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).   

 

English Beans

I have simplified this recipe by using canned (already cooked) beans, but you could certainly use dried navy beans, soaking or partially cooking them before proceeding with the recipe. In England and much of Britain, beans are served as part of breakfast, and very much so for an "English Breakfast," * although not exclusively so, and serving beans on toast is popular. There are many recipes for English beans, but I've seen perhaps as many as 20 recipes, and with one exception, the one common thing was, no meat was included. In the United States, it is rare to see beans fixed without meat, usually bacon, salt pork or ham, and even the commercial canned versions have meat, although you may need to use a magnifying glass to find it. In Britain, to save time, Heinz canned beans are highly common. These are not the same as the Heinz versions in the U.S., but rather a meatless, mixed sweet and tangy, tomato-y dish, which sell quite well throughout Britain, and "seem" to be sort of a standard by which breakfast beans are judged by many there. When I've had the Heinz variety, ** I've only seen the tomato sauce, no bits of onion or any other ingredient, and while I read where one person mentioned vinegar in the Heinz version, the ingredient list does not mention it, nor is there really any taste of vinegar; at least, not that I could tell. Anyway, this is my version of "English beans," with very tomato-y sauce.

Ingredients:

1 15 ounce can navy beans
1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
2 heaping tablespoons of finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 to 2 teaspoons canola oil
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 teaspoon blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons brown sugar (I use dark brown sugar, you may need more or less sugar, depending upon the tartness of the tomato sauce you use)

In a medium sauce pan, heat the oil and then saute the onion over medium low heat. After about one minute, add the garlic, cooking the two ingredients until softened. Add the tomato sauce, the thyme, and the blackstrap molasses, stirring to mix everything. Let the sauce simmer lightly for about 20 minutes or more, putting the lid on askew, to keep the sauce from spattering all over your stove, but also allowing the sauce to cook down somewhat. Taste the sauce to see how tangy it is, then add the brown sugar accordingly, stirring well. Let the sauce reduce to thicken it, before adding the beans. After adding the beans, let everything simmer an additional 10 to 15 minutes. The sauce should be well thickened and somewhat sweetened, but not too sweet. It should have a slight tang.

* This is the link to my "English Breakfast" article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/09/an-english-breakfast.html 

** You can often find them in supermarkets nowadays, in the international section, and they have a different label (sort of blue-green? aqua? and the Heinz logo) and the can will have, "Product of the United Kingdom," somewhere on it.    

I put my English beans on toast

WORD HISTORY:
Molasses-This word for, "the syrupy product made from refining sugar," and distantly related to the "mil" part of the word "mildew," goes back to Indo European "melit/melid," which meant "honey." This gave its Latin offspring, "mel," with the same meaning, but also the more general, "sweetness." This then gave Latin, "mellaceus," which meant, "sweet like honey." This gave the Latin-based languages in the Iberian Peninsula forms like, Spanish "melaza," Catalan "melassa," and Galician and Portuguese "melaço," all of which were applied to the refined sugar product originally made in the West Indies from sugar cane there and used to make rum. English borrowed the word from Portuguese probably in the mid 1500s, although the word did not become more common until the late 1500s.