How do I know that this was a good year for Obudu Delight? Because this year, I gained a new food obsession; homemade Guinea corn gruel also known as Oka Baba or very commonly and plainly called Ogi, served with unrestrained lashings of Obudu delight. Ogi is never ever referred to at our house as "pap" because frankly, the word sounds disgusting.
There is just nothing about "pap" that makes me want to put the owner of the name anywhere near my mouth. Not only does it bring to mind the up and down motion of toothless gums, it also gives ones brain no choice but to make such associations as Pap smear! Obudu Delight by the way, is the name of the honey produced in deep cloud layers in Obudu cattle ranch and packaged in glass jars and rustic cardboard crates. Even if I don't put a spoon of Obudu delight in my mouth for a year, it is somehow enough to walk into my kitchen in the morning and see the glass jars and crate on my counter.
My Ogi is not only served with Obudu honey, but also a generous sprinkling of some strange milk substitute called Darifree. Darifree is only probably familiar to the lactose intolerant. And I call it strange because it is almost like an illusion...this free, that free...It is allegedly free of everything bad for the sensitive constitution yet tastes quite good.
It is tough to find anyone in my generation who knows how to make Ogi at home. There was a time in the past when it was near impossible to find a teenage girl who did not know how to make it. Thankfully, knowing how to make Ogi is no longer a prerequisite for being a well brought up young lady.
Why must it be homemade? Because the difference between homemade Ogi and market bought is as they say the difference between chalk and cheese. I had to return to my mother's Ogi to fully appreciate this distinction.
For many years, because all that was available to me were carelessly produced market versions, I had formed the distinct opinion that Ogi must smell like dirty old socks which it does when it has been fermenting in the market's open air for days on end.
That's not the end of the story: What would you do if you were a market woman whose batch of Ogi was unsold after many days? The answer is prudentially commonsensical - add it to the new batch of Ogi. What if you can't find clean water, which is absolutely indispensable for making good Ogi?
The answer - who can find clean water in Lagos?! With hindsight, I would not buy Ogi from the market. Traditionally, a woman had to know how to make Oka Baba Ogi not because it was the best way to make her the household drudge, but because it would be the first weaning food given to her child. It would not be bought in a market where its production had all kinds of question marks.
It isn't convenient to make Ogi.
First there is the trip to the market to buy the brown pellet like grains of guinea corn. At home, the grains are picked clean and soaked in water for three days to swell and open them, then it's back out again to those aggressively hoarse public mills to be ground to thick sludge.
The sludge is brought home and passed through a sieve with plenty of water until one gets a smooth thick custardy consistency at one end and chaff at the other (hard, hard, work!) The custard is the end product, and in order to prevent the horrible dirty socks smell, it is stored with a layer of clean water on its face in the refrigerator (thank God for refrigerators).
Here is where I like to come in - when all the hard work has been done - I love everything about cooking and eating Oka Baba. The consistency and colour of the custard when it comes out of the fridge brings to mind coffee ice cream. I add more water, to about three tablespoons of the custard, until it is again like water.
Place it on the hob and stir continually (therapeutically) until it is thick - yet again-(I love all the contradictions!)...until it bubbles gently at the edges.
Obudu delight comes off the counter, and when I say unrestrained lashings, I mean unrestrained lashings. Then I add Darifree (which by the way is in no way elitist as it can be freely purchased at Okoli supermarket in Dolphin Estate!) This meal is better than breakfast; it is warm delicious guilt-free pudding. There is no law to the eating consistency. My mother likes hers frumpy. I like mine an elegant pouring consistency, yet thick enough to coat a spoon...thickly!
Reader Comments (15)
post a comment
* = Required information