[Nigeria]

I came into this capstone course knowing I wanted to do something with cooking. I had a lot of questions about amatuer cooking, fine dining, and how cuisines differ across the globe. Are the effects of the spice trade still seen in today’s cuisines? How do seemingly unrelated cultures have similar flavors? What elements separate a home cook from a chef? But one of my biggest questions was this: why can’t I name more than 5 dishes from the entire continent of Africa?

The answer to this question, while frustrating, is pretty clear. There is still a lot of Western bias about how we view the continent of Africa. Many Americans and Europeans have grown up with the notion that Africa is completely underdeveloped and poor across each of the 54 countries. While some areas do struggle with poverty, unstable governments, and food insecurity, many of the countries are doing well in terms of human development. The UN has determined that seven of Africa’s countries, some of which are the largest in the continent, have “high human development.” This puts those places on the same level as most of South America.

I’m relying on this more quantitative information about the quality of living on the continent because I do not have anecdotal evidence. I have never been to Africa, nor Asia, nor South America, Australia, Oceania, Antarctica. I’ve used this project to investigate countries that I plan to visit, like Hungary, and ones that I don’t have a prayer of seeing, like Antarctica. Many of the countries in Africa fall in between. While I have a possibility of going there, I don’t actively have a goal of travelling there. So, when I selected Nigeria for this project, I made two goals: one, make something authentic and delicious, and two, fall in love with the country, so that one day I’d have to see it.

One of Nigeria’s popular breakfast foods is akara, fried patties of black eyed beans and onions. Typically, the batter has a whole habañero pepper as well, making it a spicy start to the day. Akara are also sold as street food with a spicy onion sauce. The recipe seemed simple enough, and it was something I wouldn’t ordinarily make. All I needed was the beans, an onion, some garlic, and some serrano peppers, as I had difficulty finding a habañero this time of year. My taste buds probably thanked me for that decision as well; I don’t have the world’s greatest heat tolerance, and anything hotter than a serrano is pushing it.

I want to be honest upfront: the cooking process was incredibly frustrating, and a more accurate account of my experience would be profanity laden. I was enchanted by the deceivingly simple recipe and failed to actually read the steps before I settled on akara. The black eyed beans needed to be peeled before they were blended. This won’t be too bad, I thought. I’m sure it’ll be quicker than I thought I would be, I convinced myself. I sat at my kitchen table, hunched over like a goblin, and began peeling beans. An hour later, I still had half of the can to go. My fingers had wrinkled up like I had been swimming, and my shoulders were twinging in annoyance at my denial. But at that point, I had told myself that I can do it, and I’m nothing if not stubborn. I straightened up and finished peeling the beans. From there, I threw in a clove of garlic and my peppers before blending the mixture together. The last step was to add a quarter cup of water. This seemed odd, as I was deep frying the bean batter. Yet, I thought the recipe wouldn’t lead me astray, so I blended that in as well.

I spooned my mix into a tupperware. It was a greyish-greenish-brownish batter, still with a slightly gritty consistency. I mixed in a very finely diced white onion and popped the batter in the freezer for easier manipulation. In the meantime, I heated a mix of canola oil and vegetable oil in a tall pot. Both of these oils had a high smoke point, which is what’s desired for deep frying. I knew the oil was hot enough when I could see it move more easily when I tilted the pot. I dropped in a bit of onion, just to make sure, and heard a delightful sizzle. The batter, which had chilled in the freezer, was easy to spoon into a small patty.

I dropped the patty into the oil and watched it sizzle. It then started popping, and immediately dissolved into nothingness.

I blinked. Where had the patty gone? There were small chunks of onion all around the pan, but the bulk of the batter—the beans, peppers, and ground garlic—were nowhere to be found. I spooned another clump of batter together, smaller than last time, and tried to repeat the process. Again, the batter hit the oil, sizzled, and spread apart throughout the pot. The oil had taken on a dark color from bits of onion that were now burning.

Was there a chance that I misunderstood the recipe? Was there something key that I had overlooked? I double checked the website, but I had followed all of the instructions to a T. The only possible difference that I found was that the website said to fry, but not specifically deep fry. Maybe I was supposed to be doing this in a shallow pan instead of a pot.

I got out a fry pan, heated some oil, and prayed. After I plopped three spoonfuls of batter into the pan, things looked like they were going to be okay. For a moment, I breathed. However, I quickly noticed that the patties were spreading out. They resembled ice cream scoops that had fallen on hot pavement. I tried to use my spatula to create borders, but there was no use. I decided to flip them, hoping that the crisp underside would keep the uncooked portions contained. As soon as I touched the patty, the batter melted over my spatula. I tried to flip it, but the result reminded me of an undercooked pancake. Batter hit all parts of the pan. The underside was a crisp, dark color, and nothing like the golden, fluffy akara in the recipe's photo.

I had spent an hour and half peeling black eyed beans to watch my batter dissolve and melt. I honestly could have thrown the pan across my kitchen. My shoulders hurt, my fingers were burnt from popping oil, and I had completely destroyed my kitchen with dirty dishes. Even writing this now, I have no idea what I did so terribly wrong to get a puddle of onion mush. It was at this point that I declared akara a failure, and swore to never go to Nigeria.

A few hours and loads of dishes later, I realized that was short sighted. As bitter as I was with my failed akara, it wasn't fair to write off the entire country. I started doing some research about Nigeria. The first things I found were financial and economical. While a good portion of the population struggles with poverty and food insecurity, Nigeria has the largest economy on the continent. The economy is projected to be a part of the top ten worldwide in 2050. This is fueled by a good supply of oil and gas in the country. Their population is also huge: 123 million people. The people in the country place an emphasis on tradition, both religious and cultural, and seem to have found a balance between old and new routines. One article from Financial Times explored the success of Nigerians outside of the country. The people have a high focus on education, and display a strong sense of community and resilience.

I started looking at photos of the country, at the masses of people and vivid colors in the streets. It was unlike any place that I had ever seen before. I then promised to myself that if I got the chance to go, I would. I would meet the resilient people, explore the traditions and cultures, and sit down to a perfectly fried plate of akara, preferably one that hadn't dissolved into oil.