For Black History Month I signed up for a cooking class offered by EYs Philadelphia black professional network. What caught my attention was the title, Motherland Cooking Xperience. It included music storytelling, recipes and cooking experience. All virtual via Zoom. Mom decided she would join me for our weekly foodie fun experience. After I signed up I wasn’t sure what would happen next. On Monday I received a meal kit in the mail, and an email with recipes and some instructions.

When I opened the box, which was pretty heavy, I was shocked to see how much food was sent. It included potatoes, 2 huge onions, a whole fish (tilapia), garlic and ginger, green purred vegetables, goat meat, rice, lemon juice, mustard, habanero pepper, and Maggie cubes and various seasonings. The fish needed to be marinaded 24 hours ahead of time. It included slicing all of the onions, one of the Maggie cubes, lemon juice and garlic and ginger. I don’t think I’ve ever used so many onions in a dish before.

At 2 o’clock we logged into the zoom, met our instructor and classmates. I set up the laptop in the kitchen so we could view it and cook at the same time. Yassa is a traditional African dish with origins in Gambia and Senegal. You can use chicken or fish, and the dish, is made with a combination of rice, onions, garlic, mustard, spicy peppers, and lemons. Senegal was under French control, for period of time, so they still speak French, and the people of Senegal adopted some of their cooking techniques and flavor. Which explains the introduction of mustard.

When it came time to cook, we started the rice, cut up the fish and broiled it, and starting to brown the meat for the soup. To cut the fish we did not filet or debone it, but instead cut it in pieces (like we would cut bunker for crabbing). I clearly did not have the right knife because this was a difficult and messy task. Broiling the fish was designed to brown it, not cook it. We placed all of the onions that we marinated the fish in in a pot with some oil to sauté them. It reminded me of onion soup how many onions. We added mustard, pepper salt. I would never have considered adding mustard to onions. Placed the fish in the onion mixture and let it cook for about 20 minutes.

I didn’t tell mom about the goat, before she arrived. But she was still open to try it. I commend her adventurous spirit. Goat is the most consumed meat in the world. As an added bonus, it is great for your diet because it is lean and have less saturated fat, calories and cholesterol. Pepper soup is served throughout West Africa, especially in Nigeria, Cameroon and other neighboring African countries. It’s typically served at special occasions; it’s a rich, spicy dish and can be made in many ways.

Once the goat was browned, we added a number of different seasoning (Maggie cube, curry, pepper, Garlic, ginger, And this odd package of green squishy things. I’m not exactly sure it was in the bag. But according to other recipes it was probably parsley, celery, stem of a green onion. It looked good. With an added 2 quarts of water and eventually added the potatoes and let it simmer. I wish we’d added chicken stock instead of water, I think it would’ve added a bit more flavor. Since mom is not a fan of spicy food we did not add the scotch bonnet.

The Zoom cooking experience was a lot of fun. Throughout the session it was normal to miss an instruction. Our instructor was very helpful and patient in catching us up, checking in on us. She was good. While the soup and the fish were cooking we had a 20 minute break and listened to Mirabel talk about Senegal in Cameroon. There was a fun battle around who makes the best jollof rice Nigeria or Senegal.

To plate everything you put rice on a plate and put the onions and fish on top of the rice. For the soup, we just put it in a bowl. Everyone was finishing their cooking at the same time so we took Mirabelle, our instructor, with us to the table as we began eating our meal. While we ate she sang a lullaby, talked to us a little bit more about. Mom thoroughly enjoyed the onion, and I loved the fish. We both felt the Yassa fish could have used something else. The onions were much more mild than we anticipated. The goat pepper soup was a little disappointing, primarily because the goat was chewy, and a little grizzly. The best part to me about the soup was the potatoes and how they soaked up the broth from the soup. It was very thin and I wished it was thicker. An added ingredient to the soup, that we didn’t have, was Njansa. It’s frequently used in Cameroon dishes and can thicken the soup.

Would we make this again? Yes but differently. Since we learned a lot about the methods, I would try the Yassa fish or chicken again and maybe with salmon filleted. Regarding the soup, possibly but a different recipe with some thing other than goat.

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