Exciting Easter Menu Tips

It’s a few days to Easter and I’m sure quite a number of people out there would have started having those silent brain storming moments where they try and figure out the best way to wow the family this Easter; Food wise that is.

Well, I will be sharing a few ideas of things you can make to create that wonderful dining experience for your family and loved ones.

Grilling and Barbecuing: A family that grills together stays together. Grilling is a fun way to keep the atmosphere at home exciting this Easter. From grilled chicken to burgers, it is extremely easy and cost efficient. For those that do not have fancy grills at home, you can easily build a coal grill. Look for a metal basin/bucket, fill it up half way with sand and spread coal all over it. Place metal gauze and you have yourself a coal grill. Feel free to go through my earlier post on how to achieve well grilled chicken. Also, you can contact me via email for burger recipes or other grill related recipes.

 

 

Fish and Chips: This will make a great appetizer before the main entrée. You can get a bag of already peeled and sliced potatoes at Shoprite or any food mart. I prefer seasoning my fries with a mixture salt, dry pepper and seasoning immediately after deep frying them. For your fish, you can either grill or deep fry in batter after marinating.

 

Rice dishes: From Chinese fried rice to Coconut rice, Jollof rice… I tell you the list is endless. There are a few rice recipes I posted earlier on this site that will surely make your Easter menu stand out this year.

 

Kindly visit my earlier posts for more mouth-watering and exciting recipes you can make for the family this holiday.

Have a great Easter.

Easter Chicken 101

With Easter around the corner, here are a few tips on achieving fantastic results with your birds. The traditional way of treating chicken in most homes is first to boil for several minutes and fry. By doing this, one has simply succeeded in over cooking the chicken. I will be sharing a few tips you can use in preparing that wonderful, mouth-watering and juicy Easter chicken your family would truly enjoy.

First thing you want to do is to understand the kind of bird you have. Is it soft or hard chicken, whole turkey/chicken or duck? The cooking time for these birds varies because of their different textures.

With that out of the way, the next important step is to brine your bird. With brining, you can never go wrong. It makes your chicken really juicy, tender and gives it a great taste. It is a great way of seasoning your chicken uniformly and can either be used for chicken parts or whole chicken.

Here is my brining process. Feel free to use it or you can modify and come up with yours. Pour some water into a pot.  Make sure the volume of water is enough to fully submerge the chicken you want to brine. Place the water on your burner. As soon as the water starts getting warm, add equal quantity of salt and brown sugar (3/4 cup full should do), smashed garlic, squeeze some lemon juice into it and also throw what is left of the lemon into the pot, cut an onion into 2 halves and add to it. Also add bay leaves. Stir and put out the flame and allow the temperature of the mixture to drop. Make sure the temperature of your brine mixture has totally dropped before you submerge your chicken (It should not even be warm). Placing your pot in a bowl containing ice can help speed up this process.

Submerge your chicken in the brine mixture and keep the brining chicken in your fridge for 2hours if you are brining chicken parts and 6 hours if it is a whole chicken.

Then bring out your chicken from the brine, pat dry with paper towels, give the chicken a good dry rub (dry red pepper, powdered ginger, freshly ground black pepper, paprika  and seasoning) and  deep fry/grill/oven bake to get that great tasting chicken for the family during Easter.

Happy Easter everyone!

BANGA SOUP

Undoubtedly one of the most loved soups in the Niger delta region of Nigeria. It is made using extract from palm kernel seeds and eaten with either starch or garri (although some people also eat with white rice).

I will be making this dish as simple as possible as I will only be teaching the basics. You can decide to add anything extra you would want to see in your soup.

For this dish, I will be using the following:

Palm Kernel seeds (mix the native and agric when buying)

Yellow pepper

Crayfish

Lemon grass

Chicken/assorted meat/turkey (depends on your preference)

Smoked fish

Periwinkle

Onion

Seasoning

Salt

Wash the palm kernel seeds and boil for about 45minutes. Allow to cool by running water into the pot and with your hands, rub the seeds together to extract the oil. Add some water and sieve out the oil extract.

Put the oil extract in a pot and place pot on a flame and allow to boil. Blend the yellow pepper & onions and add to the boiling oil extract. Allow to boil for 30mins and add your boiled meat/chicken/turkey and some of the stock/broth. Allow to boil for another 30mins. Tie up the lemon grass and add to the soup. Then add the smoked fish, periwinkle, seasoning and salt. Allow to boil for another 10mins and put out flame.

 

 

 

How Well Do You Know Your Beans???

Beans are a power house of nutrition. It amazes me when I see a lot of people buy cooked rice and opt for fried plantain (high in cholesterols) rather than beans. In this part of the world, it gets somewhat comical when you see a lady eating bread and beans. What people fail to consider is the nutritional values that come with what is popularly referred to as B².

Be it in the form of bean pie (moi-moi) or bean fritters (Akara), beans should always be a part of our everyday meal as its nutritional values cannot be over-emphasized.

 

Here are a few of the reasons why beans, as a meal, should be taken seriously:

·         Studies have shown that women who ate beans at least twice a week had a 25 percent lower risk of breast cancer than women who ate them just once a month.

·         Copper, which is crucial for maintaining a glowing skin pigment and connecting tissues, is found in beans. Several enzymes in the body also need copper (found in beans) to function properly.

·         Studies have also shown that dietary protein and soluble fiber found in beans help prevent hypertension and improve control of it.

·         Folate is, of course, a must for any woman considering having children, as it helps prevent defects in developing neural tubes. One cup of beans provides a whopping 90 percent of the daily value (DV) of folate.

·         People who eat beans have a 22 percent lower risk of obesity and are more likely to have a smaller waist than people who don’t eat beans. Beans are high in soluble fibre, which slows digestion and makes you feel full longer. One cup (250 mL) of beans, for example, provides 60 percent of the daily value (DV)* for fibre.

·         Beans are also great sources to stabilize your blood sugar levels. The soluble fiber lowers down the movement of glucose sourced from food into the bloodstream. As a result, your body produces lesser insulin which is beneficial since higher levels instigate diabetes.

 

Well prepared beans can be taken with pap, bread, yam, garri, rice etc. University students in Nigeria would always attest to the fact that ABC, has literally saved lives on so many occasions especially on days prior to their exams. Did I hear someone ask for the meaning of ABC? It simply means Akara Bread and Coke.

Beans are one of the healthiest and cheapest foods you can find around. So why don’t you do yourself a favor today and give beans that prominent role it deserves on your daily dietary list?