Thursday, July 12, 2012

Nigerian Adventure: A Delicious Dinner

We moved. Again. But things are slowly getting unpacked including most of my kitchen. I'll have to work off memory to tell you about our Nigerian culinary adventure. Oh, the memories are wonderful. In fact, sitting here typing this I'm wondering to myself, "why haven't you made it again yet?!" Yes, it was that good. We enjoyed a meat dish and a salad. The salad was made of layers. Much as an American seven layer salad is made. The ingredients were a little different though. Slivers of cabbage, cucumber, and carrot are mixed together. A can of peas (apparently fresh isn't an option here) is poured over, followed by a layer of canned (not fresh or frozen again) corn. This is topped with slices of hard cooked egg. So far not too odd. Here's where the salad really shows its foreign side. The last two steps are to sprinkle the salad with a can each of baked beans and tuna! How odd! The layers are repeated. After chilling it's served with salad cream. I'm not a huge meat eater. This particular meat was delectable. Stick meat. Beef is coated with spices like bouillon, garlic, curry, and adobo powder and allowed to sit and "sweat" a while. Water is added And the meat boiled for half an hour. You remove the meat, heat oil until it smokes and make the sauce. Then you bake the meat. So this meat gets boiled and baked. The meat is tossed with the sauce and eaten with toothpicks. So yummy!