Seasonings used in preparing the stew are minimal, too much seasoning/spices will alter the taste. It is prepared with soft peppers, not spoil but soft, also the palm oil is bleach to prepare this stew. It has a distinct taste and delicious smell that would attract you from afar. How To Make Buka Stewīuka stew is different from the regular stew prepared. It’s traditionally prepared with numerous parts of cow which are deep fried before being added to the stew. What defines this recipe is the use of palm oil and open flame cooking. ‘Iya Basira’s’ stew or Buka stew has been saving lives since forever, ((Iya Basira is an alias for some of the many women who owns a Buka or ‘mama put’ in common parlance)). It means “hole in wall” based on the size of these local restaurants. The word “Buka” is a very popular word in Nigeria, originating from the northern part of the country. Let me show you how to make this perfect Nigerian stew in easy steps. It is made with assorted meat, cooked in tomato base (Nigerian pepper mix) and palm oil. This Recipe is simple, versatile, delicious and easy to make. Nigerians love eating in bukas because food is cheaper, fresh and provides diverse local dishes without the stress of cooking. I could manage just a few spoonfuls, but I haven’t had a sniffle since.Buka stew is the classic Yoruba stew that has been made popular by local buka joints in western Nigeria. It is immediately clear why this soup is on Lonely Planet’s Top 10 list of the world’s hottest foods.Īccording to the Nigerian gypsy-cab driver who dropped me off at the restaurant, it makes you invincible. In the pepper soup ($9 with goat, $10 with fish), habañeros are strewn with abandon, defiantly, almost dementedly. Still, it is worth braving the more uncompromising items on the menu. Best of all is moi moi ($5), a steamed honey bean cake, fiery and crumbly.Īmong the entrees, steak ($19) and whole grilled tilapia ($15) are safe havens in an uncertain sea. Likewise paper-thin slices of grilled beef dusted with suya ($5), a slow-burn spice mix proprietary to Nigeria whose dominant notes are groundnuts and cayenne. I know of no culture in which crispy fried things are not treasured, and akara ($5), black-eyed-pea fritters, are a delight. (How an ingredient from northern Europe made its way to Nigeria no one at the restaurant was able to explain.) In conjunction with ground ogbono pods, it produces a taste oddly - and not entirely pleasantly - like Parmesan.īut, really, you needn’t be adventurous to dine here. More challenging is the devastatingly sour eba, a kind of fufu made from fermented ground cassava.Ī common ingredient in the accompanying sauces ($3 each) is Norwegian stockfish, whitefish dried by sun and wind rather than cured with salt. Pounded-yam fufu looks comfortingly like mashed potatoes but has little taste on its own, which works well with the hearty goat stew ($9). This may prove a tricky operation because, unlike bread, fufu is too elastic to actually soak up anything. (“You don’t want that,” a server warned me one evening about amala, a dried-yam-flour fufu.) They will instruct you to tear off a piece of fufu ($3 each), then dab it in your stew and sauce. On his Twitter feed, he mixes announcements of which bands will be playing at Buka that weekend with news updates from Nigeria. Mashood, who doubles as the chef, grew up in Lagos, where he learned to cook from his aunts. You may be eating fufu - the thick paste made of yam or cassava that is a West African staple - but you’re doing so on formal high-backed chairs with cushioned armrests. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf is stocked with glossy art tomes and diasporan newspapers with ads for delicacies like burnt goat’s head. In the back, the feel is of a vast drawing room, with tables flung far apart. Fresh liquefied ginger ($4) - “juice” hardly does it justice - is a sock in the jaw. There is palm wine ($4) too, sweet with a yeasty finish, and Malta Guinness ($5), a nonalcoholic malt beverage brewed in Nigeria that smells like pumpernickel still baking in the oven. Upfront is a long wooden bar where you can get a Chapman ($5), a fizzy Nigerian cocktail that includes Sprite, orange Fanta, Angostura bitters, and dashes of lemon, lime, grapefruit and (surely a Brooklyn innovation?) verbena. Victorian details - a floral couch, an oil painting in a gilded frame, a chandelier - are juxtaposed with gritty exposed brick. The owners, Lookman Mashood and Nat Goldberg, have transformed a former law office on a dingy stretch of Fulton Street into an airy, inviting space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |