Recipes, the Internet, and friendship

[asakiyume]

One of my earliest memories of Internet goodness is of searching for a recipe for wild mushrooms--this would have been sometime between 1998 and 2005--and finding one offered by a guy who identified his location as Turkish Kurdistan. We had a brief back and forth, and I thought, Now this place is personal to me. I know someone there. I know he used to pick wild thyme with his grandmother.

Fast forward to last summer. One of my best memories from Timor-Leste was of being served deep-fried plantain chips, homemade, and of sharing the leftovers with friends. I wanted to make those myself, to feel close (because eating food brings us close) to Timor-Leste. And the best recipe I found? Was a Nigerian one.

Watch on YouTube

So easy to follow, so clear, so pleasant! (And the recipe was a success)

Not only did this bring me close to Timor-Leste, it made me feel close to Nigeria. I had one previous experience with Nigerian food: akara--wonderful, croquette-like deep-fried items, made with ground black-eyed peas, with onions and hot peppers to flavor it. I bought some at a local market, loved it, wanted to know how to make it, and had found recipes online, but was stymied by one key detail--getting the skins off the black-eyed peas.

Oh My God, the time that took. I'd soak the black-eyed peas, and as they expanded, the skins would begin to come loose. Then I'd rub them together in the soaking water to get more loose, and then I'd strain off the skins (which would float), while trying to keep the peas themselves from pouring out. It was such a slow process! I mean, kind of relaxing, too, if you have nothing else to do, but. . .

Well, Flo, the woman behind All Nigerian Recipes, has the answer for that, too:

Watch on YouTube

So. Simple! Much better than an hour of hand rubbing and pouring off and hand rubbing and pouring off. Though, as she points out in the comments to another video, there is the problem that the beans end up getting a little nicked--you lose some of your precious beans with this method. Which is why this is her preferred method for getting the skins off beans.

What I now know: I need one of those giant mortars! (The teeny tiny plastic one I have from my mashing-babyfood days will not cut it.)

So by this time I'm really loving this Youtube channel, loving the recipes, loving the fact that Flo responds to comments--and loving her personal videos, too. Like this one:

Watch on YouTube

Pretty cool, right? Not only does Flo put up fabulous cooking videos, she also has an *intense* day job!

And because the Internet lets us make friends with people all over the world--just write hello, just hit send--I thought . . . maybe she would let me interview her.

Then I checked and saw that she has close to 30,000 subscribers. Her top video has more than half a million views, and her top ten videos all have over 100,000 views. I'm not the only one who loves her. So then I felt more hesitant about getting in touch. . . . But I overcame that and wrote to her, and she said yes!

So come back on Monday, everyone, when Flo will answer my questions about cooking, YouTube, and self-publishing a cookbook.

Meantime, enjoy her channel and maybe have a Nigerian meal tonight.

Video List Here!

Comments

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Yum, plantains! Growing up, I was introduced to fried plantains in Juarez. I've also made my own, just pan frying them, but never used a specific recipe, and I've never made them crispy enough to be considered chips.

Food is such a wonderful way to explore cultures. Every year, in October, Tucson has a cultural festival, the official name of which is Tucson Meet Yourself (http://www.tucsonmeetyourself.org/), but which we all affectionately call Tucson Eat Yourself. Beyond the music and dance which is shared by cultural groups from around the city, there are also food booths, 53 of them according to the website, from a wide variety of cultures around the world.

I've had Ethiopian food, which I first encountered in Washington, DC. I love it, but I don't think I've ever been lucky enough to encounter Nigerian food. I suspect I'd love it, too. I don't think I've ever encountered a traditional cuisine I didn't love. Maybe we'll try making some Nigerian food, using Flo's recipes on YouTube. Thanks so much for sharing this.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Eating the food of a place makes you feel close to a place in such a good way. When I read about places I've never been, I always want to know what foods they eat, and how and when and where they eat those foods--it's such a central part of life.

I went to an Ethiopian restaurant once in New York City, and the food was delicious. Then I read a really wonderful book, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231851.The_Beautiful_Things_That_Heaven_Bears), and that got me to try cooking a little Ethiopian food.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

My family's meals are often inspired by descriptions of food in books (movies, too), but I love the way you seek out the foods in order to learn more about the culture. You're right. Eating the food does help us to feel closer to places, even places we've never been.

[flo (from livejournal.com)]

@pdlloyd I am jealous when I "meet" someone that is so adventurous about food that the description of the food in a movie or a novel alone is enough to inspire them to go out and look for these "strange" ingredients to prepare the meals. I get that often when people tell me how they discovered Nigerian food. With a majority coming from those who read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels. She does a great job of describing Nigerian food in her novels namely Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun among others.

An interesting one is someone that actually saw the ingredients in a traditional market, bought them before Googling the recipes he will use them for.

Please prepare those meals and let me know how it goes. :) Thank you!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I remember the first time I read a description of palm oil. It was in a novel--but now I can't remember what novel--and the protagonist, as a small child, had seen someone get shot, and thinks that the blood looks like palm oil.

That morbid detail was what revealed to me that palm oil was red! All the cooking oil I've ever experienced has been shades of yellow.

An ingredient that I bought and then had to discover recipes to use was tamarind paste :-)

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Red! I've never seen it, either. I'm also used to cooking oil that is yellow. Or green, which is the color I associate with olive oil. I can remember when using olive oil to cook seemed unusual and fancy.

I love many foods made from tamarind, especially tamarindo, which is a sweetened drink available in Mexican restaurants and stores here.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Hi Flo! I am fortunate to have grown up with the opportunity to try foods from several cuisines, without being pressured to eat foods I didn't like, as long as I tasted them. Add to that the many wonderful writers who describe food with such love, and so begins a search for "exotic" ingredients and rare spices.

An interesting one is someone that actually saw the ingredients in a traditional market, bought them before Googling the recipes he will use them for.

This one makes me laugh. I have learned from experience that I don't do well when I buy ingredients without knowing what they are or how to cook them, just because they look interesting. This is especially true when the people selling me the food don't share a language with me. Mostly because when I can't identify the fruit or vegetable I just bought, I am lost when it comes to figuring out how to prepare it.

I used to long for a cook who would prepare meals from all over the world for me. Now, not only have I raised sons who somehow survived all my experiments and grew up to enjoy cooking and trying new things, but I've married a man who passionately loves food and cooking, and who has raised sons who are the same. So, I am surrounded by men who cook. Our meals borrow from cuisines around the world, and I can't imagine how boring it would be to restrict myself to a typical American diet.

I wasn't familiar with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's work. Thanks for mentioning her; I just ran upstairs (in the middle of writing this post) to the library at the college where I work, and checked out a copy of Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the only one of her works on this campus. I will read this and share it with my husband, to help inspire our exploration of Nigerian food.

[flo (from livejournal.com)]

pdlloyd you have really done well for your family's taste buds. Such independence! None of you will ever get bored as far as food goes.

I'm glad you found Chimamanda's Half of a Yellow Sun in the library. I hope you will find it a good read.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Flo! I'm enjoying the book, although I haven't gotten very far, yet. I look forward to seeing what adventures Ugwu will face, and how he will respond to them.

I'm also looking forward to reading more about the food. In the last scene, he searched for and found an herb, arigbe, which he used in a stew for it's magical properties. I now know, thank's to the magic of the internet, that arigbe is an African basil. I wonder if we could grow this alongside our other varieties of basil.