In this episode of Odejuma, Harry sits down with Ozoz Sokoh, the culinary anthropologist and food explorer known to many as Kitchen Butterfly. Her debut cookbook, Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria, is the first Nigerian cookbook to win a James Beard Award. Ozoz talks about being a geologist in the Netherlands and how food not only became the thing that held her far from home but also started a decades-long career archiving Nigerian food as a heritage worth keeping. It is a conversation about documenting history in real time and the power of food to bridge cultures.

Connect with Ozoz on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kitchenbutterfly/

Buy Chop Chop here: https://ozozsokoh.com/book

Watch the Zamari interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgr_iA9HAVE

Connect with Harry on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harryitie

For more information on Harry, visit: https://www.harryitie.com/

Get Odejuma delivered straight to your inbox, alongside personal reflections on the episode by subscribing to the Substack here: https://odejuma.substack.com/

Support my work: https://buymeacoffee.com/harryitie

Hi, my name is Harry and welcome to Odejuma.

Odejuma is an ishakiri farewell that loosely translates to till tomorrow.

But for me, I look at it as a promise that there is so much more in life to look forward to.

And this interview driven storytelling podcast is rooted in that promise.

So as you take the time to listen, I want you to feel that as we go deeper with folks from across the Black diaspora, exploring the adventures, resilience, joy, and the ordinary moments that change their lives, that you would have a good, hearty laugh or.

Or you find something to sit with.

Because there is power in the stories of everyday people.

And these stories are worth telling.

Hey, y'.

All.

Welcome to another exciting episode of Odejoma.

I am really, really, really happy to be having this conversation today.

But before we dive right in, I want you to, if you're watching on YouTube, use the subscribe button because when you subscribe, it helps grow the channel.

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So I want to encourage you to do that right now as we get the episode started.

So, like I said, it's an exciting episode today.

My guest today is Aza Soko.

She's a culinary anthropologist and food explorer known to many as Kitchen Butterfly.

And.

And she has spent more than 15 years chasing the history inside Nigerian food.

Her debut cookbook, Chop Chop Cooking the Food of Nigeria, is the first Nigerian cookbook to win a James Beard Award.

She's also the founder of Feast, a freak, and a food and tourism educator.

Welcome, Azaz, to Odejumba.

Hi, Azaz.

How you doing?

I'm good.

Thank you for having me.

I am so excited to be having this conversation with you.

So, yeah, that was such a great conversation and a great time.

Yes.

I'm gonna actually link it in the description.

So, folks, I go watch that as well because there were lots of, like, gems that you dropped in that conversation.

But before we go into our conversation, I want to congratulate you first.

Chop Chop just won the James Beard Emerging Voice Award in books, and it's the first Nigerian cookbook ever to do so.

How are you feeling about winning that award?

Take me back to when you found out that you were the recipient of this award.

I was Shocked, thrilled, excited.

You know how it is when you get news that perhaps you're not expecting.

So many emotions, but most of all a sense of accomplishment.

This book that I wrote that I poured my heart and soul into, it was being recognized.

And that was one of many recognitions.

You know, there've been Nigerians recognizing it.

There've been people from all over the world recognizing it, but it was a wonderful feeling.

And were you in Chicago to get the award?

Was it Chicago that they get the award, or.

Yes.

So I was in Chicago for the first time ever.

There's this huge event, 500 odd people at the Art Institute of Chicago.

And I got on stage, stage.

I thought that I would kind of speak my speech off head because I kind of made notes.

Don't ever do that.

I think.

I think it's always a good idea to have a written practice speech.

There were so many things I wanted to say in my speech that I forgot.

So, yeah, in future, I'll be going with, like, a print and reading off, you know, piece of paper on my screen.

But it was lovely just that, you know, there's the audience, right?

You see so many faces, you're not quite sure where to focus.

There are lights.

There's also a time crunch.

But it was.

It was interesting, and I had a great time.

That's amazing.

I'm really.

Congratulations.

I'm so excited for you.

So happy for you.

Like you said, you have had so many awards.

This is not.

This is not new to you.

You're not new to this.

You're not new to this thing.

Like, people will say, um, but where did this love for food come from?

For folks who are listening to the podcast who are just hearing about you for the first time, what is the origin story of Kitchen Butterfly?

Where did this passion and love for food, not just from a culinary perspective, but from an anthropological perspective as well?

Where did that start from?

That probably started somewhere in my teenagehood.

And I'd say my mom was a member of Lion's Club, and she'd make this shrimp cocktail that was really nothing more than prawns with kind of like some kind of salad.

But there were many things about it that fascinated me.

There's like a Mary Rose sauce where you'd kind of mix ketchup and mayo, ketchup and salad cream, and you end up with this pink sauce that you could then season.

And she would serve it in, like, a wine glass that was very.

Felt very sophisticated for me.

That was probably one of the early threads of my love for Food.

I'd say though that it was probably around 97 when I moved from Nigeria to the UK to go to university for the second time to study geology.

That food became this really important thing for me.

It became about home and comfort and nourishment.

And it was the first time that I understood that there were many layers to being sustained by food.

The smells, you know, flavors and all of those.

So those were some of my early kind of memories.

There's one years before this though, because as a child I hated food, which is always a mystery to people now.

So I didn't really eat till I was nine.

Then my dad took my sister and I to Edinburgh.

I had a cousin who lived in Scotland, so we went to Edinburgh to spend some time with her one summer.

We had done a lot of activity.

You know how it is when you're on holiday, you're walking, you've worked up an appetite.

And I think for the first time I was hungry.

So my dad took us to a fast food restaurant called Wimpy.

I had a burger, fries, grinder and the rest is history.

Think of it as a three chord strand.

You know, those three experiences as things that kind of got me into food.

That is so fascinating.

It took burger fries and Mirinda to set you on this path to.

And you know, today fries are still my weaknesses.

What kind of fries is the best fries?

You know, people have this debate all the time.

What would you describe as the best fries?

I think they should be chunky salted before being fried and served with Heinz tomato ketchup with a little bit of Tabasco or Sriracha or atadinding on the side.

You know what, I'm not even mad at it.

I feel like I like yam fries more than anything.

I like yam fries over potato fries.

I will do, I will do regular french fries.

I would do a waffle fry because Chick Fil a has this waffle fry that I really like.

But those yam fries with like you said, atadidi, you know, that gets me every time, every time.

Same for me.

I know I said I had a weakness for potato fries and french fries and olive and chips, but yam, oh, I'm, I'm from Edo State, so kind of like yam is in my bloodstream.

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad we agree.

So you had developed this passion for food because I feel like it all started with Kitchen Butterfly, the blog.

Right.

So how, what was the journey that led you to Kitchen Butterfly?

What was the inspiration behind the name Kitchen Butterfly.

How did that come to be?

What led me to Kitchen Butterfly was being in my early 30s.

I was 32 when I first thought about writing a blog.

I was working as a geologist.

I hated my job, but I was in a tight spot.

I was an expat.

I was living in the Netherlands.

I had three young children under six.

We were single income household at the time.

You know, my ex and I at the time were a single income household.

So there was a lot riding on this job that I didn't really like.

And I started thinking about how I could find my way out, you know.

So along the way of exploring different career paths, I also started thinking about the things that I enjoyed.

I was like, I need to do something that has my heart.

And writing was one of those things.

And so I started writing a blog, started planning.

I hadn't yet put it online.

And at the time there was a butterfly garden close to where we live.

And, you know, we used to take my children there often.

Now, growing up, I'd seen butterflies, I'd seen chrysalis, I'd seen the poopa.

Loved all of those things, but I'd never really seen all of the stages of the butterfly.

I'd never really seen the egg.

I'd never really had someone kind of talk me through the story.

And we used to go to these butterfly gardens so much that I was just like, oh, see how they change?

See how they're transforming between one stage and the other?

You can't even recognize them.

And so I was just like, you know what?

I'm gonna call my blog Kitchen Butterfly because I feel like I've gone on this metamorphic journey.

I've metamorphosed.

I've changed from studying urban and regional planning to geology.

Now I'm working with.

I'm thinking about doing work with food and, you know, science, arts.

There's just such.

Yeah, so that.

That was really it.

Those are the kind of things that coalesced to create kitchen butter.

That is.

That is a beautiful story and a beautiful thing you've shared.

I'm curious about that initial time.

I know that was around the time when we were having the blog Resurgence in Nigeria.

Well, not really resurgence, because it wasn't really a popular.

It wasn't really a thing back then.

It was starting to like, blossom at the time.

How was the response to.

To Kitchen Butterfly at the time?

And when did you evolve to make it so sort of more anthropological in nature where you're researching ingredients and trying to figure out how can we connect this to this.

Especially with Nigerian food, where people always have this idea that our food is very, for lack of better word, very local and cannot be in conversation with maybe Italian food or Thai food or, you know, whatever cuisine from any part of the world.

I feel like I asked you like five questions in one, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to get at.

I do.

So I don't know that there were any blogs when I first started mine.

And for the first few months, I was just documenting things that were happening around me.

Kind of the push towards a more historical, anthropological documentary pattern happened for two reasons.

One, it was I found myself cooking a lot of Nigerian things that I wasn't cooking in Nigeria because I could just find them.

You know, all I had to do was ask my mom or, you know, go on the streets or go to the market.

So I wanted to kind of document the things that I was learning about, you know, how to make Suya.

Because, you know, for a long time we didn't make things like suya at home when there was a malam close by.

Yeah, but because I was away, I was so distant from home in a place that wasn't proximal to Nigeria.

So I, like, I wasn't in the UK where there were lots of Nigerians.

So there was that personal desire to document things so that I could easily replicate them.

The second thing was a series of excursions.

One of them was having a Brazilian colleague who was telling me all the time about Brazilian foods.

And I was like, this sounds very Nigerian, particularly he'd shared it with me about Akaraje, which I was like, that sounds like Nigerian Accara.

And then under.

And then I got to learn that there was a whole thread.

I was also part of a group of bloggers led by a lady who would do this cross country across global blog tours every year.

So every year she'd select 12 countries and she'd encourage people to learn more about the cuisine of these cultures, countries and to cook more from them.

And I decided that for all of the countries she had on her list that year, which were Central and South American, that I would try to find if there was an African connection.

And I found from Haiti to Cuba to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica.

So those kind of early incidents gave me kind of anchors and probably sparks to research and to explore further, you know, what.

What Nigerian cuisine was.

I think at that time I was already convinced that there was Nigerian culinary history.

And I think I was convinced of that even before some people thought of it as a thing for Nigerian culture and cuisine.

I like that.

I like that you say that.

And I'm curious to know, how would you describe Nigerian culinary history?

How would you describe Nigeria cuisine to someone who might not have an idea of what it is?

What misconceptions do you think people have of Nigerian cuisine?

Say Niger.

I always tell people that Nigerian cuisine is just like any other cuisine.

We have fruits, we have vegetables, we have staple crops, we have seasonal produce.

Our foods tend to be composed of spices, not necessarily peppery spices, but our food is spiced and sometimes spicy.

We have soups, stews, broths.

We have lots of carbohydrates and starches, everything from cereals and grains like rice, legumes, beans, millet or gum, to things like yams and plantains.

And some of the foods are indigenous to West Africa and other parts of Africa.

And some of it have.

Some of it has traveled long distances.

Plantains, for instance, coming from Asia.

And I think misconceptions about Nigerian food is it's heavy and starchy.

And of course, that's also true to some extent.

It's overly spicy.

I've met so many Nigerians who don't eat exorbitant or, you know, extreme amounts of pepe or chilies.

So I think there's a misconception about the spiciness.

I also think that people use all sorts of things to dismiss it.

To dismiss Nigerian culture.

Oh, it's too complicated.

It's just like, literally, if you can read, you can understand Nigerian cuisine.

So, yeah, there's always the conversation around elevating Nigerian food.

Right?

There's always a conversation around, okay, we need to be able to make it more fine dining appropriate, right.

So that I.

So that we can compete in a much more global perspective.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on that and what that and what you feel about the concept of, you know, elevated in quotes, Nigerian food.

Also, looking at how your cookbook Chop Chop, has got all these awards, including a James Beard award, and then relating that to how we have this conversation around how, okay, maybe we need to, you know, elevate, make Gary pasta, make some version of, you know, I don't know.

I have my thoughts about that, but I'm curious to hear what you think about this conversation around, quote, unquote, elevated Nigerian food.

There's room for everything on the spectrum of cuisine, right?

From street food to, like, super artsy and artful Sometimes I wonder if the language and the framing and the use of the word elevation or elevate is suggesting that at its core, it needs that.

Nigerian food is some of the most delicious food I've had the world over.

I haven't traveled to every country, but I've done a fair bit of traveling.

Whether that is physically or by plate, Nigerian food is up there in terms of flavors, textures, combinations, like, hard to beat.

So caution around the terms elevation.

Now, do I believe that there are multiple ways to explore Nigerian ingredients?

Hundred percent.

I think that we can use Gary to make pasta and 20,000 other things.

And that, for me, is where the wealth and the richness of the, of the ingredients shine.

Right in understanding the range of possibilities.

Because I want to enjoy Gary in ways that I'm not even familiar with, ways beyond those that I enjoyed when I was a child.

So, of course I want to enjoy the multiple possibilities.

But that it needs elevation, I don't know.

Exploration.

Yes.

We can all get our hands dirty and kind of finding out all the wonderful things to do with it.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think that, I think the example I gave, for example, you know, to get really Gary pasta, I'm like, you know, I, I get it, but I, but why do we need, like, I don't think we need Gary pasta, you know?

You know what I'm saying?

I feel like, you know, maybe, maybe we can do something else with Gary.

I feel like the idea that we have to make Gary pasta for Gary to be elevated in quotes, I think that was like my own pushback.

Like, okay, gotcha.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, Gary.

Yeah, we don't need to do that.

We don't need to do that, though.

We don't need to do that.

But, yeah.

So I've used Gary, for instance, instead of cornmeal to make a across on things.

So, you know, like when you're deep frying and you toss things in cornmeal to give it that crisp exterior, I've done that with Gary.

It has similar textures.

It's also gluten free, and it's a very, very nice contrast.

Those are also some of the ways that I think I'd love to see us discover new possibilities and new things to do with the same ingredient.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

I, I, I, I'm glad, I'm glad we were able to talk about that because I feel like, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of.

On TikTok, you see a lot of content creators doing these.

Look at how we are elevating Nigerian food, and then they are making Nigerian versions of, you know, Italian food or whatever food.

I'm like, I get it.

That's fun.

But I feel like our food is.

I feel like our food is beautiful.

And in the.

Simply in the, you know, eating a wagon right, is.

It feels magical to me.

I think that is elevated.

I feel like that can be elevated in itself, as is with the beans and the pepper sauce and the soft bread.

All you gotta do is just plate.

It, eat it, eat it.

That's all you gotta do.

You know, communication media has always impacted how cultures shift and how they shape, you know, how they shape up.

It's not surprising to see people wanting to explore more Nigerian ingredients in ways that they've come across online.

Because we're exposed to so much and we're seeing more and more, we're able to draw parallels.

You know, just as you were talking about ewagoni and the pepper sauce and the bread, my mind is going back to Mexico City.

So I spent 10 days in Mexico City in late June.

I came back a week ago, and I've just been thinking about how similar many of the foods that I encountered are to Nigerian food.

You talk about ewagoni, they have friol, which is kind of like ewagoin mashed.

It's kind of like a refried beans mashed.

They have something called salsa matra that is quite similar, at least in function, to the ewagoin sauce.

And then they have tortillas where we have a gege bread, and it's just like, wow, you know, so I can.

I can imagine that maybe I want to try a more true Mexican salsa matcha that has peanuts and sesame seeds with awagui, because the Mexican beans reminded me of the Togolese Nigerian beans, you know, so those kind of things can ins often.

I think it can inspire people to try, to want to try new things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I. I really like how you.

How you look at food.

I like how you talk about food.

I like how you.

Because, you know, I feel like there's a way you've opened up our eyes to how we can use food.

With the work that you do, I'm curious to know what that process is like for you.

You know, when you say, okay, uzazi, leave, or you say, we talked about Gary earlier on, or, you know, pepper soup, spice or palm kernel nuts, you know, like, all these things that are inherently Nigerian ingredients, right?

How you see them, how do you go from looking at the ingredients to discovering the ways that we can use the ingredients in multitude of.

In millions of ways.

You know what I'm saying?

I have the pleasure of being someone who gets obsessed with things, and ingredients fall into that.

I often find myself focusing on one ingredient at a time, which suits not only my temperament and my ways of being, but also suits an exploratory framework.

For instance, for the last few months, I've been really intrigued by cherries because in a way, they kind of remind me of, like, North American cherries.

Particular sour cherries remind me of Nigerian agbalumo udara.

But I found myself in this framework where I'm like, okay, this is a cherry.

What does it look like?

I trained as a scientist.

I'm a geologist.

So there's a very sensory approach, first principles, approach to the start of my work.

So when I find a cherry, for instance, I'm like, what does this cherry look like?

What does it smell like?

What does it taste like?

What does it sound like?

What does it feel like?

Before I even get deep into things, I want to be able to define what it is, and then I want to kind of spark any memories I have of it.

This North American cherry reminds me of some kind of udara that I've tried in Nigeria.

Then the next thing I do is, can I eat it raw?

Then when I go to cooking it, I think about a number of things.

Can I boil it, steam it, bake it, pickle it, dry it, roast it?

Like, how does it function under various temperature and pressure conditions?

Is it great in drinks?

And then I just start thinking about all of the different types.

What is it like dried?

What is it like fresh?

How can I use it?

So, for instance, I recently made cherry yuzu Chapman.

That is amazing.

Really, really amazing.

I think it took understanding what are the elements of Chapman.

It's a cordial, something sweet, something slightly sour, maybe a little tart that gives color.

Ribena can do it.

Grenadine syrup can do it, but cherry syrup can also do it.

Then, okay, I have the orange soda, but you could also use mandarin soda.

You could also use another kind of light soda.

Then I'm like, okay, instead of using lemon and lime soda, I could also use Yuzuan lime.

Right?

And so.

But I feel like by understanding the framework, what the key elements are, I'm able to think about what substitutes to make and then craft something that still, for me, always respects the original, always respects and pays homage to the history and the origins, but is a spin.

You definitely love a spin.

You know, like I said, first time I met you, we had mushrooms.

So yeah, I've never had mushroom soya before in my life and we had that where we met.

So I love that you like to put a spin on things.

Curious about agbalu more.

How would you put a spin on agbalumo as is?

Right.

So if you don't know, I think many people know me as the agbalumo queen.

I have done so many things with it.

I've made agbalumo wine, I've.

I've done infus, like alcohol infusions with agbalumo.

I make an agbalomore soda that stunning.

But one of my favorite things to make is an agbalamo carrot cake.

So it's an upside down cake.

The base is chock full of agbalumo and then you have this really kind of soft, lightly spiced carrot cake on top.

And then when you flip it over, I always do an unveiling.

You just get this beautiful, glossy, icky, tightly puckering chunks of agbalumo with the soft cake.

My children can get enough of it.

I have to make one soon.

But yes, is there, is there.

Where can we find these recipes, these agbalama recipes?

On my blog, Kitchen Butterfly, you'll find the agbalumo upside down carrot cake.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, Cool.

You started your work when you were in the Netherlands and then you went to Nigeria, you went back, you came back home to Nigeria and now you're in Canada.

That.

How has that changed how you view food?

You've been in, you've been in Europe, you've been in the uk, you've been in back home, now you're in North America.

How does that shaping your perception of food in general, but more specifically Nigerian food?

One of the things that first became obvious to me when I was working with food early on was how similar many cultures and cuisines were.

For a variety of reasons, cultures tended to have done something called, I think it's cultural convergence, where we kind of came to the same conclusions about a number of things, geographies apart, like wrapping food in leaves.

So you'll see that many cultures have some kind of tradition of wrapping food in leaves using some kind of grinding stone or mortar and pestle.

That's something I would have likely developed independently across the world.

And I continue to see even more similarities between cultures and cuisines.

Some shaped by global trade, some shaped by colonialism, some shaped by transatlantic enslavement.

But there are similarities in the ways that people eat, in ingredients that they use every Culture kind of has some broth, some soup that's spiced.

That is a good postpartum soup, or some kind of cough syrup or remedy.

That's great when you have the flu.

You know, I think I'm in an era where I'm continuing to find and document red threads that connect cultures and cuisines across geographies, across borders.

So that's something that has really stood out even more for me since kind of settling in Canada six years ago.

Yeah.

Like pepper soup, for example.

Everybody has their version of pepper soup, like you said.

And it's so funny to me, if I feel some level of flu, if I'm feeling whatever it is I'm feeling, I'm just like, I gotta have pepper soup.

You know, I'll feel better.

I just need pepper soup and some Tylenol.

I'm good.

Yep, I am good.

Yeah.

It is so interesting.

Like, I'm just even, like, you know, coming to the terms with.

With that in my head.

But, yeah, let's talk about Chop Chop for a bit.

So talk to me about the history of Chop Chop.

How did I come.

I love the name, right?

Chop Chop Cooking the food of Nigeria.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful cover.

Tell me about how you came about that book and what was the journey like into documenting the food.

Nigerian food, basically.

I'm still thinking about launching a publication 13 years on, and I was gonna call it Chop Chop.

That didn't happen.

I was like, yeah, I've been working on kind of like a new Nigerian cookbook proposal.

At that stage, I was really fascinated by all of the things Nigerian ingredients could do.

And so I wanted to write a book to document that.

And at that time, like that week, I had had a dream about him as well.

So I was like, it's meant to be.

So anyway, he comes to Nigeria, and at the back of our minds, we're like, you know what?

We'll work on a project.

So we went everywhere.

We took photos, we went out, we ate lots of things.

And so we.

The first stage was writing a book proposal, and I didn't really know where to start.

I was afraid.

Anyway, I was just like, this is such a big undertaking.

But James was really, really supportive.

He found a sample of A proposal.

When I.

That didn't work for me, he found someone who could.

Who I could hire to write my proposal with me.

And then shortly after, I met a friend who introduced me to her agent.

And that was kind of like another major step, because her agent, now my agent, Jonah, was like, you.

Nigerian Kitchen sounds like an interesting idea and concept, but I think it is one step ahead of where you need to begin.

A foundational cookbook that introduces readers to Nigerian culture and cuisine is probably a better idea and a better place to start.

And at first, I was really disappointed because I had spent hours, days, months working on this new Nigerian Kitchen proposal.

And so I had to redo that, and it was just exhausting.

But in the end, you know, with Jonah's help, we got the proposal ready, pitched to some editors, and then it was like a, what, two, three year journey to chop chop.

The writing.

It began with me saying, what do I know about Nigerian culture and cuisine?

And kind of doing a brain dump of all of the recipes that I felt should go in the book, and then kind of running that through my personal board of directors, my children, as well as a few close friends of mine.

What I did want to happen was I wanted it to be a. I wanted to be as thorough as possible coverage of the regions of Nigerian culture and cuisine.

So I wanted representation and in multiple ways and multiple recipes of all of the different regions.

I didn't just want it to be all of the recipes I knew from, like, the south and a few from the north.

And I think that was a big goal.

But I really had a great set of people who I was reasoning with, who kind of, you know, helped me on the journey.

And over the years, I think I'd also been gifted recipes from people.

People loved the work that I was doing, and they would just message me, send me a copy of their mom's recipe, talk to me.

So I think I had a full kind of sense of the things that I wanted to go in.

In fact, the problem wasn't that I didn't have enough.

It was that I had too much and I had to kind of whittle things down.

Do you have any recipe that is kind of like your favorite in the cookbook?

All of them are my favorites.

I think that.

I think that there are a few recipes that, were it not for the kindness of people, I would never have come across.

So there's one recipe, for instance, which I really love, Ye Damblong.

It's from the south, south from UGEP in particular.

And it features kola nut as an ingredient, which for me as a Nigerian is mind blowing because I'd only ever known kola nut as a stimulant.

Right.

Not something that people actually ate.

There's another recipe from North Central from my friend Ellen and her mom.

So, yeah, Emblong is for my friend Carol and her mom.

There's another recipe that's made with like ground millet from my friend Ellen and her mom.

It's in the breakfast section.

And again, it's one of those things that I wouldn't have necessarily come across.

Pop.

Yes.

But I wouldn't necessarily have come across that recipe.

Another friend, Linda, told me about this green bean salad that her mom makes.

She sent me a recipe.

I was able to use that to develop mine.

So it's just like, you know, it's these, these gifts where, where it's almost like people recognize or people message me because they're thankful for the work they say I'm doing and then are gracious enough to gift me these recipes that I would otherwise not have come across.

That is very beautiful.

And how would you describe the response to the cookbook?

I know, like I said, we have the James Beard Award.

I know there was a New York Times review as well.

But, like, people that are engaging have been engaging with the cookbook.

What testimonials have you heard?

What have stood out about the things that people are saying about.

I'm gonna split it into two groups of people.

Nigerians, West Africans, people from the Caribbean, black people.

I have seen testimonials from a two year old who's sitting on his potty and kind of going through the pictures in the book.

And his mom was like, see, to like grandparents, to like teenagers and young adults who are like, outstanding.

The storytelling, the voice, the imagery, the recipes, all of those.

And that more than anything, has been comforting and affirming.

And then you have a group of people who, who are leaning on tropes, I think, of how difficult and complicated Nigerian cuisine is that they wouldn't even look right.

They're like, I don't know where to start with this ingredient.

You don't know where to start with rice and beans.

Same things you have in your culture.

Like, I think that that's been quite interesting and surprising.

But overall, I'd say am thrilled with people's love for it.

I love it.

My people love it.

For me also, it's not a one year wonder.

This is a book for generations.

So I'm okay with, you know, not everyone discovering it or falling in love with it right now.

There's room.

There's room for all of those to happen.

So.

Okay.

Chop chop Cooking the food of Nigeria is currently available.

It's been out for a year now.

Over a year.

And in the time that it's been out, I want to say, like I said, it's the winner of the emerging voice award for James.

For the James Beard met a gold winner at the not to lost book awards.

It has a taste of Canada nomination.

So if you're listening, if you're watching, I need you to go pick up this cookbook because it's really good.

I'm going to share the link in the description for how you can purchase wherever you are in the world.

I just purchased mine.

I'm a year late, but, you know, we're never late.

We're just, you know, on time again.

This is a book for life and also, you know, ask for it in your libraries.

Libraries have been such a great resource for me my whole entire life.

So, you know, big up libraries and.

Yeah, yeah, I am very excited.

I'm so excited to get my copy and I'm gonna share, like I said, the link in the description so you can also get yours as well.

Those are gonna go into some rapid fire questions before I let you go so folks can get to know you a little bit, you know, better.

The first one is what are three songs that are currently on your playlist right now?

I can't even remember the last time I listened to music, which is so foreign.

So, like, my children are like, they listen to music around the clock.

I cannot remember the last time I listened to music.

And if I did, it's likely to be gospel.

Honestly, I can't remember the last time that I actually listened to music.

Okay, but who are the.

Who are your go to artists then maybe we can do who are, like some of your go to artists that you always will listen to.

Elevation.

Elevation.

Yeah, yeah, that's your name.

Elevation.

Okay, Elevation.

Let me say Asha.

Okay, we love.

I love Asha.

Elevation.

Asha.

Okay, okay, okay.

I think.

I think there's a group called Red Rocks.

Red Rocks, I think.

Okay, I haven't.

I'm gonna have to listen to music.

You know, we're pushing you to.

We're pushing you to listen to the music.

So we're here for that.

Everybody talks about Jollof rice as a, you know, as the Nigerian staple when it comes to rice.

But what is your Favorite type of, you know, we have jollof, we have coconut, we have ofada and all these other things.

What is your favorite type of Nigerian way of eating rice?

I have a distinct memory of seeing a child in 18 and eating coconut rice from Ekoma.

So like locally grown Nigerian rice, which is red street, kind of looks like ofada, kind of like the red striations on the grain, but with the sweetest aroma and flavor with like fresh coconut milk.

Oh my God.

On a Sunday afternoon.

Steamed cabbage, green peppers, onions and carrots with well made, well fried stew with, with meat.

Yeah, I love jollof though.

But this coconut rice is kind of like deeply embedded in my, in my memory.

Okay, okay, I want to try that.

Now the way you described it, I'm like, whoa, I need to have that, that, that coconut rice.

Where is your.

When you're in Nigeria, where's the favorite.

What is your favorite market to go to?

Go shop at early in the morning.

You.

You want to do a 6am 7am Jaunt through oybo when you, you know, everything is fresh.

The traders.

Well, I said fresh.

That market probably never sleeps and people are there from like 4am but kind of like that early in the morning before it gets really, really chaotic.

It's kind of cool.

You can do your anthropological journeys, talking to people, finding what seasonal.

That's my favorite.

That's my favorite market hands down.

That is so funny.

I grew up in Ibuta Mehta.

So I was.

We lived in a Butameta from.

From, I think 19.

So I lived, I lived the bulk of my.

Of my life from childhood up until adulthood in Butameta.

So Oyimbo was the only market that we'll go to.

And yeah, that's.

I feel like you can find everything you're looking for food wise in Oyingbo.

The things that I discovered in Oyingbo, like, I had never really seen cotton seeds before.

For instance, cotton seeds that are used both as seasoning and they ferment them sometimes.

There are so many spices that I saw at Oingwood that I'd never seen anywhere else.

Vegetables, dried mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, fresh uziza.

Too many things, but gifted me a lot.

And when I lived in Nigeria, I would do like maybe once or twice a month, I'd go and I would come back with a haul and just share it and yeah, I miss it.

Effy shout out to Oyengo.

I remember I have A memory from.

Because, you know, my mom is.

And then she wants to make starch or owosu.

We'll go.

There was a. I don't know if I feel like there were Shakiri women that were there because she would go there and she speak Shakiri with them.

And you buy.

They will buy the starch.

I will buy the potash for the owo.

Potash is what you use in Owo, right?

I hope I'm not saying the wrong thing.

Yeah, no, you're not saying the wrong thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Typically there's potash and there's also native salt, which is kind of rock salt, like potash.

But potash is what would give it that emulsification, the light orange color and kind of like the alkali salt flavor.

Okay, okay, cool.

But yeah, I remember I have that memory embedded in my brain.

So shout out to oingbo.

Shout out what is the most diverse Nigerian ingredients according to you in terms.

In terms of possibilities.

I see agbalu.

So that there's so many things you can do with it that are unexpected and all of them are a delight.

So I'd say udara, balumo, cherry, African star, apple, whatever you call it.

Okay.

Okay.

Are you team sweet or savory?

Oh, I'm.

I'm team sweetheart.

Sweet and savory.

I have a sweet tooth, but I also like savory things.

Probably more sweet, to be honest.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

What is one cookbook everybody should own?

Apart from Chop Chop after Chop Chop Cooking the food of Nigeria?

I love a book called the Kudeti Book of Yoruba Cookery.

But it has a lot of gems and there's a lot that you can unravel and tease out of it.

Historically, that's definitely one.

But get chop chop.

Before you get that one.

Get, get chop chop.

Like I said, chop chop first.

It's in the description.

Get chop chop is there.

If you were to make Nigerian food, like to introduce Nigerian food to people who are not familiar with Nigerian cuisine and you want to serve like a nice three course meal for them, what would it be?

What would your menu look like?

My menu would begin with pepper soup and maybe some age bread rolls because people understand bread and soup.

For the main course, I would do a rice spread, white rice jollof or fried with a variety of sides.

There'll be moimoi.

People understand tamales, so people will be able to understand moimoi.

There'll be dodo People are familiar with fried plantains in a variety of forms.

There'll be a Nigerian style salad dressed with salad cream and then there'll be meat and maybe maybe a stew or maybe a curry.

Again, things that people are familiar with because you have similar tomato based things or, you know, similar curry style things.

And then for dessert, I would do some kind of pudding.

So it could be a rice pudding.

Again, very familiar across many cultures.

But maybe because I had rice for the main course, I would opt for a fresh fruit salad and maybe a tapioca pudding.

Mingo people, again, all over the world are familiar with both fresh fruits as well as tapioca puddings.

So.

Or maybe I'll do cream caramel.

I can't decide.

But those three things.

And then there would be drinks.

So Chapman Zobo, some tamarind drink.

Yeah, I feel like.

I feel like Chapman is always a good way to introduce people.

Like, that's such a Nigerian thing.

I don't know if it's a Nigerian thing per se, but it's like a Nigerian.

When I say I don't know if it's a Nigerian thing, I mean like with the ingredients that is used in Chapman.

But I feel like the, the way we make the drink is very unique to, you know, to who we are as Nigerians.

So, yeah, it's a Nigerian drink.

There are similar drinks to Chapman across the world that combines soda with bitters, but it is distinctly Nigerian.

Distinct ingredients may have been imported, but.

Yes, we made it ours.

And finally, what is your guilty pleasure?

Soaking Gary and granite.

Okay.

And dreaming about eating puff puff.

God.

I think about eating puff puff every two business days and then probably make it once a year.

In fact, I don't think I've made puff puff for two years.

That must change.

But I think about it a lot.

Yeah.

Way more.

I do.

There's this lady in Lagos Island.

I used to make puff puff right opposite Ghana High.

There's something about her puff puff.

It wasn't very oily, even though she deep fries it, but it did come out oily.

It had like a nice bounce to it.

Very soft.

It was very soft on the outside.

Very smooth on the outside as well.

Yeah, I miss puff Podcast off.

I feel like I gotta make.

I gotta make some effy.

You should, you really, you really, really should.

It's been so great talking to you, learning about your journey and where you are now.

I think before I let you go, I'm curious to know where do you see your journey with food taking you in the next like 10, 15 years.

But I'm curious to know, where do you see this going in the next 10, 20 years from now?

So I recently turned 50, so this is a very good question.

I'd love to do a TV series putting Nigerian cuisine in context of global cuisine, exploring and documenting similarities with a companion podcast.

I'd love to write more books.

I've been thinking a lot about legacy, about how I can broader share my work, my frameworks with people who might have similar interests to me.

So whether that is developing some sort of residency or internship program or writing group or exploratory group where I'm able to share with people, people are always curious about my methods, my processes.

Yeah, I'd also like to write another cookbook, particularly my new Nigerian Kitchen Cookbook.

And I have a few other ideas.

Most of all, I, you know, staying.

I hope to be in good health with wealth and love and joy and all of the things that kind of make life meaningful.

Yeah, those are the things that are top of mind.

That is awesome.

That is awesome.

Well, thank you, Azaz.

This has been such great conversation as well.

I knew it was going to be great because we've done this before and it was great before.

And so I was really excited to have this conversation.

It's a long time coming, so thank you so much.

We really, really appreciate you for coming on and sharing more about your journey with us.

Thank you for having me on.

I really, really enjoyed it.

I love being asked questions because it makes me think in ways and articulate my thoughts.

So I do appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

No problem at all.

And to everyone who's been watching or listening or both, thank you so much for tuning in.

Again, like I said before, I'm going to be sharing the links in the description too, so you can follow us also on Instagram.

And as well, the cookbook Chop Chop is available everywhere, but I'll share a link so you can know wherever it is you're in the world.

You can know how to purchase the book.

It's very important.

I just got mine, so you should get yours as well.

Don't forget to subscribe, like, comment, share with your friends and your people.

Thank you so much.

This has been such a great conversation and a great episode.

Till I see you next time.

O Day Juma.