CHOPPED AND STEWED

The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.

- HANNAH GOLDFIELD

Made from a steamed root vegetable or grain in this case, yamthat's been pounded and hydrated until it's soft and slightly stretchy, reminiscent of rising bread dough, it falls under a pan-African category known as "swallow," most often served as a starchy accompaniment to soup or stew. This was not my first time eating fufu. With confidence, I tore off a small piece and began to roll it between my palms. Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me. "Unh-unh. Mm-hmm. What are we doing?"

The voice belonged to Kavachi Ukegbu, a Houstonian whose mother, Margaret, a Nigerian immigrant, opened Safari in 1994. After checking, and then checking again, that I was after "traditional traditional" Nigerian dishes, Ukegbu, the co-author of a 2021 book called "The Art of Fufu," had ordered for me, ferrying plates from the kitchen herself. There was a meaty whorl of land snail, which was draped in sautéed onions and peppers, and required a sharp knife to slice; abacha, shredded cassava tossed with palm oil and hunks of stockfish; and the fufu, which came with a bowl of nsala, a thick, fragrant soup, crowded with offal and various cuts of beef and goat.

Ukegbu shot me a look of amused exasperation before correcting my fufu technique. I should use only one hand, she explained, to tear off a piece, roll it between my fingers, and then flatten it into a scoop to dip into the soup. I followed her instructions, but as I raised my hand to my mouth I could see in her gaze that my tutelage was not over. "Now let me see if you're going to chew it or to swallow it," she said. I froze, and gulped. "Swallow," I realized, was a literal term.