SLC-S31W1-"My taste My Culture/ (Nsek Ato)!"

So today I decided to go creatively traditional since the emphasis is on culture and roots. I'm an Ibibio man, and I can cook most of our delicacies. I prefer most of our traditional dishes to all these white foods, as my mum would say. I'm Nigerian, but my culture has its distinct meal, and you see Afang Soup, the Ibesiko Local Government Area can make the best Afang soup. So today, I decided to make what is called Nsek Ato.

Ato in English means 'raw banana that's grounded and cooked with oil and other ingredients'. Now 'Nsek' means 'the uncooked one' — raw banana mixed with oil that's not yet cooked. And my language just rhymes with our delicacies.

As a traditional man, I'll be going the traditional way. Our culture values the use of mortar and pastel as an essential tool to use when cooking. We enjoy eating directly from the mortar if a meal is prepared from there, and you see our hands; our fingers are the best set of cutlery you would ever know because you get to feel the food in your hands and in your mouth.

I'll have to tell you about my food that represents my foot and identity before showing you how it's prepared and the ingredients. Nsek Ato is the wholesale version of Ato mboro. Ato mboro is a derivative of Nsek Ato, which means Nsek Ato is the mother, and I want to talk about the mother, which I'll link to the child, then my culture. Banana is an essential food in my culture.

It's one of the most planted foods in the local areas, and in some cases, during marriages, this banana would be needed in bunches as rites to be paid. Raw banana in my culture can be eaten with oil when cooked, when grounded and mixed with oil or eaten with sauce. We don't have to wait for it to become ripe before eating it.

That's where the inspiration of Nsek Ato comes from. Nsek Ato is a local dish usually made using a mortar and a pestle. It comes out as food when raw banana is boiled and pounded together with oil and other essential ingredients and then eaten like that without further exposure to heat.

It's called 'Nsek', meaning 'uncooked', because the main Ato is one that has to pass through fire, and the banana won't be boiled but grounded. It's not a plated food. It's best eaten inside a mortar, and that's what I want to show you now. It's very easy to prepare compared to the Ato mboro.

The following ingredients are used to prepare this recipe. It's not a complex recipe, though.

• Red Oil

• Unripe banana

• Crayfish

• Onion

• Maggi and salt

• Fresh Pepper

These are all the ingredients needed to make my recipe sumptuous. They are added in their right quantity, which I'll show you in the procedures.

The utensils used in preparing this are the following:

• Mortar

• Pestel

• Knife

• Pot

• Banana leaves as plate

• Spoon

	mortar and pestle
	Knife, plate and spoon

To make Nsek Ato, I did the following.

• There's a species of banana I used to call Eba mboro. I plucked it from its bunch and put it in a pot filled with water. It was just 5 pieces of banana that I used. After containing it inside the pot, I exposed it to heat to boil until it becomes soft before bringing it out of the heat. After 15 minutes, I checked the pot, and it was still boiling. The banana turned black-brown. This was a sign that it had undergone a lot of heating processes. I used a knife to check if it's soft. When it was soft, I brought it down from the gas cylinder from which heat emanated.

• I emptied the hot water by using the pot lid to filter it out. I then peeled my bananas and placed them on the banana leaf I washed as my plate. I rubbed salt on the 5 bananas and kept them there.

• I then took my mortar, peeled my onion and contained it in the mortar and then added pinches of salt, half a cube of Maggi, 3 fresh peppers and crayfish. I ground them all together with my pestle before putting my banana to pound them together.

• After pounding my ingredients together, I cut the banana into halves and then ground them using the pestle until they looked grounded. The ingredients were mixed with the banana with the help of the pestle, and it came out well. Some people usually add water into the ingredients before adding the banana, but I didn't because I wanted it to be a good snack.

• I then added my oil in the specified quantity. I wanted and mixed it with my pestle until it became yellow. Note, you're not to pound the banana to become totally grounded. There must be some lumps of banana, but small ones. After that, I added pinches of salt and mixed them together with a spoon.

• This food is best eaten inside the mortar, and that's exactly what I did. I ate it inside the mortar before using the presentable method of serving this food. I used a small cup to mould it like this and then placed it on the banana leaf with my sign, written on the banana leaf as well. So I went all in and was local about the preparations.

• This is a picture of me and my recipe with the sign on it. Come join me as I serve you Nsek Ato.

This food is important to me because its derivative, which is considered a main meal, is a ceremonial dish. This food is just an appetiser and can be eaten daily. It's important because we now have a native snack other than cassava called Editaiwa. It's not a popular dish, though, but it's our second local snack discovered from IBesiko Asutan. So it means a lot to us. It's an achievement. This is eaten on a daily basis if one wishes. It shouldn't be only in ceremonial days.

The green colour of the unripe banana represents growth and fertile land in my culture. It grows in suckers and is harvested when it's strong enough to be used for cooking. Nsek Ato was introduced by my grandma to us in the year 2017. She would make it and call us to eat. She will then tell us that this is our heritage and culture.

It's our foreign lunch, as other tribes laughed at us, saying we can't produce a popular snack that can be eaten anytime other than main meals. We then shocked them with Nsek Ato, which can be eaten in-between meals.

	The derivative of Nsek Ato

_{Nsek Ato prepared for marriage introduction.}

The discovery of this food shows that it's universal and can be eaten by anyone, not just our culture or tribe, and it's easy to prepare. The way the food is produced using a mortar shows the lifestyle of a common Ibibio person who's traditionally inclined. We prefer using a mortar instead of a grinding machine.

The mortar is our root and made from woods we suffered to plant. As for the food, its mixture with oil shows our agricultural wealth in oil production. Red oil is nothing to us; that's why we can use it the way we like to uphold our traditional values that are not too rigid for the masses.

It's the memory of my grandmother, who usually makes this for us in the afternoon when there's no food. She'll make it so rich and satisfying that we won't even want to eat other meals after that one. She taught me how to make this easily and how to take advantage of the little things when there's no food, especially in the afternoon, and this happens to be one easy food to prepare without stress. The prices of my ingredients are shown below.

The prices were calculated at the Steem price rate of $0.056

	food In local plate
	Tag with name and date
	Selfie with food

This title means Akwa Ibom food is very sweet. As a local government in Akwa Ibom State, IBesiko people have the best of traditional foods. Se owo Ayo, enye Aya Aduk adia. We know how to prepare our delicacies in a very sweet and palatable way. Nsek Ato is a traditional foreign dish so to speak. It can be eaten as a snack. If you've not tasted it before, you can make your snack classy by preparing it this way instead of using hands to eat the banana or the cooked ato mboro itself. Watch my video for more info.