Yam: The Heart and Soul of West African Cuisine

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Like they always say, food is life and not just a mere sustenance, when it come to how importance food can be to human, there is no limit to it, food give us strength and nourish our soul, I'm actually a foodie and I don't joke when it come to food, and coming across this particular topic on hive naija that as us to pick one food we will love to eat all the rest of our life, I had to give it a deep thought because I have lot of interesting varieties when it come to food selection and in my locality we have lot of delicacy to select from, normally eating just one kind of food all the rest of my life will be a hard choice but when it come to one particular food, I think it will be easier and you will know the main reason while reading through.

The main food is Yam, this is a starchy tuberous vegetable that is planted and widely consume in my country Nigeria and since I hail from Ekiti, it is one of my favourite food because we love pounded yam a lot. I actually saw yam as a normal food back in the days since my mom rarely prepare it especially when it come to pounded yam, we only ate it twice in a year and that is during the christmas and new year eve, so I do see it as a special food until we travelled down to my home town, anywhere I look, it is always yam or pounded yam and I was like, for real. The way I was served ehn make me like it more, there is no day we wont take yam or pounded yam. The main reason why I will be picking yam is because of the various way it came be prepared that wont make it look tiring.

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The Boiling Part

Boiling yam is one of the easy thing to do when it come to cooking, all you have to do is to just cut the yam into small slices, as you want it, rise it well with water to remove dirt then put it inside water, sprinkle some salt and place it on fire. within 30-40mins, it should be soft enough to eat. Back in the days, boil yam can actually go with anything, locally, they take it with groundnut oil with small salt or palm oil, it really make sense eating it when the yam is hot and some people like pouring this oil on the yam to get it soaked. I love the old method to some extent but people rarely eat it that way again. Another way is taking it with pepper sauce which is the common one or with garden eggs mixed with pepper sauce, you can also take it with friend eggs, vegetables and so on.

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The Frying Part

If you are fond of going to the restaurant to enjoy life, this is the type of yam you will be seeing there and the major one I love having as afternoon snacks, they always make it with fried potatoes and are always crispy, back then during my secondary days, I always save my launch food just to branch at joint to get this type of yam with pepper sauce, it is always delicious, you can always eat it alone also. The major way to do it is somehow tricky, they usually soak the yam after peeling and cutting it, in side water for a while, then fried it inside oil with water mixture.

The Roasted & Grilled Part

If you are use to the village life style, you will be use to the roasted yam a lot, back in the days when we do follow our captain to his dad farm whenever we need to cut trees for campfire in church, we always go to his village for a short vacation and we go in groups, most times, after felling down some trees, we always roast yam even ever we are hungry, we just start some small fire, put some yams inside the fire to smoke, then after a while we will take it out, peel it before eating it with palm oil, it is always sweet, but the modernised version is the Grilled part using a grill hot machine.

There are still lot of ways to prepare your yam, we have the meshed one we know as asaro (yam porridge) and above all pounded yam which I mentioned early, it is the main reason why I picked yam and it isn't one kind of food you can see anywhere and it have different kind of special food you can eat it with. Back in the days, making it isn't easy since pounding it with mortal and pestle is somehow hard and strength taking which make people to always run from preparing it but nowadays there are now machines or heavy duty blender that I do see online that you can use in blending this year and it will give you soft pounded yam (or should I say blended yam). Still looking forward till the day I will be blending my own yam

In case you want to participate, you can check out the Hive Naija Prompt here