Humanist

Born into an oral African culture, for the most part, recipes of our ancestors have been handed down orally and via demonstration. Cooking side by side with an elder. You never remember exactly everything, but you get to know the basics.

The learner watches the master estimate proportions and quantities of ingredients – pinch of salt, splash of cow ghee, sprinkle of ash salt, a bit of water, etc. And each time the master gets it right.

The master’s dishes are on point each time; albeit the fact that the ingredients my differ each time. For example the varieties of millet porridge one can make – with lemon, with tamarind, with milk, etc.

Or the mixture in atap (millet meal) – could be millet, sorghum and cassava; or could be millet and cassava; or it could be millet and sweet potatoes, etc. And when mingling, it could be with lemon or tamarind or nothing added.

Cooking lesson begins with the question: what do we have in the granary, in the kitchen house, or in-field in the garden? Then the recipe is decided there and then on the basis of what is available.

Yes, there was a time that it was rare for our communities to buy food. Sadly, the skill of preserving all sorts of foods – meats, cereals, vegetables, legumes, etc., so that food is available in the home all year round is disappearing.

Back to recipes. For us, the culture-normal is learning the basic central logic of how to cook and not necessarily a fixed recipe. With the basic knowledge of how to cook, you are unleashed to experiment – pairing different ingredients.

Bonding through cooking a privilege we had. The stories told to get the lessons to be learned were awesome. I still remember the story told of my late grandfather’s first wife, rested as well. I never met her she died before I was born.

Legend has it that she was always the first to get her food ready, but it it was always poorly cooked. Apparently, her husband never ever talked ill of her food. A kind of open secrete and which was used to train us not to cook like she did.

The stories of how her husband side-stepped eating her food in a way that made her believe he had actually eaten to his fill are hilarious. And until her death, legend has it, she believed herself the best cook ever.

Anyway, for us when you ask someone for a recipe, if they are the master in that dish, they will invite you over to their kitchen so you may observe. It is actually not uncommon for the lesson to include a history of how the master learnt.

People were renowned for being the best cook of a particular dish. I know some of my favorite dishes, but I do not have a fixed recipe for making them.