size carrot
lettuce leaves
2 cups of chopped green beans
half cup peas (optional)
3 cooked eggs
one can of baked beans
2 big size of cucumber
salad cream (heinz, BAMA mayonnaise)

Just know that most vegetable salads are usually 50% cabbage, 30% carrot/green beans, 5-10% cucumber while the lettuce leaves, peas, eggs and cream make up the other 10%

Preparation: chop the carrot /green beans/cucumber and set aside in different bowls, I like to peel off the green back of cucumbers and also remove the center seeds, you will learn how this is done by watching how I made salad via the video below.

Slice the cabbage too in a different tray (we use tray often in our home), slice the lettuce leaves, boil the eggs and remove the shell (2-3 eggs).

You then need to soften the cabbage, green beans, carrot and peas, most of the times we boil carrot, green beans and peas together and soak the cabbage in hot water for a minute.

Here is how it is done, add the carrot, green beans and peas to boiling (small) water, and allow to simmer on low heat for 3-4 minutes (this is to soften them a little, this practice is elaborated in the video below) heat water to 100 degree celcious (boiling point) and pour into the sliced cabbage in a bowl, allow for a minute then drain.

Also drain the carrot/green beans, peas and set aside in a bowl, now you are ready for the mixing part.
Most people choose to mix salad in a large plate/bowl or a tray.

The mixing is simple: sprinkle a handful of cabbage on the tray, and then sprinkle the carrot/green beans/peas, also the lettuce leaves and keep repeating the process until they are all in one place.

Then slice the egg and drop on the top of the salad. (the egg is mostly for decoration) The final mixing is done as people dish out the salad; you add the salad cream and baked beans. It is good for these two to be separate to avoid getting soured over a long period of time.

Nigerian vegetable salad is served best with either fried rice or jollof rice; it is also very delicious when served alone.

How To Cook Moi Moi Nigeria (Beans Pudding)

Moi moi (beans pudding) is one of such Nigerian food that is eaten by everybody. It is made of beans and some other ingredients. The process of making moin moin (as some people call it) is a little bit
complicating but I will try to be as detailed as possible since we are yet to produce a video for moi moi.

I am making videos for all the known Nigerian foods; I just want you to be able to make them easily.

Here are the Ingredients I used while making the plate of moi moi below, you are free to increase the quantity of ingredients or reduce them depending on the number of persons you are looking to feed.

These ingredients would serve six persons depending on stomach size and other factors
Fresh fish (optional)
7 Cooked Eggs (optional)
Half cup of vegetable oil
Maggi (seasoning, 2 to 3 cubes)
Salt to taste.
1 cup of sliced onions
Tatashe or shobo (about 5 to 10, it add the reddish color)
Crayfish (1 cup)
3 cups of beans


What you find above are the images some of the ingredients for making beans pudding as well of that or ground moin moin on the left and right respectively.

There is a special kind of beans (moi moi beans) used for making beans pudding in Nigerian but you can substitute with any other type of beans if you live outside Nigeria.

You can use the cooked eggs, corned beef, fish of any kind or a blend of both to make moi moi. Here I used fish and eggs, I simply parboiled the fish, removed the center bones and split into smaller pieces
Preparation:

Please add the beans into a bowl, sprinkle a handful of water and start squeezing with your hands. This is the easiest way to wash beans; you would be through in 20-30 minutes. You can add a little more water but don’t allow it to soak; continue squeezing until it starts shading off the outer coat, you’d probably be doing this for about ten minutes.

When it seems like a good amount of the beans have shaded off their outer-coat, add enough water to fill the bowl, the outer coat would rise to the top, sieve and continue squeezing. At some point there would be just very few that have not shaded off their outer coat, work on them and keep washing.

Wash the beans to remove the outer coat, keep squeezing, washing and sieving till you are left with the white beans then you can prepare for the grinding part.

There are people in Nigeria that render the service of grinding food stuff like moi moi or tomatoes in large quantity

Split the red tatashe or shobo into two halves to remove the seeds at the center, this practice is necessary because the seeds add a bitter unpleasant taste to moi moi. Wash and also pluck off the green stem at the top.

What I do at this point is to add all of them (beans, onions, crayfish and tatashe or shobo) in a small clean bucket and take to the commercial grinding mill. You can use a smart blender for this if you have one, I used my semi-smart blender and it didn’t do a perfect job but it was good enough.

Parboil the fresh /frozen fish, pick out from the water then pieces the fish with your fingers, not really squashing (leave in bits) Add this to the mixture. At this point you can also add corned beef in place of the fish or a blend of both.

Below is the image of my favorite moi moi (beans pudding)


While still in the bowl, add the oil just pour into the ground beans – about half cup, add 2 cubes of maggi seasoning, the fish water (fish stock) (which must not be over half cup or so) salt to taste. Taste the entire mixture.

The egg can be dropped on top after the moi-moi has been distributed in cooking plates, if you want to use eggs.

Distribute in as many plates as possible, some people use moi-moi wrappers for this purpose. After the distribution you can drop into the cooking pot.

If you are cooking with plates, you can drop the plates on top of each other but you must drop tiny logs of woods or pieces of clothes at the bottom of the pot to avoid burning (some people use the stem of the moi-moi-wrapper), you don’t really need them if you are careful.

Drop the plates in the pot and add water simultaneously making sure it doesn’t top the first plate. Then cover tightly and cook for about 40 to 60 minutes adding water at interval to avoid burning or too much water that would run into the plates.

This part is monitored closely because if you allow the pot to dry the plates would start melting especially if you are using plastic plates. Note that plastic plates can cook for hours without melting or getting burned, the exception is when the pot is completely dried.

You can bring out one of the plates after cooking for 40 minutes to check if it is done, check again after ten minutes, once it is done, allow to cool off for 30-60 minutes; then serve with pap (akamu), rice or custard

Nigerian moi moi (beans pudding) can also be served alone, I love it.

How Good Foods and Love improve relationships

This article shows how good foods improve relationships. We have been discussing the correlation between a good cook and good relationship. The argument is whether a wife/fiancé who is a good cook is likely to be loved better than a kitchen newbie.

Now, a kitchen newbie is not a bad cook but someone that is about to become a great cook. I don’t believe in absolution, if you don’t know it today, you can be good at it tomorrow; it all depends on your drive and level of desire for delicious home made good foods.

If you are subscribed to my free weekly newsletter you probably read my email about how good foods improve love and relationship. This is just a child-birth of that email, the discussion continued here. The email was my own personal opinion with regards to my encounter and relationship with other women but what we have here is a collective idea.

More like a discussion, as a matter of fact you can also add your own comment via the comment form below.

So do you think there are benefits to being a good cook… as a wife/fiance? Well… my answer would be a somewhat “yes”, and I will tell you my reasons.

I am quite aware of the controversial nature of this topic but no matter how far we would like to drag the subject, it would never erase the fact that women run the kitchen in the African setting.

This may change as western civilization absorbs the African culture but at the moment it is a fact that can never be neglected. Other factor that may also influence this culture would be the economic empowerment of women, but in the season and time we live in, women run the kitchen.

One can never truly comprehend the reason behind the angst and chaos that builds up in a home that is run by a kitchen newbie, sometimes it get to a point that the relationship between a couple becomes very fragile.

Just to prove a point, I got this email from a member of the kitchen sometimes ago


Hello Chy, thanks for your wonderful recipes and emails. Can you believe I was almost driven out of my husbands house because of foods? My husband makes me do all the cooking and wouldn't eat out. At first I thought I couldn't do it and it resulted into quarrels and troubles for me and my husband. The truth is that your website actually made me believe that I can cook, I made a decent soup yesterday and hope to improve with time, all thanks to you for saving my marriage o. God bless the kitchen (Mrs Catherine Ehulu)

I also got lots of emails after I sent the newsletter on “how good foods improves love/relationship” like this one below

You are so right Chy. Am not yet married, but believe me, I have seen how this food issues can destroy beautiful relationships. I dnt wanna take chances and I love new things. So, am ready to journey wit u into d great world of FOOD. Haha.

Like I did state initially, this is more like a discussion and there would be collective ideas. I do believe that every woman want to run a peaceful home and I have also learned from experience that being a motivated good cook makes the whole process a lot easier.

For the African woman; either you are a good cook or you are wealthy enough to employ a cook. I said in the email that a man is willing to pay for food stuff but most men would never pay a cook, either the woman cooks the food or she pays the cook

However, there are exceptions; I have even seen families where men also love to cook; but that doesn’t happen often in our part of the world. In our part of the world there are just three options for the women.
Allow the angst and chaos to get to the boiling point.
Employ a cook.
Learn to cook.

If you are a kitchen newbie, you have absolutely nothing to worry about; you can fast-track the entire process in less than one month, there are hundreds of free recipes on this blog. The Latest edition of The Ultimate Nigerian Cookbook is also available (the best product in the world for making delicious Nigerian foods) was created just for you.

The Ultimate Nigerian Cookbook shows you how to make over 60 different Nigerian foods and drinks with easy to follow recipes, step by step images and so much more. You will learn to make Foods by different ethnic groups and cultures.

My desire is that we would be motivated enough to take control of our individual kitchen, why? Because I have learned from experience that wives/fiances that are also good cooks end up getting more love and respect.
Here is what Ijeoma has to say.

"I thank you so much for bringing honor to my marriage. I'm two month old in marriage. I already know a little how to cook some foods but not all. You have added more knowledge to the little I know on how to make different types of foods. .My husband after eating asks me how I learned to make his native food. The taste of my meals is now the order of the day by my sister/brother in laws staying with me. They keep saying and I quote you are a great cook, did you go to any catering school?" I keep smiling each time they make that comment. Thanks and keep your flag flying. Blessing Ijeoma, Nigeria"

This goes a long way to reiterate the fact that a good cook wife/fiance is more likely to be loved and respected then a fresher. All of what you have read so far is not just my opinions but also that of diverse women from diverse backgrounds

Best-Ever Banana Cake

Sweet, ripe bananas are the key to making a great banana cake. If you'd like me to show you how to cook the perfectbanana cake check out my blog The Ultimate Banana Cake.Prep time:15 minsCook
time:1 hour (less for smaller cakes)Makes:1 large cake, 4 small cakes or 12 muffin-sized cakes

250g butter, at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 very ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (about 2 cups)
2 tsp baking soda
½ cup hot milk
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder

Lemon Icing:
50g butter, at room temperature
3 cups icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
½ tbsp hot water


Preheat oven to 170°C fanbake. Line a medium (23cm-diameter) cake tin with baking paper or prepare four 10cm-diameter tins (recycled 425g tuna cans are perfect – just make sure they don't have a plastic coating inside) or 12 muffin tins.

Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then vanilla and bananas.

Dissolve baking soda in hot milk, add to mixture and stir to combine.

Sift in flour and baking powder and fold gently into mixture using a big spoon and a large scooping action to keep the mixture light. Do not over mix.

Spoon mixture into prepared tin(s) and smooth top(s). Bake until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch. One large cake will take 50-60 minutes, allow 45-55 minutes for medium cakes and about 20 minutes for muffin-sized cakes. Allow to cool in tin(s) and then turn out. Ice when cool. Store in a sealed container in a cool place for 2-3 days or freeze.

To make the Lemon Icing, beat together butter, icing sugar, lemon juice and hot water until creamy. Spread over cake.

Easy Banana Cake

Equipment
1 saucepan

Ingredients
125 g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
2 banana mashed ripe
1 1/2 cup self-raising flour
1/4 cup milk

Method
STEP 1Melt the butter, sugar and vanilla in a medium sized saucepan.
STEP 2Remove from heat.
STEP 3Add mashed bananas and stir through until just blended.
STEP 4Add egg and mix in well. Stir in flour, add milk and mix lightly.
STEP 5Bake at 170C for approximately 40 minutes.

Notes

I adapted this from a recipe that calls for creaming butter and sugar together as I can't stand doing this. I recalled a recipe from years ago that melted these ingredients in a saucepan. It's so easy and takes so much less time.

Nigerian Beans Recipes

Like I said before, Ewa (beans) and bread is a very popular breakfast recipe in Lagos Nigeria and because I want to make this site as comprehensives as possible I don’t want to leave out any important food

The above image is not porridge beans, the recipe is completely different from other Nigerian beans recipes, you cook the beans separately and then make a special kind of stew. You will learn to make this stew the exact way it is made in Yoruba land where I live.


Here are the basic ingredients, although some other local herbs are used optionally in some cases.

Half cup of dry ground pepper
15cl of palm oil
A cube of maggi or knorr
1 bulb of onions
Ground ginger

Tomatoes are not used in making this special kind of stew, just ground dry pepper and red oil (palm oil), although some people eat the same food with the normal Nigerian Tomato Stew

Here is how to prepare stew for ewa (beans) in the Yoruba land.

Pour the palm oil into a pot and set on fire, allow to heat for about three minutes but don’t allow to bleach. Then add the ground dry peppers and fry for about ten minutes, just keep stirring occasionally for ten minutes.

Then add the onions, ground ginger, a cube of maggi, cook for another five minutes and you are done.
Serve with the beans,


Here is how to make yet another simple Nigerian food (Porridge beans), one of the different Nigerian beans recipes. Porridge beans in Nigeria are often cooked alongside yam or plantain. It could serve both as lunch and dinner.

This particular recipe is very popular in the south and eastern part of Nigeria, the Igbo tribe of Nigeria is very familiar with this recipe so if you want to make porridge beans the exact way an IGBO woman would like to make it, here is your best guide.

Ingredients (for 5 serving)
3 to 4 cups of beans
Red oil (10cl)
About 5 to 10 balls of tomatoes (cut to bits)
2 balls of onions
Vegetable (optional)
Potash (very small, about half baby spoon)(optional)(I don’t use it)
Crayfish (1 cup blend)
Knorr cube (2 cubes) or any spice of choice.
Salt and pepper to taste.

The last time I ate beans and yam was in my village, made by my mum, I think beans and ripe plantain is a better combination, partly because ripe plantain tend to add a natural sweetness and also because kids like it.

Here is how to prepare beans recipe in Nigeria:

Select the beans to remove impurities (sands) then parboil for about 5 to 10 minutes, wash and start cooking with just water.

At this point most people tend to add a little bit of potash to hasten the process but it is highly not advisable. I add about 2 balls of sliced onions at this point (after boiling for about 10 minutes alone.), this has shown to serve the same purpose as potash, although with a slightly slow impact.

Boil until it is soft for consumption or at least 95 percent done, you can check by taking some on your cooking spoon and pressing against the spoon, it takes about one hour or a little more to cook beans if you are doing it the natural way (without potash).

Add the blended crayfish, palm oil, knorr (2 cubes) salt and pepper.

Add a little water if necessary.

Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes/onions and vegetables on the top and cover to cook for 10 to 15 minutes and you have delicious bean porridge.

I like to add tomatoes and vegetable to porridge beans because they are both a good source of vitamins and also serves for decoration purposes.

There are so many other beans recipe in Nigeria,

If you have eaten bread and ewa before please use the comment box below to tell me about it.