"SLC-S31W3 -"My taste My Culture; Festive Foods/ Plantain Porridge

So it's another edition of me cooking a festive food, and I decided to try plantain porridge, or pepper soup, as some people call it. This was the food I ate in a traditional marriage and knocked out. I didn't know this food was for special people and weed was contained inside the food. I smiled after collecting the food, glad that I'd eaten somehow. Just imagine that. 😁😁.

Even the sharers didn't know that something was put inside the food and that it was for a group of people. I ate this plantain and became dizzy as fuck. I had to dance my body out so that the affect would fade off. Since that day, I have never forgotten Plantain Porridge. It's always in my memory. So today I decided to cook it but didn't put weed 😁😁.

To prepare porridge plantain, there are things we must do. Please note that we have two different types of plantain people call 'porridge', which is either watery or dry. ....I was cooking the watery porridge, so to speak, one that comes in as pepper soup. These are the ingredients and utensils used for this preparation.

• Plantains

• Palm and groundnut oils

• Scent leaves

• Dry fish

• Steak

• Seasoning cubes

• Curry powder and salt

• Crayfish and onions

• Pepper

These are all the ingredients needed to prepare this food. Now, to the preparation of my dish.

• I started by peeling my plantain and containing it inside a basin to wash. After peeling it, I washed it with running water without having to scrape it. If my mum caught me scrapping the plantain, it would have been a death wish for me because she feels there are ingredients in the body of the plantain. After washing, I sliced my plantains into three and four halves in a slanted way, as you can see. I then reserved two plantains which I would use to make the porridge thick. The two whole plantains were grated on a grater, as you can see. This is to add thickness to the food. In a culture, we call it Abidad ukom.

• After containing it in a pot, I added water to be slightly above the plantain. I then added salt to taste, as I'm always finding it difficult to add salt when a food is cooking already. It won't be easy to know the right amount of salt to add. I placed it on heat for 30 minutes for it to become soft before adding my ingredients.

• While waiting for the plantains to boil, I had to cook my steak. I cut them into small pieces and washed them in a basin. After washing, I had to contain them inside a pot and sprinkle a half spoon of salt on it. After that, I added 1 seasoning cube, 3 ground peppers, half an onion bulb and a drop of water, as the steak itself has water already. After doing this, I mixed the ingredients together and placed them on heat.

• In 10 minutes, both preparations were properly cooked. I brought down the steak from the heat and kept it aside while I added 4 seasoning cubes into the plantain. I also added one full onion bulb to the plantain in slices with my crayfish and 8 peppers. I added them to the ground. I then added my steak with the water with which it was cooked in.

• After adding all these ingredients, I added my groundnut oil to make it thick and less gummy and to add taste to the meal. My red oil was the last ingredient I added, and then I stirred it to blend. I then covered the pot with a lid and then allowed it to cook before adding my dry fish and scent leaves.

• After allowing it to cook for 10 minutes, I added my dry fish and scent leaves, which I washed and sliced into small pieces. I then allowed it to cook for 5 minutes before bringing it down from heat. My food was ready to be served hot with the pepper soup porridge in it. It was breathtaking, and I ate it when it was as hot as that.

Final product

This dish is usually prepared during traditional marriages and a few white weddings in Nigeria. Aside from rice and soup, which are the dominant foods to serve on such occasions, plantain acts as our traditional heritage to blend with the occasion, and it's usually made in such a way that people will eat and become satisfied. It's a presentable traditional food for ceremonial events, nothing more. It's also prepared locally by family members and eaten any day they choose to do so.

In my village, they usually call porridge a food that sticks and makes it difficult to detach from. If a plantain is to fall on your clothes, it sticks, and the colour of other plantains in the pot will show on your clothes – no outright difference. Other meals have the tendency of detaching, but you see this porridge; it signifies togetherness, which means in every chaos, there's always something that binds or brings us all together.

In terms of joy, people are always joyous when this meal is prepared because they know at the end of preparation, they'll scrape the pot, and that's when togetherness comes in because you can't basically prepare such a large meal alone.

You'll need assistance from people of different backgrounds to help you do things, and this process brings us together. Serving porridge plantain especially to those titled men, speaks volumes because to them, you just welcomed them, and that shows hospitality. You received them well, in a manner they never expected.

As for tradition, a porridge plantain for a festive period or ceremony isn't prepared using modern tools or utensils. We use the then method of cooking, which brings our tradition to life and preserves it. Grating plantain to make a porridge out of it is something we have been doing dated back in the days. So it speaks a lot about our tradition, as other traditions have their own way of preparing it.

Porridge plantain reflects my people's lifestyle in the sense that the ingredients and methods of preparation are simple. Our people are very simple people when it comes to lifestyle, and they can make the most of the little they have. Some people may want to add a lot of protein to make it look attractive, but as simple as this dish is, it's sweet and satisfying. In terms of the spirit of festivity, things are done to make it grand.

A large pot is used, sizable local proteins and large amounts of ingredients to make the occasion grand and thick. In the spirit of such celebration, you get to see the real significance of this meal compared to when prepared on a normal day.

As for festive values, plantain porridge bread values such as togetherness. In a festive period like this, a large pot of plantain can't be cooked alone. Everyone is involved in the preparation for this meal to come out well. People that haven't been talking to themselves will have to join hands together in unity in the process.

My dish was as simple as it could because it didn't require much to purchase, most of which I already had.

All other ingredients were in my store already. So I didn't need to make many purchases; rather, I increased the amount I bought so it would be a family meal.

Ema Stem, mme owo edara, ema etappa, idung esio mkpo. This means that on the sight of the spoon, they know and perceive the taste of the meal prepared. How do you simply tell by the spoon? Because not all spoons are used to prepare this particular meal. In application, it's not every tool that fits the solution of a problem. Some fits it best and people know from the size.

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