A mandolin, I traverse

My kitchen lessons

While we are estranged for reasons, she quite easily forgets in impactfully unguarded expression that cannot be misconstrued by the listener, there are benefits to that unsteady relationship that have served me well. I guess the biological relationship has met too many issues of ego and standing to develop into a friendship of any significance, and I am fine with that.

From an early age, I was invited into the kitchen, whether by my personal interest or her coercion, what I have learnt therein has meant when I am as inclined and disposed, I can fend for myself and attend to the cravings I need to satisfy, if alternatives would not suffice.

Doing it myself

A case in point was when at one time in Cape Town, I could not find anything like Agege bread, even in the shops purveying Nigerian fare. I was soon out looking for a baking tin with a lid, that I could not find anywhere in the shops, that I ordered one for delivery to home in the UK.

I made do with what I could find and started baking, it was when I returned home that I got the Agege bread recipe to a level of satisfactory achievement and was later able to give Brian the true experience of what that kind of loaf was all about.

It is probably laziness and lethargy that gets the better of me when there are things I could do at home that I end up spending money on at the local supermarket. For instance, I hate chopping onions, I can do that with a mandolin, and I have had one about the house for about three decades.

The mandolin in this context is not the musical instrument, but a kitchen utensil used for slicing, there is a difference in spelling between English and American English which takes an ‘e’ on the end.

Cost-saving benefit

On one supermarket shelf, I saw a bag of chopped onions going for a song and I bought them, the price looked reasonable enough until it went up by 50%, how I can tell prices have changed, I cannot explain, but in my subconscious, I notice how prices fluctuate on the everyday goods that I get. There is a threshold beyond which I would whisper to myself, almost spitting out in disgust and disdain, that I am not paying that much for that.

I returned home to my red onions, prepared them for the mandolin and apportioned quantities to zip lock freezer bags, then wondered why I had never done that in the first place. That is the case with a few other things that I have learnt from domestication encouraged by my mother from childhood. It is one of those things to celebrate, despite the other things.

To bread, it is, just express yourself without bounds

A bread to realise

There are many liberation struggles going on around the world, but there is one I was not aware of until yesterday evening, the liberation of the loaf is the battle cry of bread and the art of baking what the United Artists for Africa mistakenly suggested was God turning stones to bread because that never happened.

Having bought takeaway Togolese beans (èwà Àgànyìn), which is mashed black-eyed beans with a red chilli sauce, the only adequate staple to go with it is Agége bread (a soft, dense loaf of bread), which I soon learnt, I could not get anywhere in Cape Town that I decided to bake my own.

All pans run free

Asking Alexa to find a recipe on YouTube was a waste of time even with my putting on a thick Nigerian accent as it offered either Gigi or Gay for Agege, it was just better to type it in. Having gotten a good idea of what to do, I acquired the ingredients and utensils and set to baking bread, my very first time.

After all I had done, one thing was missing, a lid for my loaf pan. Apparently, you can get every choice loaf pan for baking bread, in any material you might desire including silicone that takes heat up to 230℃, but you cannot get for the want of trying in stores, specialist outlets, or online, a loaf pan with a cover or a lid.

Perseverance in lack

Then, I improvised, I wrapped the loaf pan in heavy-duty foil, which kept the loaf in shape, but I had to have it baking in the oven for thrice the recommended time because the heat was not getting to the loaf as it would have if there were just a lid. You have to ask, what happened to loaf pan lids or why no one around here seems to desire to bake bread with the loaf liberally expressing itself beyond the mould?

Then again, what I might not get on the retail market most definitely is in the professional bakeries, because typical bread for toast is moulded in an almost square cross-section to a rectangular length. I might have an alternative, using disposable aluminium food trays with cardboard covers. It might suffice until I accidentally find a loaf pan that invited a lid companion to the party, else, it is to England where the freedom of the loaf is still a subject of debate rather than of right.

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