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A straight line is completely
antithetical to the concept of good food. The reason why the idea of
stock cubes is so tragic is because stock cubes are the unimaginative
shortest distance between two points. You want a pot of stew or soup to
taste delicious, and you immediately reach for the stock cubes. But it
is for this very reason that Nigerian food has lost something very
essential. The soul of the pot of soup or savoury dish in any culture
is the layering of flavours and it is this layering that old hands over
time turn into virtuosity.

The layering of flavours achieves the
desired umami. Umami is a word borrowed from the Japanese, and it is
best defined as a well rounded savoury taste. Scientists suggest that
certain taste receptors induce salivation and a furry sensation on the
tongue, stimulating the throat, the roof and the back of the mouth.
They are informally referred to as umami taste receptors, in addition
to the sweet, sour, bitter and salty receptors.

In 1908, a Japanese scientist called
Kikunae Ikeda isolated the glutamate that is the chemical source for
the taste of umami. It is with this knowledge that monosodium glutamate
came to rule the world. We can say he created the beginnings of our
loss of sophistication, but the Japanese, in spite of chemical
alternatives to glutamate like Ajinomoto, have not lost their esteem
for natural sources of glutamate and umami, like kombu seaweed and
dashi; these foods, along with the almighty miso, remain fundamentals
in Japanese cooking.

Fermentation is one of the most time
honoured ways of increasing the glutamate levels and umami in foods.
Thelma Bello, my cherished food mentor, eagerly drew my attention to a
brown paper package in Marian Market last week. She opened it
carefully, parting dried, some rotting, leaves. Lost in relation to
leaves and paper was a smear of something, visually an anticlimax, and
also a little off-putting. That stingy smear was nothing more than
fermented melon seeds or castor oil seeds left to the will of nature
and the aggression of fermenting bacteria: in other words, ogiri.

Ms. Bello took me to a local condiment
vendor who sold the ogiri as well as three different types of Dadawa or
what I call iru. Not that thoroughly offensive Yoruba iru pete that
draws flies like something dead…but beautiful delicately layered
aromas of fermented cocoa beans on rain beaten soil, meaty and warm and
organic, the pungency of fermentation mellow and comfortable in the
nose.

Even over many years of sporadically
eating iru and smelling it in food, I have never got used to the
pungency of the smell nor comfortably eating it. A friend from Benue
State gave me a version that I worked hard at loving, but ended up
binning because the smell just wore me out. I cannot comprehend how
anyone can eat something that smells so very bad.

This condiment woman’s iru/Dadawa was
the most expensive I had ever seen. A small ball of the dark locust
beans held together was N100. I also bought a significantly cheaper
version, still bearable but stronger smelling, with the same suggestion
of dark chocolate and as dark in complexion as rich loam. The
insignificant smear of ogiri was N100, and worked out the most
expensive of the three. I call the combination of the three condiments
the kings of umami. I dare any pot of stew not to become gorgeous after
it has crossed their path.

Since that day in the market, I have
felt some lingering sense of irritation and disappointment that these
possibilities of explosive natural flavour, so much a part of our
culture of food, should be disdained for trashy Maggi cubes, when on
par with any sophisticated miso, or aromatic nam pla, or nutritious
kombu, or soya sauce. What excuse do we have?! My last but not least
purchase from this gem of a woman in the market was cups of
hand-shelled egusi.

What did I do when I got home? I
layered the aroma and flavour of heated palm oil with that of expensive
Dadawa, fried the locust beans for a while before adding onions for the
base of my soup, then blended hot aromatic peppers, onions and tatase;
stockfish, catfish, hand-shelled egusi roasted in a hot pan (most of it
ending up in my mouth), a little ogbono and fresh ugwu…

If I ever cook with another Maggi cube in my life, may the word ingrate be branded with hot iron on my forehead!