Cooking in Nigeria...

After leaving Lagos, the three of us, Drew, Andrea, and I, went to Nsukka, a university city in Enugu State, eastern Nigeria. The University of Nsukka is large, supposedly 40,000 students, but the campus did not fell nearly as busy, frantic, and frenzied as Lagos, or even Accra. We spent three days with the artist El Anatsui talking with him, hanging out in his studio and talking with his assistants (I actually got to help make one of his newest pieces).

The guesthouse that we stay in did not have anyplace to cook and despite the size of the campus, there was only one restaurant that we could fine. The nearby town was very small and had little to offer as well. The last night on campus, after having eaten in the same university restaurant for three days, we were a bit tired of it. We asked around for any other options but really did not have any good leads. The restaurant we had been eating at was nice enough, but still had a very limited number of dishes and there was usually a pretty long wait. As we pondered our few options, Andrea came up with the idea that we should go to the restaurant, walk into the kitchen and just make whatever we wanted. I love to cook and this sounded like a great idea to me. The three of us marched down to the restaurant, walked it, noticed the place was nearly empty (which was probably good), made a bee-line for the kitchen and waltzed right in.

I am not sure exactly how or when it happened, but the original idea of the three of us cooking quickly fell to the wayside and the other two allowed me to do most of the work. I talked to the cook, Dominic, who at first was very leery of who I was and what I was doing. He seemed to come around after a short time (unbeknownst to me the others told him that I was a professional chef and had my own restaurant in New York and so wherever I went I had to see the kitchen and cook). I tried to keep it simple and make some fried yams (kind of like a West African version of French Fries) and omelets with onions and tomato for the three of us. However, the best laid plans often times go quickly askew when in the kitchen and new ingredients and spices are discovered. As I started cooking, with Dominic getting on board and lending a hand, when I saw that there were beans cooking, plantains that had just finished frying, rice that was warm and ready to serve, and some type of tomato sauce that looked interesting and turned out to be quite spicy. I changed up the game plan and started to make fried rice. To keep the appearance that I had any idea what I was doing I began to bark out orders to “wash this” and “chop that” and before I new it, the entire kitchen staff was bustling away at my direction.

During all the commotion, a waiter came in and said that someone had ordered “red red” a West African dish that consists of beans and plantain. I looked around and saw that the stuff was already made, so, I plated it, put some tomatoes, lettuce and purple onion on the plate for color and gave it to the waiter to take out. He picked it up, looked at the plate, looked at me, looked at the plate, took a deep breath, shook his head and walked out to the restaurant with it. The dishwasher lady took particular interest in what I was doing and came up and introduced herself to me. She told me her name and I did not understand it, so I asked again, did not understand; asked again, did not understand; asked again, and still did not understand. “I will call you Izzy, you look like an Izzy” I told her. She smiled and said that was fine and she helped me get plates and silverware ready to go. I went back to cooking and before long had made, with a great deal of help from the real kitchen staff, enough food to not only feed the three of us but the kitchen staff as well. As I was dong this, the other two Fulbrighters were watching these charades with obvious enjoyment. I plated the food, and the three of us went out to the actual restaurant and ate. It was pretty good (if I don’t say so myself), or at least it was edible and no one got sick.

The next morning we got up to leave early and walked by the restaurant. I went in to tell all of them good bye and found that they had gotten busy after we had left and ended up all spending the night in the kitchen. “Izzy” actually gave me a hug before I left and they all not only remembered me, but thanked me and told me the food was good.