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It is the first
week in August, and I have a newfound passion for scent leaf, wild
basil, ocimum gratissimum, clove basil, efirin; whatever you like to
call it. In Calabar, it is raining almost every day, and the pineapples
are bursting with tangy sweet juice, they arrive in the house on stems
as thick as a man’s arm; the corn is absurdly fresh, giving way under
your fingers and the plantains are yellow and fragrant when ripe.

Even when it isn’t
raining, the flame of the forest is swaying its own rain of pollen. It
might be why they say Calabar people can’t get their minds off matters
pertaining to the appetites. At every turn, I want to put something in
my mouth.

Scent leaf can be
grown by a toddler in this environment. It is as aggressive, as
prolific as a weed. A thick bush of it costs nothing more than fifty
naira, and the taste of it is complex, bitter, sweet, minty, earthy,
like basil, like cloves, like soil and rain mixed together. Its
complexity confuses even scientific categorisation. There is a tonic
made out of it that is said to alleviate if not cure absolutely
everything that goes wrong with the human body.

On the Internet it is linked to erectile dysfunction, malaria, diabetes, sickle cell anaemia, salmonella poisoning etc.

Plantain porridge
is a delicacy for the Ikom people. Their own version is cooked with
grass cutter (bush meat) and green unripe plantains. My first plate of
plantain porridge was given to me after a long period of anticipation
in which I imagined that the porridge was made from ripe plantains. I
have never successfully overcome that first disappointment.

Green plantains are
a chore for me to eat. They don’t taste of anything, and if the
plantains are not very good ones, then they taste like cardboard. It is
so much a bone of contention that I have had many back and forth
arguments on the matter with people who I suppose have acquired a taste
for it over lifetimes where there was no contention that plantain
porridge is made from unripe plantains.

I begged Theresa,
the lady who came to teach me to cook this dish, to include ripe as
well as unripe plantains. Grass cutter is of course one of the reasons
why this dish is a delicacy. It isn’t meat that one can just go to the
market and buy, so our version had to be made with goat meat.

It didn’t take long
for Theresa to become exasperated with me; first I wanted ripe
plantains, then I said she couldn’t cook with Maggi, and then we
discovered that I didn’t have any crayfish in the house. She put the
washed goat meat at the bottom of a large pot with a chopped large
onion; garlic, ginger and plenty of hot peppers blended with water, and
salt.

The meat was left
to boil until very soft. Half a bunch of green plantains were peeled,
cut into small pieces and put aside, as well as my requested ripe
plantains. A large bunch of scent leaf was washed rolled up and
shredded into strips with a knife; prepared towards the very end of
cooking.

The body of a
rolled-up smoked fish, head removed, washed with salt and hot water,
bones removed, was added to the pot of goat meat with the plantains,
plenty of water and what seemed like a whole container of red palm oil.
(More exasperation and rolling of eyeballs at my request that the oil
be used in moderation).

More salt was added
as seasoning, the porridge was left to thicken, plantains softening and
adding fragrance and body. At the very end of cooking, the scent leaf
was stirred in, the heat turned off so the leaf wouldn’t cook but keep
its texture and freshness.

I must tell what it
is like to eat this porridge…I have met a few people who claim that
they don’t get full when they eat pasta or ogi or potatoes, I didn’t
believe them until I ate my plantain porridge…What it did in terms of
expanding my stomach was nothing less than astonishing, and I have
never been one to eat large portions of food.

The more porridge I ate, the hungrier I became. My ripe plantains
gave the porridge that beautiful balance of sweet and savoury that I
like in my food. It also gave my palate the playful quest of finding
that odd sweet mouthful among many savoury mouthfuls. The hot
stodginess of the mashed plantains and fish and oil made me find a
comfortable chair in the house where I tucked my legs under my body and
just ate for what seemed like hours. The smell of the palm oil, the
flesh of the he-goat, the minty basil smell of scent leaf completely
intoxicated me. This is not food that I can eat regularly. I would
become that quintessential fat Efik female that Yorubas affectionately
call Iya Calabar.