TRS - From Sandgrouse to Short-Order - The Red String

August 2011
From Sandgr!se, to Sho"-Order
Special Edition

Prelude
Agbaya!
A Market Place
This is How We Roll
Wining and Dining
Dami Arrives
Wrapped in a Leaf
O Gbono Feli Feli
Contents

1
Prelude
As I begin to write this story, I can't help but think how much better it
would be with pictures! Perhaps I might be able to get some from
Mrs. Iyabo Ladipo of Double Portion Ltd, the woman to whom most
of my experience is due. I say most of it because really I can't begin
telling this story without thanking my parents for putting down the
requisite N30,000 to send me to cooking school.
Yes, cooking school is what this is all about. I was taught to cook for
a few hours a day, three times a week, for 3 weeks, and in that time
I learnt to make moi-moi, egusi, stew, sausage rolls, and a host of
other basic Nigerian meals. Well, I know they're basic now, but
before I ever set foot in Mrs. Ladipo's kitchen I thought otherwise.
But this story is not just about cooking. It is about an experience. A
brief one, but an enchanting one nonetheless. So sit back, relax,
and let me tell you all about how I learnt to cook.

2
Agbaya!
I was forewarned but not forearmed the first time I arrived in Mrs.
Ladipo's class. Having been told I would be joining a teenage
course, I was duly prepared to meet some 17 and 18 year olds.
Lord knows I had forgotten about the rest of the teen age
spectrum.
Well I certainly met a rude awakening that day. The oldest was
16, and even she was in a class of her own! Not only did I feel
like an agbaya but in truth, that is what I was: "The agbaya from
America."
But I wasn't just any old agbaya, I was the kind who might be
looking at jail time given one false move. Because as
circumstance would have it, my class was a harem of underage
beauties! Kids of nowadays... Only God save us. LOL
See the picture at the end of the edition

3
A Market Place
Although my first day wasn't actually the first day of class
('twas the second), it might as well have been. We
introduced ourselves, the class was introduced to us...
general first day activities took place. So I'm going to
skip all that and just jump to the second.
On my second day, we went to Sandgrouse market on
Lagos Island. You know, to buy the ingredients we would
be cooking with. Did I say ingredients? I meant corpses.
Because outside of the plant-life and snails which were
*gasp* alive! the rest of our ingredients were dead fish,
dead cow, dead goat, dead crab... dead... things!
Now I had been to Sandgrouse before and I expected
what I met. As for the girls, I think Sandgrouse is their
new depiction of hell. They hated the air, the land, the
puddles, the live animals, and oh my did they hate the
dead ones!

4
A Market Place
Our journey in the market essentially took us from places of
the least disgust, to those of the most and where I started out
maintaining a safe distance from these young girls, I ended
up with a few clinging to me for dear life!
From buying Ugwu, Tete, and Okro, (vegetables) a few metres
from the street, to grinding dried yams into elubo with a visible
escape route, then carrying a goat head, studying the heart of
a cow, and learning the gruesome truth behind shaki with no
escape whatsoever from the sights, sounds, and smells of the
busy market, it is no surprise that my JJC harem was more
than ready to go home when the time came.
Comments like "..it is only in Nigeria that markets can smell
like this!" and "I am going to catch a disease!" had me
laughing for the majority of the day. But the funniest thing
about it all was that these selfsame girls will one day be
women patronising Sandgrouse just as my mother was once a
girl who said "I have never seen such a horrible place in all my
life!" :D

5
This is How We Roll
After our so-called horrid experience, it was time to do something the
harem would actually enjoy: Pastry making. And as far as Nigerian
pastries are concerned, there are two that immediately come to mind:
Sausage rolls, and Meatpies. Of course to be fair, there are a whole host
of other pastries worth their dough and so rather than making meat pies
and sausage rolls, we made sausage rolls and jam tarts.
Making pastries taught me one very valuable lesson: It is a very hands
on process. You make the dough with your hands, knead the dough
with your hands, roll the dough with your hands, You do everything...
With. Your. Hands! - and for someone like me who is not at all
confident in his dexterity, getting good at it would require some work.
So mentally, I've put it on the back-burner for now. But another thing I
learned was that you don't actually have to be very good to produce
decent results - which in fact is what the 8 of us students managed to
produce that day.
What I produced on my own 2 days later however...

6
Wining and Dining
Did you know that for any given meal there could
be up to seven glasses associated with it? Yeah.
Seven glasses... and each glass for a certain type
of drink.
Now I personally learnt to set the table long
before I understood the value of eating at one.
And even now I can't say I value it all that much.
But aside from the single glass, single plate,
single fork, knife, and spoon, I never really
considered the possibility of such a large place
setting. I mean, I already thought the spoon was
over the top because really... how many times do
we need both a fork, and a spoon!?
So to learn about seven glasses was well, it was
mind-blowing. But then it all made sense
because 7 glasses = 7 courses right? But no! You
can drink 7 drinks without eating 7 meals... Now
that! That was a whole paradigm shift on it's own.

7
Wining and Dining
Because I realised that the British are not stupid. Kings and Queens of old
had 7-course meals with 7-course place settings to match. The multicourse
table setting you are sure to find at any English restaurant is not a
product of the imagination of some old fart with a top-hat sitting in his
mansion by the sea. Neither is it a pointless endeavour designed to punish
little kids.
It is actually a dynamic and scalable system designed to adjust to the
needs of both the server and the consumer such that the table can be set
for any number of courses of any kind of meal. It never needs to be set
twice, plates and cutlery can be added and cleared on demand, and all
without ever seriously disturbing the consumers meal or making the server
jump through hoops.
Who knew that we came before such a wonderful feat of engineering as we
sat to eat everyday! I certainly didn't, and I'm sure neither did you! This is
what I learnt on my third day in class... and my friends, I see the table in a
whole new light.
Nevermind that setting the table was the tiniest part of that day's lesson

8
Dami Arrives
About a week into my fantabulous learning
experience, my old friend Dami Jagun arrives
fresh from Ireland and guess what? She wants to
learn to cook too! See how God works?
Here I was, managing my agbaya status as best
could be with no one to talk to, and he sends
someone to keep me company. Of course I totally
forgot to mention to her that it was a teenage
course when she asked. Oops! How silly of me ;)
Anyway, that is how Damilola Jagun came to join
my harem of eight as the only "of age" woman in
the group. It was nice to have some company
even if all the cooking we were doing precluded
much in the way of conversation.

9
Wrapped in a Leaf
Remember those dead things we bought at the market? Well while it was
fun to buy them, I couldn't help but think how much more interesting it
would be to cook them. We would be cleaning snails, killing and defeathering
a live chicken, washing and chopping up bloody pieces of
meat, ahhh, how fun it would be to watch the faces of my adolescent
harem. :D
But alas! It was not meant to be. For the day before the show was to
begin, I came down with a nasty infection. One that left me with an
equally nasty cough for weeks after. This meat cooking day was also
Dami's first day of class. So the one day I happened to miss class not
only did I miss the most interesting part, I also prolonged my agbaya
status. After all I couldn't truly feel better until I laid eyes on my friend.
So I missed the cleaning of the snails, and the killing of the chicken, and
the deboning of the fish, only to come back the next class to meet
leaves. No meat, no snails, no fish, just a number of, very large, leaves...

10
Wrapped in a Leaf
In actual fact, what I met first were a number of average sized
newspapers. Newspapers which we had to learn to fold in a
certain way on the table, and then the same way in midair, before
finally, we were allowed to touch the leaves.
For those of you familiar with the Nigerian dish called Moi-moi, you
already know that it is traditionally served in a leaf. And for those of
you familiar with cooking Moi-moi, you also know that the proper
folding of said leaf is essential to the Moi-moi making process.
Now the other essentials of this process are what we call the "emi"
or in English, the "lives" of the Moi-moi. Of these we had a few:
Boiled eggs, Crayfish, Corned beef, and the like. The combination
of some of which in a bean paste wrapped in a leaf and steamed
for 30-45 minutes can produce some of the nicest tasting Moi-moi
you will ever eat.
So it was that I learnt to make Moi-moi; From folding newspapers...
Sounds easy doesn't it?
Mrs. Ransom-Kuti won a cooking contest with a Moi-moi that had 7 lives!

11
O Gbono Feli Feli
If you know the song I am quoting above then you also know
that D'banj actually says "Mo gbono feli feli..." meaning "I'm so
hot" and that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Ogbono soup.
But mehn, if you ate the Ogbono we made this particular day,
you would be singing as I am singing: "O gbono feli feli bi
amala to jina gangan, don't hate it 'cause it's hotter than
stew... It's hotter than stew..." - Don Damzy again!
Okay, so maybe not the last three words, but that Ogbono was
too hot - and it wasn't just Ogbono we made. We also made
Stew, Egusi soup, and Okra soup, and they were just as
delectable, delightful, and delicious! In fact 90% of our class
had devoured their "take away" servings before I had even had
a chance to sit down.

12
O Gbono Feli Feli
Needless to say, few parents got a taste of what was made that
day. As for the former complaints of catching diseases, stinky
meat, and Lord knows what else was said at the market, they
were nowhere to be heard. The only sounds out of the harem's
mouths were those of the chomping of meat.
There was however one other sound that was heard soon after
we were done eating... and that was the singular spoken
sentence:
"May we have more?"

-
Copyright Notice
The Red String is a monthly newsletter owned, managed, run,
and mostly written by Damola Mabogunje. He has been at it
since September 2010 and while it is free for all to read and
share, he would be very, in fact not just very, extremely pissed
off if anyone should copy or plagiarize his work.
So please don't. I don't want to sue anybody.
Copyright Damola Mabogunje (2009 - Present)