Nigerian Goat MeatBy Melody WillisThis popular one-pot soup is a light broth with any meat of choice, most commonly goat, catfish or chicken (native chicken) flavoured with African spices and herbs such as ehuru (calabash nutmeg, African nutmeg), negro pepper (Ethiopian pepper, Senegal pepper), lemongrass, habanero pepper, uziza leaves, scent leaves or wild basil. Some people eat this soup with boiled white rice or put yam, agidi (balls of corn flour), plantains or potatoes as I did in this recipe.
Growing up in Nigeria, I remember my aunts craving this soup after giving birth as well as my mother giving my siblings and me this soup when we were recovering from malaria. This soup is very simple to make and even if you can’t get your hands on the traditional ingredients there are some pretty close substitutes that I listed next to the traditional ingredients.Mandazi – East African Sweet BreadBy Aisha SilimMandazi is a sweet East African bread that puts donuts to shame, and it’s a dish that you can find in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania (it also goes by the name mahamri).
Mandazi dough is traditionally leavened with yeast, kneaded with cardamom, and flavoured with coconut powder. Once the dough has risen, it’s rolled out and cut into triangle shapes, and then deep-fried in boiling oil until each piece is golden brown and crisp.
There are so many ways to eat mandazi. You can eat it freshly fried, and rip it open to let out the steam in the hollow middle. Or you can save it for a snack, and dunk it into some afternoon chai tea (an East African favourite). It’s also popular for breakfast, and it’s an ideal vessel for anything that’s cooked in sauce – like vyazi ya kanga (potatoes simmered in tomato sauce) or mbazi (pigeon peas in coconut).
My own family brought their mandazi from a recipe from Uganda to Toronto, and we make it religiously every week. Back in the day, it was a time-consuming effort. Modern technology has made it much simpler, and now bread mixers do most of the work. We make it ahead of time, keep the dough in the fridge, and bring it out to roll and freshly fry it. Here’s the recipe, enjoy!Misir – Easy, Ethiopian LentilsBy Eden HagosOne of the first dishes my parents taught me to make is miser/misir, a spicy Ethiopian lentil dish, so it’s what I’ll share with y’all first too!
The key to the perfect miser, in my opinion, is lightly caramelizing the onions before adding the Berbere spice & garlic. I’ve been using Canola oil for years to cook miser, but had no idea till recently that the canola oil that’s been holding me and my fam down for years in the kitchen, is a Canadian product.
Here's my recipe. I hope you love it!
