Product: My Everyday Lagos: Nigerian Cooking at Home and in the Diaspora by Yewande Komolafe (Release October 24th 2023; Ten Speed Press)
Cookbook Cost
EBook: $14.99
Hardcover: $35.00
Where to Buy:
Amazon: Purchase your copy today!
Meet the Author: The ‘New York Times’ Cooking Columnist Yewande Komolafe
Yewande Komolafe is a cooking writer, recipe developer and food stylist for the Holy Grail New York Times. Her monthly NYT column explores the impact and evolution of diasporic cuisines, and her recipes appear frequently. The Nigerian chef and recipe developer is based in Brooklyn. Her culinary expertise draws inspiration from her family’s kitchen in Lagos, as well as her extensive experience in restaurant kitchens across the United States. She crafts recipes that reflect her immigrant experience, focusing on flavor and texture.
Yewande’s culinary career has spanned two decades. She’s been a prep cook at fine dining establishments, classic French viennoiseries, and family-owned Nigerian restaurants up and down the East Coast (as well as iconic NYC establishments like Momofuku Milk Bar).
She has consulted for restaurant groups, worked with food tech startups, developed and styled recipes for dozens of food publications, and photographed recipes for the James Beard Foundation. In 2017, she founded a consulting company, Four Salt Spoons, providing recipe support for various cookbook projects.
Her second cookbook, My Everyday Lagos, is a paean to Nigerian cuisine and the city where she grew up. The cookbook was released October 24, 2023 and is available for order, and in bookstores nationwide.
5 Reasons Why You Should Buy This Cookbook ‘My Everyday Lagos’
- For culture lovers and tastemakers who love to explore multicultural culinary and try new experiences, this cookbook is a must have for you! It is also the perfect holiday gift for your loved ones.
- To know the city of Lagos, Nigeria, is to understand that it is a key part of a larger conversation about West African cuisine and its influences throughout the world. This stunning cookbook is an in-depth exploration of a cuisine as well as the definitive book on Lagos cuisine that reveals the nuances of regions and peoples, diaspora and return—but also tells her own story of gathering the scattered pieces of herself through understanding her home country and food.
- If you love an underdog story, then this book is a MUST HAVE! For the author Yewande Komolafe, this is a book she didn’t even plan on writing. A bevy of publishers approached her after the publication of her “10 Essential Nigerian Recipes” feature in the New York Times in 2019, asking if she might have a book in her. The author has an interesting story that sheds light on the struggles of being an immigrant in America and achieving success beyond all odds. Komolafe had been living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant for more than a decade. Her marriage to an American man in 2016 gave her a green card that allowed her, at long last, to hop on a 13-hour flight to see her parents in Nigeria, moving freely between countries without threat. My Everyday Lagos explores Yewande’s personal narrative of immigration through the lens of West African cuisine.
- The cookbook consists of 75 recipes that reflect the nuanced diversity of regional Nigerian cooking. While exploring the significance of traditional dishes such as Jollof Rice and Groundnut Stew, Yewande highlights the adaptability and accessibility of food from her home city of Lagos.
- My Everyday Lagos acts as a guide for home cooks and particularly cultural artisans who crave the distinct textures and flavors of classic West African cuisine. Overall, My Everyday Lagos is a love letter to the country of Nigeria. Yewande pays homage to the city that raised her while simultaneously acknowledging the tribulations and identity crises that accompany the immigrant experience through mouth-watering recipes.
Komolafe writes for New York Times Cooking, writing recipes for people all over the world to read. This soup includes tamarind, lemongrass, ginger, and chiles. Source: @yewande_komolafe on Instagram
TANTV Editor-in-Chief Adedayo Fashanu Interviews Yewande Komolafe:
Checkout highlights of the interview below, read full editorial HERE!
Q: How did your experience as an immigrant influence your writing in ‘My Everyday Lagos?’
A: I had to grapple with the question of what it means to be Nigerian if I hadn’t been back in so long. I was living in the United States undocumented and asking myself these questions; am I still Nigerian? Did I really grow up there or am I making up these stories about growing up in Lagos? When I finally did get to go back, I was flooded with a bunch of memories and it was almost an overwhelming amount of nostalgia. It felt like all the pieces of me that I left in a bunch of different places were finally coming back together. I am open about my immigrant experience because I think it is something that people go through in the United States and it’s not something that I personally heard a lot about. Even though a lot of my family members were going through the same process, they would never talk openly about it. Being open and vulnerable allows others to see their own stories reflected back to them.
Q: How do you grapple with the notion of authenticity in your cooking?
A: I used to have these dinner parties where strangers would come over to my house. I would send out an email and people would respond and I would be like okay we have 20 people for dinner tonight. Sometimes Nigerians would come and they would eat my food and they would say ‘This is not how we make it in Nigeria’ or ‘This is not how my mother would make it’. That’s all fine and good but this is how I make it, this is how I express the food. The food is Nigerian because I am making it and that’s just it. As far as recipes, I think that recipes are not static, recipes are an ever-evolving concept. I won’t make Akara the same way you would make it in your kitchen. I love that people feel so powerful about how things should be but honestly I don’t think that, if we are honestly speaking, everyone makes it the same way. I think people make food according to their preferences, and that’s how I cook, according to my preference. I like a lot of spices. I’m going to put a lot of spice in my food. I like a lot of green onions. I’m going to put a lot of green onions in my food. Again I don’t really think of recipes as something that should be unchanging. I think of recipes that are not static and always evolving, even in Lagos. The food evolves, you know. I go back home and they’re like, Oh, we don’t do it like that anymore, like, that’s like the old way of doing it. So you know I think of it as an ever-evolving concept.
Q: What was your reasoning beyond the selected recipes in My Everyday Lagos?
A: So I think specifically with this cookbook, I went with the classic cuisine because I kind of wanted to start at the beginning for myself. I started examining Nigerian food after being away for so long, and I knew how to make stew, I knew how to make pounded yam, I knew how to make Efo Riro, but I didn’t know why we make things the way we make them. Why do we fry with palm oil, why do we mix palm oil with, why do we do it this way over that way? I wanted to understand the reason behind the way we were cooking, the way we layer flavors, and the spices that we use. I know I can buy pepper soup spice that’s already ground. It’s already mixed, but, like I wanted to know what exact spices are in pepper soup spice? I asked my mom, and she’s like, I don’t know. It’s a bunch of spices I’m just like, Okay, well, that doesn’t help and so I wanted to do a deep dive into the elements of our cuisine. So starting from just the basic ingredients, and starting from the intro, it’s an introduction to Nigerian food, one on one, you know. Understanding the basics gives me the flexibility and the experience I need. If I ever wanted to do a fusion style, I would use peanut oil or vegetable oil. That’s up to what I have in my cabinet, you know whether I put meat in. It is up to my taste, and so I needed to understand the essential elements of our cooking before I felt like I could be courageous enough to mix.
Check out our interview through video on our Youtube!
TEAM CREDIT:
Special thanks to: Yewande Komolafe & her team.
Written by: Sommer Stokes
Edited by: Adedayo Fashanu
Video Produced: Abolaji Omitogun
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