Made from a steamed root vegetable or grain in this case, yamthat's been pounded and hydrated until it's soft and slightly stretchy, reminiscent of rising bread dough, it falls under a pan-African category known as "swallow," most often served as a starchy accompaniment to soup or stew. This was not my first time eating fufu. With confidence, I tore off a small piece and began to roll it between my palms. Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me. "Unh-unh. Mm-hmm. What are we doing?"
The voice belonged to Kavachi Ukegbu, a Houstonian whose mother, Margaret, a Nigerian immigrant, opened Safari in 1994. After checking, and then checking again, that I was after "traditional traditional" Nigerian dishes, Ukegbu, the co-author of a 2021 book called "The Art of Fufu," had ordered for me, ferrying plates from the kitchen herself. There was a meaty whorl of land snail, which was draped in sautéed onions and peppers, and required a sharp knife to slice; abacha, shredded cassava tossed with palm oil and hunks of stockfish; and the fufu, which came with a bowl of nsala, a thick, fragrant soup, crowded with offal and various cuts of beef and goat.
Ukegbu shot me a look of amused exasperation before correcting my fufu technique. I should use only one hand, she explained, to tear off a piece, roll it between my fingers, and then flatten it into a scoop to dip into the soup. I followed her instructions, but as I raised my hand to my mouth I could see in her gaze that my tutelage was not over. "Now let me see if you're going to chew it or to swallow it," she said. I froze, and gulped. "Swallow," I realized, was a literal term.
Denne historien er fra December 09, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra December 09, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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NO WAY BACK
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.
PRIMORDIAL SORROW
\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"
CHOPPED AND STEWED
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.
TOUCH WOOD
What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.
HELLO, HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.
THE CHOOSING ONES
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.
OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.
NOTE TO SELVES
The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
