Nigerian Salad

Nigeria is a country in the western part of Africa with a population of about 210 million. The 1500s saw the Portuguese begin to have lots of contact with the Nigerians for trade, primarily via the city of "Eko," which the Portuguese called "Lagos," which has remained the name of the city. (Note: Lagos is one of the world's largest cities, with a metro population of some 25 million.) The slave trade was centered in the Nigerian region and by the early 1800s, the British had outlawed slavery, and they actively fought against slave traders, which brought their involvement in that general area of Africa, and by the early 1900s, Nigeria became a colony of Britain, a status that lasted until 1960. While there are hundreds of languages and dialects spoken in modern Nigeria, English is the official language.  

There are naturally variations to some of the ingredients, and some recipes include pasta or boiled potatoes. Green cabbage is traditional, but I like to use red cabbage at times, if I have it, which I did when I made the salad for the photos below (it adds great color). You can peel the cucumber or leave the peel on, or partially peel it.

 

Ingredients (4 to 6 full servings):

 

2 cups shredded lettuce

2 cups shredded cabbage 

1 cup shredded carrot

1 cup chopped cucumber, small chop

1 cup chopped tomato, small chop

1/2 cup chopped red onion, small chop

1 cup baked beans*

3 or 4 hard boiled eggs

1/2 cup corn (canned, frozen/thawed/off the cob) 

1 to 1 1/2 cups salad cream, Heinz or homemade**

 

In a large bowl/dish, add the lettuce, cabbage, carrot, cucumber, tomato and red onion. Mix to combine (I use my hands). You can serve up the vegetable mixture in individual servings, then add some corn over the top of each serving, then add some dabs of baked beans around the top. Quarter the hard boiled eggs, then place a few pieces of the egg around each serving, followed by some salad cream in the middle of the salad. Otherwise, you can put the corn, baked beans and hard boiled egg pieces on the top of the vegetable mixture in your large bowl/dish for everyone to serve themselves. Put the salad cream in a separate dish for each person to add to their salad.   

 

* Heinz beans are, and have been, very popular in Britain and in some former British colonies. While they are "similar" to the beans the company markets in the U.S., they are slightly different. You can find the British style Heinz beans in some U.S. supermarkets (if they aren't with the other canned beans, check the international section) and in some specialty shops that deal with international products. If you like looking for products, and you want to try to make as close to a genuine "Nigerian Salad" as possible, the recipes I've seen over the years for the salad all had the Heinz beans, an influence carried over from the time when Nigeria was a colony of the British; so, you'll want to try to find the British style Heinz beans. If the type of beans isn't that important to you, use the baked beans of your choice. By the way, the same is true of the salad cream, as the Heinz brand is very popular in Britain and in some of the former colonies, including in Nigeria. It is not easy to find in the U.S., and while it is available online, it will cost you more than a couple of dollars for a bottle, perhaps more like about $8.00 or more, and then there are the shipping charges. I'm not here to market for Heinz, but these are the products commonly used by Nigerians, so it is what it is.   

 

** For homemade salad cream, here is the link to the recipe:  https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2021/08/british-salad-cream.html

WORD HISTORY:

Jumbo-This is one of those words that requires the use of "could be," "possibly," "maybe," "perhaps," as the reason for the name is not really known, although the speculation for the name makes some sense, but that does not guarantee that it's true. "Jumbo" was the name of an orphaned elephant calf captured in East Africa in the 1860s. It was said to have been an unusually large elephant calf, and it grew into a huge adult. The young growing elephant was sent to Europe, spending time in Italy, Germany, France and England, before being sold to American circus showman and promoter (and exploiter) Phineas "P.T." Barnum in the early 1880s. The elephant's immense size had proven to be an attraction in Europe and Barnum popularized the attraction even more. Of course, the question of the day is, why was the baby elephant named "Jumbo?" Some have speculated that the name was taken from Swahili "jumbe," which meant "chief, leader." The abnormally large elephant certainly fit with its name as a "chief" or a "leader," and as initially Europeans turned out in considerable numbers to view "Jumbo," the name also tied in nicely with a creature from Africa.^ The name became so well known, that the idea of its size provided the basis for other abnormally large objects to have the word applied to them as an adjective, a use still in existence to this day. Another possibility is that the name came from a European-ized version of "nzamba," a word that meant "elephant" in Kikongo, a language spoken in and around the Congo region. I use "European-ized," as one of the elephant's original captors was a German.

 

^ By the mid 1800s, many European countries were colonizing regions of Africa (or had already colonized some areas).   

 

British Salad Cream

British salad cream is similar to mayonnaise, but it ISN'T mayonnaise. Salad cream is commonly used as a topping for ... wait for it... SALADS, and for hard boiled eggs, boiled potatoes and it is used as a spread for sandwiches and as a dip for vegetables. It seems salad cream was a homemade type of dressing in Britain, with the first commercial brands making an appearance in the World War One era, with Heinz leading the way, with this brand is still heavily identified with salad cream to this day. Salad cream was taken by the British to a number of their colonies, where the creamy delight is still common in some of the now former British colonies. There are many variations in recipes, with some people making mayonnaise first, then adding ingredients to turn it into their version of salad cream.

Ingredients:

 

6 ounces heavy cream, very cold

2 hard boiled egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

1 heaping teaspoon powdered sugar

1/4 ground white pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt   

Put all of the ingredients into a small blender and blend until it thickens. If the salad cream is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk and stir it in by hand, repeat until the desired thickness is reached, but keeping it a little too thick is best, as the cream will begin to break down the longer you keep it. I tend to like sauces that are thick, I mean THICK (see photos below), so I blend my salad cream until it is the consistency of mayonnaise, but it's my understanding that commercial brands are more like salad dressing; that is, thick, but pourable.

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Ceiling-This word is related to "conceal" and "color," words of Latin derivation borrowed by English from Latin-based French, and it is distantly related, through Indo European, to "hell/Hell," a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Ceiling" goes back to Indo European "kel/khel," which meant "to cover." This gave Latin the verb "celare," meaning "to cover, to cover up, to hide," which passed to Latin-based Old French as "celer," meaning "to hide, to keep secret," with a secondary meaning of "to cover walls with paneling." English borrowed this as "celen," meaning, "to put a cover over," and not long thereafter, "to cover the walls with paneling" (seemingly then specifically "oak paneling"), circa 1200? A noun, "celynge" developed in the mid 1300s, meaning "the action or process of covering walls with paneling" (the ending "ynge" was an old form of modern "ing"). The 1530s saw the word, now spelled "ceiling," used for "the interior overhead part of a room," with likely influence in meaning from the similar Latin word "caelum," which meant "sky," but used in religious contexts for "heaven," which was usually seen as "in the sky/skies." (Note: Latin "caelum" is thought to be from a totally different source, which makes it unrelated to "ceiling.") The meaning "cover with oak wood paneling" died out over time, but lasted regionally until the second half of the 1800s. The word is used figuratively to indicate an upper limit on something, for example: "The city puts a ceiling on rents," or "The building has a ceiling on the number of occupants because of fire safety regulations."