Giving Up Meat Made Me Love Cooking Nigerian Food Again

Here’s a memory: I’m six or seven and my mother is in the kitchen making stew. It’s a laborious process that begins the night before, or days before actually, when she buys beef from the store, hacks the meat into more-manageable chunks, and then trims the fat. She boils the beef in a combination of onions, thyme, salt, and pepper, and then—this is the part I love—she fries it.

I loved the smell of fried meat, of hot oil and salt and fat. My mother would leave the meat in a colander to cool, and that was the moment I always stole a piece or two or three. The exterior was hard, but the meat inside was tender with piquant spices. Later I would learn that to certain coastal elites, this well-done meat indicated an inferior palate. But my mother was a Nigerian woman, and in Nigeria, you cook your meat very well because if you contracted salmonella or E. coli, you couldn’t rely on the health care system to save you.

When my sister and I were older, my mother decided that this business of making stew for the household was something that we should do instead. It was a good idea in principle. Stew was fundamental; we ate it with rice (white, jollof, or fried), with yam (boiled, fried, or pounded), egg, bread (agege or white), and boiled plantain. But I hated cooking, especially Nigerian food. I saw how many hours my mother spent in the kitchen. She was also a perfectionist, quick to point out mistakes we made in how we handled the food.

Cooking stew was an all-day, sometimes two- or three-day affair. And I couldn’t stand it. Whenever I was on stew duty, Saturday mornings automatically filled me with dread. There’d be a tub of plum tomatoes soaking in water to blend, frozen beef to cut up. While some Nigerians use canned tomatoes for their stew, my mother likes to use fresh ones, which had to be cleaned and cut into sizes commensurate with her blender. Then, after blending them with Scotch bonnet pepper and sweet onions, I had to boil the base down until the water was mostly gone. After frying the meat, I added some of the hot oil and assorted spices to the tomato base—thyme, salt, Maggi cubes—then later the stock (once you had strained the fat and onions), and then, finally, the meat. I let it simmer on low heat for half an hour or longer, tasting for salt.

Though I loved the Nigerian food my mother made, I just couldn’t be bothered to cook it once I was on my own. When I started living away from home after college, I attempted to make stew once or twice but quickly gave it up, much to my parents’ chagrin. They would repeatedly tell my sister and me that as women, one day we would be responsible for cooking in our future homes. What would we make if we did not learn from our mother?

But at the time, I wasn’t concerned. I just knew that making Nigerian food required too much effort. And I was lazy.

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Another memory: my future partner showing up at my apartment door with coconut rice and stew. We had been on two dates. I got strep throat before date three, but he asked if he could stop by anyway and came bearing food. Our extremely brief history had been characterized by this kind of unusual thoughtfulness on his part. It troubled me—I was used to indifference. Usually people told me in plain words or in unanswered texts that they were not as invested as I was, but I was accustomed to listening to only what I wanted to hear. I didn’t realize then how I chose people who withheld what I was too afraid to admit I wanted—care, sustained interest, desire, commitment.

He was different. “I don’t know if it’s quite like the stew you make; I just looked at a recipe online,” he said, handing the container to me.

He was also a vegetarian. I had liked exactly one vegetarian before, the kind who didn’t ask about the origins of the jollof rice a friend had made for my birthday party. I had vegetarian friends who were more half-hearted about their diets, who picked the meat off the pizza and then kept eating it. But he had stopped eating meat seventeen years ago.

The stew he made had jackfruit instead of beef. It tasted more like spaghetti sauce than traditional Nigerian stew, but it was good. We left it at that.

Our relationship progressed. We broke up for a while after I realized I had some stuff to work through. Then the stuff worked out and we got back together. One night, we went on a walk before seeing a concert in Manhattan and started talking about veganism.

“If you ever become vegan, I’ll break up with you,” I told him jokingly. Only he stiffened.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.” A few months later, he told me he’d decided to do it. “You still going to break up with me?” he asked over text.

Of course I wasn’t. But I was alarmed, and alarmed by my alarm. I couldn’t fathom the source of my discontent. I complained about his decision to my friends as we ate pizza covered in spicy deli meat. I worried that he wanted to convert me though he had assured me that I didn’t need to go vegan to be supportive. It had taken him a long time to arrive at his decision; he would give me that same courtesy.

What would they know about Nigerian cuisine unless I taught them? What did I even know myself?

I thought about what his veganism would mean were he ever to meet my family. In my household, a meal without some form of animal protein was not a complete meal. Once, in college, when a friend had stayed with us over Thanksgiving, my mother had asked if she ate fish since she was a vegetarian.

Eating together with my partner was an important aspect of our relationship as well. He cooked meals for me that he came up with, which made me want to cook for him too, to show him the delicacies of Nigerian cuisine. In longing to share meals with my partner, I had begun to understand the losses that came with having given up cooking Nigerian dishes. I thought about hypothetical children of mine and what they would eat. What would they know about Nigerian cuisine unless I taught them? What did I even know myself?

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Another more recent memory: my mother’s unexpected laugh of delight as she bites into some moin moin I made. I had just moved into a new apartment, one with more kitchen space and one that was only about ten minutes away from an African-food store that sold honey beans, egusi, Scotch bonnet peppers, and fat yellow plantains perfect for frying.

I had begun dipping my toes into cooking Nigerian food again—only vegan versions. I had realized that cooking without meat was so much easier. Making stew no longer needed to be a multiday affair; I could make it in one evening, throwing in some plant-based chicken at the very end. What had begun as a project to square the playing field, to allow my partner to enjoy the dishes I had eaten as a child, had become something of a discipline. My partner’s commentary on the food incentivized me. I enjoyed the challenge of substitution and—in a very unexpected development—I enjoyed cooking for him. I had started with jollof rice, which was easy to veganize—just don’t add animal stock or animal bouillon cubes. Then I tried stew. Eventually, I branched out into foods I had never tried to make on my own.

So I decided on moin moin. To make it, you blend honey beans with bell pepper, onion, and Scotch bonnet and then steam the mixture in little foil packets until it congeals into a light-pink mold. It’s a versatile dish that works as a snack or for any meal. Some people make their moin moin with boiled egg or corned beef or shrimp. I made mine vegan.

To make things easier for myself, I decided to bake the moin moin instead of steaming it. I added Trader Joe’s mushroom spice mix that promised some umami flavor, a generous half of a vegetable bouillon cube, and salt to the batter, remembering to taste it before transferring it to a glass pan. It came out of the oven looking redder than usual, but it tasted just the same, maybe slightly grainier.

“It’s like a healthy brownie,” my partner said. He loved it.

It turns out that the path of least resistance has its perks.

When my mother later tried some, she could not get over the fact that I had made it. “I can’t believe you are cooking Nigerian food, Tomi,” she told me. She had continued worrying about me and my sister, she told me; troubled over our inability and unwillingness to cook Nigerian food. But here I was, doing it. The dishes were vegan, which she was suspicious of like I once had been, but she was still encouraged by my progress.

It turns out that the path of least resistance has its perks. Cooking without meat has expanded the confines of my world. It forces me to be creative in the kitchen in ways I didn’t know I was capable of. I worry less about accidentally giving someone salmonella. In giving up cooking meat, I have found the joy in cooking Nigerian food again.

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