The perfect way to soothe my cravings for juice . I’m currently doing the LCHF diet aka Keto, and I had a serious craving for a sweet drink this afternoon. As fruit juices are not Keto Compliant I had to think up another fix.
See I’m on a one month challenge to lose the extra 7kg I gained recently. This is the heaviest I’ve been sans pregnancy. This my sweet tooth won’t let me be great, sweets and decadent stuff are my achilles heel. Now my sister’s wedding is coming up in a few weeks and I must look smoking hot and fit into the dress I’m going to wear. No sweet tooth can stop me.
Recipe
Ingredients
• A bunch of fresh Lemon grass Leaves or stalks.
• A few slices of lemon (optional )
• Any natural sweetener of your choice. E.g. Stevie, Honey, Date Syrup etc. (No sugar, nothing that contains aspartame.)
• Ice Cubes
Procedure
– Wash the Lemon grass to get rid of sand.
– In a pot or kettle, add enough water to cover the lemon grass and boil.
– Let it cook till it boils. Turn off the heat and add the slices of Lemon.
– Leave it to cool, strain and add your sweetener
I used Stevia as sweetener
– Serve with Ice Cubes or Refrigerate before you serve.
*You can store the rest in an airtight bottle for up to 1 week in a fridge.
I’ve been pushing the #Plantain #Chocolate competition for the #ounjegiveaway. So I’ve been sharing easy ways to incorporate plantain and chocolate. Plantain waffle is an old recipe I shared last year. This is a different take on the earlier RECIPE
Plantain Waffle
Plantain Waffle topped with Frozen Yogurt, Honey and Milk Chocolate shavings Recipe
(Serves 5)
4 large ripe plantains
20g Butter
2 cups Yogurt
1 cup flour
1/8 tsp Baking powder
1/8 tsp Baking soda
1/8 cup Sugar
1 cup Milk
1 tbsp *Vanilla extract
*Cooking spray or oil to coat your waffle iron.
Procedure
▪ In a blender, blend the plantain and all the other ingredients to a smooth paste.
▪ Spray the waffle iron with some cooking spray or use a brush to apply oil on the iron to prevent the batter from sticking to the plates. (Use the waffle iron according to manufacturers instructions)
▪ Cook till waffle iron indicator says it’s done.
Plantain Waffle topped with frozen yogurt, chocolate syrup and milk chocolate shavingsPlantain Waffle topped with Frozen Yogurt, Chocolate Syrup and Milk Chocolate shavings
Earlier in the year, I announced that I’d be having a give away. I would be selecting FIVE (5) LUCKY WINNERS to gift BOXES of CUSTOMISED CHOCOLATES BARS to, courtesy of The ChocBoy
TO QUALIFY
CREATE A RECIPE THAT INCLUDES PLANTAIN AND CHOCOLATE!!!!!!
The top FIVE PICTURES with the highest number of likes WIN.
The competition starts TODAY 29/07/2016 and ends on MONDAY 1/08/2016. ABOUT THE SPONSOR
ChocBoy (The Best Chocolatey Service in Nigeria) has generously donated boxes of chocolates that would be personalised with the winner’s name.
The ChocBoy Chocolatey Brand produces, packages & sells chocolate bars,chocolatey treats,chocolatey products and customized chocolate bars.
The company is an indigenous company here in Nigeria that delivers the best chocolates and chocolatey experience for you and in any event.
With a vision to become the preferred premium, Nigerian made chocolate brand, the mission is to produce chocolates that will give a yummy, smooth and an unforgettable chocolatey experience that keeps our consumers wanting more.
THE COMPETITION
Rules!!!!!
Take a picture of your Plantain/Chocolate creation, and cc @ounjealadun
For our Facebook followers, you can still participate by sending us your entries through our inbox, we would share your pictures on Instagram and collate the votes!
Shout out to @dodogang_ for the social media support. We love you!!!!!
You can get inspirations for your entry from our plantain catalogue in the link below.
My sister came into the kitchen this morning as I was preparing to make garden egg sauce and she said, “Sis, isn’t this that sauce we hated as kids”. I told her, “Believe me, I now eat many of the things I hated as a child, so why not this one too”.
Today probably is the first time I would eat Garden Egg sauce in probably 16 years. My husband on the other hand likes Garden Egg Sauce and for the 6 years we have been married, he has asked me several times to make it. My memories of garden egg sauce kept me from making it, well today I did and I loved it, so going forward I’d make new delicious memories of my own and share with my children.
Procedure
– Wash and take off the stalks on the garden eggs. Then boil till the garden eggs are tender, and the skin can peel easily. Peeling the skin is optional
Douse the boiled garden egg in cold water so it is easier to peep the skin off.
– Mash up the softened garden egg
Mashed garden eggs with skin on
– While boiling the garden eggs, blend your tomatoes and pepper. Chop onions
– Heat up vegetable oil in a pan, and add the onions. Fry the onions lightly and add blended tomatoes and pepper.
– Add your seasonings, if you have stock, add a cup.
– When the pepper is cooked and the water has reduced completely, add the garden egg and the fish. Cook for an additional 7 – 10 minutes with the lid on.
Garden Egg Sauce is most popularly served with boiled yam, you can pair it with anything you want. Serve warm.
A few days ago, my Gizdodo was featured on a blog and it really cheered me up. Thing was I had been ill, drifting in and out of sleep from being heavily medicated with flu pills and antibiotics, I had initially thought it was malaria and so I self medicated (don’t be like me).
That blog post reminded me a lot of a part of my life that I had not paid attention to at all this year. Cooking!
Not just cooking, because of course I have cooked food this year, but being a mad scientist in my kitchen. Using my cooking as a therapeutic outlet and chronicling it.
Not quite sure how I would fit this back into my life right now, but I’m sure I won’t let myself go too much to the extent that I’d neglect the things I love.
I love seafood as some people would know and this here is Prawn Dodo made using Gizdodo recipe. You should try it out.
Recipe
• 500g Fresh Prawns
• 3 Ripe Plantains
• 1 Large Onion
• 4 Tomatoes
• Jalapeño peppers ( Bawa / Sombo / long tatashe ) As many as you want depending on how much heat you can handle. I used more than 10 pieces
• 3 medium sweet bell peppers (i used yellow, red, green)
• Scotch Bonnet (Ata rodo) as many as you want
• 1 cup beef Stock
• 2 Bouillon Cubes (knorr beef cubes in this instance)
• Salt to taste
• Vegetable oil ( to fry )/ Or Air fry
• 1/4 Coconut oil
Procedure
– Dice up your plantains and fry till golden brown and set aside.
Fried plantains
– Coarsely blend your tomatoes, onion and peppers. You can use as little or as much of any of these ingredients. What we want to get is at least 1 1/2 cups of the coarsely blended pepper.
– Chop you bell peppers.
Basic ingredients
– In a pot or wok add coconut oil, blended pepper, add 1 cup of beef Stock, taste for seasoning, if necessary season a little more. Cook with lid off till the water is reduced completely, turn the heat down a notch and allow the pepper simmer, then add chopped bell peppers and prawns.
– Turn the heat down completely and cover the pot/wok for 2 minutes to allow the prawns cook, take off the lid and cook for an additional 5 minutes, then stir it in well and add the fried plantain and stir in using a wooden or plastic spoon/ladle so as not to mash up the plantain.
In recent times I’ve done very little “cooking”, most meals have consisted of quick fixes, take outs or otherwise cooked by someone else. I had a rough start this year. Thankfully it’s been rough for the right reasons, Growth in my business Fontaine De Vie. Shortage of man power, break down of some machinery welcomed the growth, it was a gruelling time because we just had to meet up. I went from a production staff strength of 5 to 1 coupled with no domestic staff to help with the home front, I found myself borrowing more hours from the next day only to fall short. It’s amazing how my health didn’t fail in all of this. I made it through and I’m grateful for the lessons I learnt during the phase. Challenges are made to strengthen you, it won’t break you if you don’t let it.
Ofe Onugbu recipe is the same as that of Oha, only difference is the leaves, Oha and Onugbu (Bitter Leaf). I’m a yoruba girl who loves to cook eastern and south eastern soups, a little more pepper than the traditional requirement and I’m good!
• 1 teaspoon Ogiri Igbo (for the traditional taste but optional)
Procedure
– Grind pepper and set aside.
Blended Pepper
Achi on the left, Ofor the right, ground mixture of both in front
*If using Cocoyam
– Wash and boil the cocoyam corms till soft. Remove the peels and in a blender , blend to a smooth paste you can also use a mortar and pestle , that is the more traditional approach.
Mashed Cocoyam using a blender
– Personally I buy, bitter leaves that have been washed in the market. However when I get home I pour boiling hot water over the bitter leaves and leave it steep for about a minute and strain, a friend advised I use salt to just wash it a little more instead of using hot water, to get rid of more of the bitterness. Now you may prefer to buy your own Bitter Leaf fresh , and wash from the scratch, I think it is tedious, but hey whatever rocks your boat. Set it aside.
– Season and boil the meats, when then are tender add stock fish and dry fish.
– Add the pepper, ogiri Igbo and ground crayfish and cook for 10 minutes. Now add either Achi/Ofor powder mix or the cocoyam paste in small lumps then the palm oil
See Pictures below.
Ogiri
– Cover the pot and leave to cook on high heat till all the cocoyam lumps have dissolved. You can add more water if you feel that the soup is too thick.
* Remove smoked catfish if you are using any at this point to prevent disintegration
– Add the washed Onugbu (bitter) leaves and leave to cook for about 5 minutes.
* Ever since the Igbo woman who sells me spices adviced I use a combination of Achi and Ofor instead of Cocoyam, I have come to fall in love with it. The smoothness, the consistency, the taste, is so different from what I get with cocoyam. I love it.
Serve with your favourite starchy side dish. E.g Eba, Amala, Pounded Yam, even Rice.
I’m so excited about today. Thanks to Facebook memories I was reminded the the blog officially launched a year ago today. I’m so happy that in a space of a year I was able to chronicle my food therapies and share them with you all.
Thanks for following me on this journey.
Recently I’ve not been so consistent and this is the reason why. Many of you know I run a Fresh Fruit Juice business Vie Juice . The last few months of any year are usually peak business periods as such I was really busy between October and December. This new year we (my team and i) have been working really hard on some business expansion, expanding our customer base , trying out new business models. So I must confess that this has kept me really away from my kitchen and when I cook up a mini storm I hardly have time to do a photo shoot as I duck right back into all my paper work, staff supervision, quality control, customer service, whilst at the same being wife and mom .
I love what I do, as it also an extention of food. Creating new juice recipes and experimenting with natural ingredients and fresh and dry spices, who knew chillies, ginger , tumeric, cloves , cardamom … pair so great with basic tropical fruits.
It’s Ounje Aladun’s anniversary!!!! (just before I get carried away talking about Vie Juice)
To show appreciation, I would be doing a give away!!! Keep your eyes peeled to all our social media pages as we would be announcing what the prizes are and what you need to do to qualify to win. All I can say is …. Get ready to cook.
Its amazing how life changes you. Growing up , beans was one of my most hated meals. I hated eating many things as a child anyways, my mum still can’t believe how I’ve turned around and become a foodie, I hated beans. Then life happened and I found myself married to a beans lover, and I had to cook and of course eat it more often than I could have ever imagined.
Beans porridge is one of the most popular protein dishes in Nigeria. In the University the boys hostel was known as the hub of beans porridge. The boys didn’t seem to know how to cook anything else other than beans. Beans porridge can very easily be a one pot meal and it was easy for them to pair it with bread or garri and have a fully stomach for the whole day.
Easy as it is to cook beans, it is quite easy to go wrong with it too. The best type of beans to cook beans pottage with is Ewa Oloyin (Oloyin Beans / Honey Beans) . Honey beans is naturally sweet hence it the name. However even in the absence of honey beans, a few tips can help you make a tasty meal of beans pottage.
Recipe
Serves 6
Ingredients
*all measurements are made with standard measures.
• 3 1/2 cups Beans
• 2 Medium sized onions
• 1/2 or 3/4 cup of jalepeno blended pepper OR you can use 1 or 2 tablespoon (s) of Cayenne pepper
* It is said that the amount of pesticides applied to beans for storage is really high, in fact some western countries recently placed a ban on importation of beans from Nigeria due to the high presence of pesticides. This has also been linked to the cause of heartburn and flatulence after consuming beans. Beyond washing beans throughly, you can slightly parboil the beans and discard the water, or soak the beans in boiling hot water for at least five minutes, discard the water, rinse and proceed to cook.
– In a clean pot or pressure pot, cook the beans with water and one chopped onion. I strongly recommend that every one owns a pressure pot even if it is just for cooking beans. With a pressure pot, the beans is tender in about 15 minutes. If you are using a regular pot, you have to cook for between 30 – 45 minutes to get the beans to be tender enough
The beans is tender and it is beginning to split
– When the beans is tender, add, palm oil, crayfish, pepper, salt, bouillon cubes (I use knorr)
– Cook all together for about 20 minutes or until all the elements are well incorporated in the business and the beans pottage has thickened. Turn off the heat and serve
On the last day of our vacation in August, we arrived Virginia very early in the morning very tired – after an exciting week in Florida- and very hungry too. Le hubs cousin -who had been longing to host us- treated us to a breakfast buffet at a nice Indian restaurant. The food was really good, and for dessert I had rice pudding. I’ve been longing to make my own rice pudding since then. Few weeks ago I did even though I’ve been too lazy to blog.
Looking at the pictures now, I can taste the coconut milk in the rice pudding, the Sorrel and date syrup and the orange slices at the side.
Recipe
Ingredients
Serves 8
• 4 cups cooked jasmine rice (I used basmati as I didn’t have any jasmine rice at home)
• 4 cups coconut milk
• 1 Cup condensed Milk
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1 tbsp Vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sugar (optional)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)
Procedure
– In a pot, add 3 cups of hot water to pre- cooked rice, cook on medium heat, add, cloves , nutmeg. * Jasmine rice is preferred because it gets mushy when it is cooked and has great texture. I had to mash up my rice a bit because is used Basmati rice.
– Add Coconut milk and condensed milk. Turn down the heat and let it simmer. Add sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Stir well and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
– Break egg and whisk with vanilla extract, add the egg to pudding and stir in properly. Let it simmer for about 1 minute and turn off the heat.
FOR SORREL SYRUP
• 1/8 cup dried sorrel leaves (also called zobo leaves)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• *Chopped pitted dates or raisins
Boil the sorrel leaves in water, once boiled, remove the leaves from the water, add sugar and leave to boil till the water reduces to a thin syrup, add chopped dates or raisins and turn off the heat.
Busy as Lagos is, it has an interesting night life. After the stress of the hustle and bustle of the day, people seem to find a way to unwind after. Hence you’d find a lot of out door cool spots and night bars scattered across the metropolis of Lagos. The city is a sort of melting pot for people of different ethnicities and culture across Nigeria, thus you’d find the influence of different cultures in the cuisine.
Popular amongst them is Isi Ewu, Nkwobi, Point and Kill Pepper, Asun, Suya which feature prominently on the menus of most outdoor (indoor too) night bars and cool spots. There seems to be a sort of marriage with alcohol and spicy food, which might be responsible for there popularity.
I’d be sharing the recipe for Nkwobi and Isi Ewu in this post. The recipe for both is the same but for the meats used.
Nkwobi – Cow Leg
Isi Ewu – Goat head (i have often used just smoked goats meat instead of the head.)
I have often used the recipe I found on allnigerianrecipes.com, but I have a few tips. There is an on going argument as to how safe it is to consume Kaun ( potash) or the local potash. I figured that the idea behind adding Kaun is to get the palm oil to alter in colour, cuddle and thicken, pretty much like palm nut cream. Right? So I went for palm nut cream instead and it worked, turned out really great.
Isi Ewu made with Palm oil
Isi Ewu made with Palm Nut Cream
Recipe
Ingredients
• Goat head/ Goat head / Cow foot (cut into sizeable pieces, I used 12)
• Yellow Scotch Bonnet / Habanero peppers (to your taste)
• 1 medium onion
• 2 big stock cubes
• Salt (to taste)
• Ugba
To garnish
• 1 medium onion
• 10 Utazi leaves
Procedure
– Wash and season your meat along with stock fish, and cook.
– Add the bouillon cubes (crushed) and the chunks of onion.
– Add a small quantity of water and start cooking at medium heat till well cooked. Add just enough water to prevent burning as you cook. There should not be any stock (water) in the pot when the meat is done. If the meat is tough, I’d recommend you cook with a pressure pot or just cook for longer.
– While the meat is cooking, pour the palm oil or crean into a clean dry pot.
* If you are using palm nut cream, skip the next 3 steps.
– Mix Potash with some water to dissolve and seive. Pour in the potash mixture (sieved) into the oil.
– Stir with a wooden spatula as you pour the potash. You’ll notice the palm oil begin to curdle and turn yellow.
– Keep stiring till all the oil has turned yellow.
– If you are using Palm nut cream ensure there is no water contained in the cream. To achieve this you can either use the canned ones or, after extracting your cream from the palm nuts, set it aside for the cream to collect at the top or put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes for the cream to set.
– Heat up the cream for about 5 minutes and proceed to the next step.
– Add the ground crayfish, pepper and ehu seeds. Stir very well till they are all incorporated.
– Add the well done meat and Ugba to the palm oil paste and stir very well with the wooden spatula.
– Leave it on heat till the Soup is piping hot, stirring all the time to make sure it does not burn.
– To prepare the garnish, cut the onions into rings and cut the utazi into long thin slices.
I served it traditional style in a wooden mortar
Add the thin slices of utazi and onion rings on top for the full effects.
Normally Nkwobi or Isi Ewu is served alone accompanied with alcohol or soft drinks but for some reason I enjoy pairing it with white rice.
