A Nigerian Kitchen in Westchester

Photo of Winnie and Ike Ogbogu in Nigeria 1970s

Towards the end of elementary school the Ogbogues moved to Croton just around the corner from my house. Soon a close family relationship began between children and adults alike that still going on today. I spent a lot of time playing the sport in season with Fran and Ben the two oldest boys. We went in and out of each other’s houses all the time eating or drinking. Like me Fran and Ben ate a lot. So did the other six big boned children Mrs. Ogbogu had over the years. One of them, Eric, went on to play seven years in the NFL. I remember the smell of Nigerian food in Mrs. Ogbogu’s kitchen so well! Born and raised in Nigeria, she made traditional dishes like Akara (blackeyed pea type dumpling/patty), egusi (the seeds of fermented melon cooked with beef, oxtail, smoked fish) soup and ground nut soup. These soups one ate with yam fu fu. She also made fried plantains and many other dishes. But my favorite dish was jollof rice! Here’s the recipe below.

Jollof Rice Recipe:

Ingredients
Oil for frying (palm or regular vegetable oil)
1 chicken
1 or 2 finely chopped onions
salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper according to taste
Flavouring:
chopped chilli pepper
2 or 3 crushed cloves of garlic
bay leaf
curry powder
2 cups of chicken or beef stock or Maggi cubes
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
bell pepper or sweet green pepper, chopped
green peas or string beans
(carrots/cabbage chopped)
four cups rice
4 tbsp can tomato paste
2 tbsp dried shrimp or crayfish
Garnishes:
fresh parsley and cilantro, chopped
lettuce, shredded heat oil and brown chicken.

Preparation
Remove the meat and add the onions, the salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic, bay leaf and curry in the oil.
Fry for a moment and add vegetables.
Fry the mixture until the onions become tender.
Add the stock and the chicken and boil for about 20 minutes.
Then add the dried shrimps/crayfish and the chilli and bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
Put the rice in a separate saucepan. Add water and tomato paste.
Cover and cook for about 20 minutes until the rice is done (add warm water or broth if necessary).
Adjust seasoning.
Serve with garnishes according to taste.

Sweet Potato Pie and Grits

I am not sure how it started but one morning I had a slice of left over sweet potato pie from a family holiday meal that tasted a little too sweet. To tone down the sweetness of the pie, I poured some reheated and sticky lumpy grits on the pie. My northern classmates probably ate oatmeal, but in a home like ours, inundated with southern influences, we regularly had grits for breakfast. The taste and texture of hot sweet potato pie and reheated lumpy grits went together perfectly! Don’t knock it until you try it.I’ve been modifying traditional recipes for years, trying to make them healthier. Here’s my own sweet potato pie recipe as best I can describe it.

Fred's Sweet Potato Pie Recipe

Ingredients:
4 to 6 large baked organic sweet potatoes (My mother in law taught me that baking the sweet potato makes the pie come out better than boiling them which is what a lot of folks do. Like steaming, baking is also healthier than boiling because it preserves the water soluble vitamins in the sweet potatoes).
2 large eggs or egg substitutes
1 cup of the thickets best tasting vanilla soy milk you can fine (try Silk’s very vanilla, or Vitasoy Vanilla)
1-2 cups unprocessed sugar
2 Tablespoons of lemon juice
Dash of cinnamon and nutmeg
Dash of vanilla extract

Directions:
Mix the ingredients into a sweet potato purée add milk as needed to make a smooth but thick filling. Bake in a pie crust shell (remember add a little fiber to your crust recipe/http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/) at 375 degrees on lowest rack for 50 minutes, until filling has set. Cool on rack for one hour. Then transfer to refrigerator and chill completely.

Grandma and Corn Bread

Photo of Luesta Duers the gracious matriarch on my mother’s side and my maternal grandmother. Migrated to New York from Windsor, North Carolina.

Most children associate Christmas with toys. I did too, but I also associated Christmas with the food I ate at my grandmother’s homes. After opening presents at our home in Croton, we packed into the car for our first stop at Grand Ma Duer’s home at 63 Hunter Street in Ossining right down the street from Sing Sing Prison. Corn bread made in little corn shaped baking molds is my immediate food association with Grandma Duers. As a child, I just thought that corned shape cornbread was something magical! I’ve been hooked on corn bread ever since and fashion myself as a kind of consignor of fine corn bread having eaten it in many parts of the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. I’m northern born but reared in part by southern grandmothers who migrated to New York from North Carolina and Southern Virginia. In the North, cooks continued the southern tradition of regularly baking corn bread, but for some unknown reason it took on a distinctively sweeter taste. Southerners dismissed the sweeter northern interpretation of corn bread as unfit for consumption. However, over time, the corn bread of newcomers from the South became more northern in style, just like the migrants themselves. Both my grandmothers retained the tradition of making un-sweet corn bread but I like the sweeter northern variety. The next time you have corn bread in a place like Sylvia Restaurant in Harlem or even a Whole Foods bakery notice that it’s northern and sweet like cake. Please comment on your cornbread experiences and recipes.


Southern Country Cornbread

2 cups of buttermilk (or 2 cups of vanilla soymilk)
½ teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoon of hot water
2 large eggs
¾ cup corn, canola or vegetable oil
Mix eggs and milk together
Sift in 2 cups of corn meal with a teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of baking powder or use self-rising cornmeal (I add just a little high source of fiber, just a little!)
Mix ingredients and if you’re northerner like me add a ¼ cup of sugar
Spray hot biscuit pan (or cast Iron skillet like I like to use) with nonstick cooking spray
Preheat oven at 425 then turn down to 375 and bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown
Brush with melted butter when done and enjoy!

Thanksgiving at Cousin Katie’s

Katie Green with turban on at my post wedding picnic in Alexandria, Virginia, 2000

I will never forget the time our family had thanksgiving dinner at my Cousin Katie’s house up in Syracuse. I must have been around twelve at the time. I would later live with her during my last two years of a doctoral program in history at Syracuse University. I recall driving down Borden Avenue where she lived passed a home with what looked like a freshly shot and gutted buck with four points hanging from the second floor of a neighbor’s house. Evidently the family planned on fresh venison on the thanksgiving table. I mention this because I learned of the years that folks in Central New York loved to eat wild game. For example, in addition to turkey, glazed ham, creamed pearl onions, candied yams, collards, biscuits, cornbread, Mac and cheese, peas, and cranberry sauce, Cousin Katie served fried rabbit for thanksgiving that year. Until that time, I as a Westchester boy never heard of folks eating rabbit. Chitins’ was strange enough for me and her house did have that distinctive vinegary chitins’ smell that thanksgiving too. But I remember that large platter of fried rabbit sitting on her stove looked like large chunks of fried chicken. The older relatives who grew up eating it from time to time stood around it delighted and eager to it. They told us kids that tasted like chicken; I don’t think any of us kids ate it. Most members of my mom’s side of the family—no matter their age would agree that hands down Cousin Katie was the best cook in the family. But she also had a reputation for cooking road kill like raccoons and rabbits she get killed during her fifty minute commute back and forth from the typewriter factory she worked at in Cortland, New York. I kid you not, she would stop throw it in her trunk. Get home clean it and marinade the meat. When you had thanksgiving at her house you never knew what kind of meat you were eating but she seasoned and cooked it to perfection. Here is a recipe from my book Hog and Hominy http://www.amazon.com/Hog-Hominy-Traditions-Perspectives-Culinary/dp/0231146388.

Wild Hare in Tomato Sauce

1 young rabbit, cup of

Flour for dredging

Salt and black pepper to taste

Bacon fat

4 scallions with tops, cut up

2 gloves garlic, crushed

Sprig Fresh parsley

4 tbs. Butter

2 tbs. Worcestershire sauce

2 cups tomato juice

½ cup milk

1 tsp. sweet basil

Roll rabbit pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown in bacon fat. Make a sauce with sliced scallions, crushed garlic, parsley, butter, salt, Worcestershire sauce, tomato juice, milk, and basil, Pour over the rabbit while still hot. Cook 2 hours in a covered pan, remove lid and cook 15 to 20 minutes, reducing the sauce. You can thicken sauce with a little cornmeal mixed in water if it is thin.