cooking basics

Unfortunately, the two dominant tastes of Nigerians are hot (as in spicy) and bitter. If it doesn’t have lots of pepe (pepper), it’s not food. They’re not so into fruits, either. And desserts are unheard of. I can actually eat most of their food, problema lang madumi yung pagluto, lalo na paano nila kinakain. Damak-damak! I guess the translation in Tagalog would be dugyot, sobra! Kadiri, I swear! Compounded by the fact that clean water is hard to come by. The problem is, I’m supposed to be “integrating with the community” so I don’t want to offend people when I’m offered food. So even if I can actually get by without having to cook because people will always offer (and there are two “restaurants”, na tawag nila “hotel”), I’d rather live on my trusty oatmeal. Bread is hard to come by, I get that from Calabar and it doesn’t last very long, kasi ayoko rin yung binebenta sa village, and sometimes panis na. What my village will never run out of is yam (balinghoy), coco yam (gabi daw sabi ng isang pinoy na VSO dito), water yam (ewan kung meron tayo), plantain, at walang kamatayan na cassava. Every afternoon the women come back from farm (yes, the women – don’t ask me what the men do!) with loads of cassava, and there is the omnipresent smell of cassava being grinded, squeezed and dried. The end product is a yellowish powder, which they can just mix with hot water and it becomes some sort of very soft and mushy puto.

If my months here will amount to nothing, at least I’m learning how to cook from scratch. My first attempt was a pancake, and I just kind of thought about the ingredients without actually knowing how to measure or how to go about it. But voila! I got it great the first time. A great feat for a fast food person like me. One time it was Nicky’s birthday and I know she loves chocolate so I tried to make cookies with chocolate syrup. I’m amazed what one can do with Milo. Yes, Kix, may Milo, mabubuhay ka dito! I thought I wasn’t so big on chocolate, but what deprivation can do! I had such a choco fix that afternoon! Then I was able to make pizza without an oven, and who knows what I can whip up next! VSO Nigeria has actually made a great compilation of recipes using local ingredients and measurements, and it takes into account that most of us don’t have electricity. Ironically, I’ve had to cook rice here for the first time. Even with all those camping trips, I always got away without having to cook rice. Kasi sa lahat ng staples dito, pinaka ok pa rin rice, kahit na ang pangit ng variety nila at ang mahal, sa North kasi talaga ang nagtatanim ng rice. At syempre sobrang low tech ang pagka-mill. Pero Bunny, pinagtyatyagaan ko favorite food mo! I actually got it right the first time (Bot, naalala ko pa ikaw yung rice guru dati). The second time I thought, why not try it on a frying pan; much easier to clean. Weeelllll… The thing about cooking for myself and having no fridge is, no matter how much I like my lunch I always have to force it down my throat for dinner. If anyone knows how to cook laing (pangat), puso ng saging (banana blossom), bananaque and ibos, please email it to me in very simple steps.