Recettes Nigeria

Catfish and Carrot Sauce

Catfish is everywhere in Nigeria now, and the reason is farming rather than fishing. Catfish aquaculture expanded enormously across the country from the 1990s onward, at both household and commercial scale, and a fish that was once a river catch became one of the most available proteins in the market. Dishes built around it have multiplied accordingly. This one is a contemporary Nigerian preparation rather than an inherited dish. Carrot and tomato are blended into a sauce in a three to one ratio, so the carrot rather than the tomato carries it, giving a sweeter and thicker base than a standard Nigerian stew. The fish is marinated, grilled or baked separately, and set into the sauce at the end rather than cooked in it. Cleaning is the part that determines whether it works. Catfish is naturally slimy and has to be scrubbed with salt, alum, potash or maize chaff, and soaking it briefly in hot water both removes the remaining slime and firms the flesh so it holds together instead of breaking apart. Grilling rather than frying keeps that firmness. It is served with rice, potato or yam.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Maryam · Africook

Efo Riro

Efo riro is a Yoruba vegetable stew, and the name says exactly what it is: efo means vegetable or leafy green, riro means to stir or mix. Stirred greens. The vegetables it is properly made with are specific. Efo shoko, known as Lagos spinach, and efo tete, African spinach, are the two local greens used in Nigeria, and they behave differently from the spinach sold in European supermarkets, firmer, with more structure, and they hold up to the cooking without collapsing. Outside Nigeria most people use whatever spinach they can get, which works, though the texture is softer. What distinguishes efo riro from a simple pot of greens is the base it is stirred into. Blended red pepper and tomato are fried down in palm oil, with iru, locust bean, providing the deep savoury note, plus crayfish, assorted meat and often smoked or dried fish. The greens go in near the end and are stirred through rather than cooked down. It is quick, which is unusual for a Nigerian soup, and it is low enough in carbohydrate that it is regularly eaten on its own rather than with swallow, one of the few in the repertoire where that is normal. Versions are cooked in Ghana and Cameroon too, with small differences.

EasyNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Grilled Mackerel Fish Sauce

Whole mackerel is seasoned and grilled, then folded into a fried pepper and onion sauce. It is a Nigerian everyday dish, quick enough for a weeknight and substantial enough to stand as the main event, usually served with plantain, yam or rice. The structure is the familiar Nigerian one: tatashe, the sweet red bell pepper that provides colour and body, and scotch bonnet, which provides the heat, fried down in oil with onion until the raw edge is gone. What makes this version specific is that the fish is grilled separately rather than stewed in the sauce. Grilling firms mackerel up and gives it colour and a smoky edge, and folding it in at the very end keeps it in recognisable pieces instead of breaking it apart through a long cook. Mackerel is an oily fish, which is why it suits this treatment. It holds together under direct heat, it does not dry out the way a lean white fish would, and its strong flavour stands up to scotch bonnet and Cameroon pepper rather than disappearing under them. Cameroon pepper, dried, ground scotch bonnet, is the marker of West African rather than generic pepper cooking here. The source's weight-loss framing has not been carried across.

55 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Sarah · Africook