Nigerian and Jamaican Recipes

This is a blend of my favourite recipes passed down to me by my mother in law, who is Nigerian, some of these recipes are ancient recipes from West Africa Nigeria. She would spend hours in the kitchen when she first came to live with us, all we knew was how to eat this delicious food but I did not know how to prepare or cook the meals because I did not know the ingredients. Then one day I realised that I was having the finest gourmet meals everyday and I needed to capture these recipes in a book, all the attention is in the detail of how she prepares the meals, the attention to detail is the key and the ingredients must be top quality. So, I decided to go to the kitchen and watch her, we laughed and chatted and she talked about her life, she loved to reminisce about her life, it was so interesting there were some sad times and also many happy times too. She told me of her brother who became a Chief and how he had fought in the army in Burma (now known as Myanmar) as part of the British Empire's West African Colonial Troops during world war II and how they prayed night and day for his safety He was shot in the leg but survived. To my surprise I didn't know that Africa was in the war, (how ignorant could I be) but we were not told when I was at school. We didn't learn much about African history. She was in her element telling me all these stories and cooking at the same time.Now back to the cookery book. She was not measuring anything, putting a bit of this and that into the pot at strategic times everything was about time, when to put the seasoning in and what goes in and out of the pot at what time. it was so quick I needed her to slow down to let me measure what she was putting in and what she was taking out. Nowadays, it seems strange to spend that amount of time in the kitchen cooking, but some things just don't work or come out tasting as delicious as her cooking we seem to have lost the art of cooking as the convenient fast food takes over. Read more