Photo Credit: 10best
It is virtually undeniable that your kitchen is a sacred place when Christmas is around the corner. The room that everybody (except the hopeless enthusiast) avoids until their moment of need becomes the favourite room to explore. This Christmas season won’t be any different as families and individuals are prepping to create magic through mouth-teasing delicacies.
Check out some of these cuisines to try out in your kitchen this holiday season:
Fried Rice
There’s very little doubt that fried rice has become the staple dish to celebrate Christmas (in most Nigerian homes). While the recipe and ingredients are quite straightforward, it takes some skill to master the art of the dish.
In your favour, YouTube and Nigerian recipes websites can guide you in the right direction. The dish (in all its variants) relies on rice, fresh vegetables, beef liver or shrimp, and vegetable oil to hit that mark.
Salad
I absolutely do mean coleslaw! There’s a difference. Salad seems like the better choice since it boasts of more exotic ingredients that make it come alive. The beauty here is that, coupled with the regular ingredients of cabbage, carrots, baked beans etc., one can experiment with options that suits one.
Rotisserie Chicken/Turkey
If you’re wondering, this dish is that image of a full, golden, cooked-to-perfection chicken or turkey that lives in our heads when the word chicken/turkey is mentioned. Adding this to the Christmas ‘buffet’ is often the grand topping of every Christmas meal.
Smoky Party Jollof Rice
Are you even Nigerian if you don’t add this to your holiday cooking itinerary? Party Jollof is likened to the ‘holy grail’ of dishes in this clime. Rumour has it that jollof rice cooked over firewood beats the taste of one cooked via a gas cooker. But then, you can still make it work, I bet.
Chickpea Moi-moi
This is a less strenuous option to the regular beans moi-moi which is quite laborious to make. All it takes to make it work are dry chickpea (or chickpea flour), habanero pepper (Ata Rodo), ground crayfish, nutmeg, pure vegetable oil, onion, seasoning etc. It really follows the same procedure as regular beans moi-moi, except that it is faster to prepare.
Pounded Yam
This is a wonderful ‘swallow’ meal to add to your kitchen adventure this season. It’s interesting how it cuts across all ethnicities. However, for many, it is the manual pounding that’s a turnoff. But there’s very little to worry about as there are product lines that are springing up, offering the flour version of pounded yam. You can literally pick any of your favourite soups to go with this.
I wish you the very best of the season as you exploit the gastronomical possibilities of your kitchen.