Atkins Beware!

When travelling to any new place, food always seems to be a big topic of conversation.

I have made some effort to try some of the different Nigerian foods so far, and am handling it ok (i.e. my internal workings are still working). As the title suggests, the meals are not for those adverse to carbohydrates. In a typical Nigerian dish one can expect to find a big plate of carbs, so far its been rice, pasta, cassava yam (or some concoction derived from yam). In fact it seems that Nigerians have gone for the concept that the more food on your plate the better it is (at the same time forgetting that meat and vegetables taste better and have more nutrients). This will then be accompanied by a single small piece of meat (usually goat or beef) and the Nigerian staple – pepper sauce. This sauce is made from tomatoes, onion and red peppers. They are shredded and then cooked for hours till the sauce is quite thick. This sauce is hot. But I’m getting used to it. The thing is Nigerians love to put pepper (you can get the powdered form) on everything. I managed to eat the only dish I'd heard about before I arrived. That being pepper soup. Any kind of meat (I had catfish) in a fiery pepper sauce.

The other night I tried something that definitely tops my weird food list (there's not that many things on the list yet, but I'm trying). I had an Ibo dish imaginatively titled and literally translating as "head goat". From what I could gather, they get a goats head and roughly chop the whole thing up, mix it with spices, cook it, put it in a calabash and serve it up. It was actually one of the better things I've tried so far. The sauce was made of secret spices, potash and palm oil (I am told) and wasn't too spicy for once. What’s more the meat was of decent quality and tender. Though the eyeball that I ate was a touch on the rubbery side.

Otherwise I seem to be eating a lot of goat. A typical roadside snack is goat meat (more emphasis on the skin and fat, than meat) heavily peppered and barbequed. Things they eat that we don’t include yam (lots and lots of yam, it's a bit like potato), cassava and plaintain (tastes like a cross between banana and pumpkin, but looks exactly like one of our bananas). Yam comes in all sorts. Yam flour, a kind of drink made from yam, yam paste, or just whole and boiled.

I anticipate much more to add for this section.