Back To Basics - Seafood Medley with Soaked Ijebu Gari

Back to Basics - Seafood Medley with Soaked Ijebu Gari

As I absolutely love experimenting with food and creating wonderful fusions, there are days that I just want the simplicity of Nigerian local delicacies, served the way they are meant to be served, though with a little "caveat", they still need to tally with my healthy eating agenda...! From now on, I will differentiate such recipes with the tag BToB - meaning Back To Basics.

BToB Soaked Gari: each time I try to describe gari to people who are not familiar with it, I tend to liken it to tapioca, not necessarily because the taste the same, but because they are both made from cassava.

The result of grating, fermenting and drying cassava is gari. Its a common source of carbohydrates for most Nigerians and one of the ways to consume it is by soaking in iced cold water with added sugar or milk. Soaked gari is served with fried fish but can also be eaten with vegetable soup, fried meat or groundnut.

To quench my craving for soaked gari, I decided to cook a medley of sea food as its accompaniment....

What you need

• Large tiger prawns
• Yoyo smelt/whitebait
• Red bream fish
• Gari granules (Ijebu type)
• Brown sugar
• Iced cold water 
• Ice cubes
• Coconut oil for frying

What to do

1. Clean the different sea food and season with some salt and black pepper
2. Then pan fry the prawns and deep fry the sea bream and smelt. 
3. Once fried, drain excess oil using a kitchen towel. Place 1-2 handfuls of gari granules into a medium size bowl and add some fresh clean water. You will notice some chaff floating in the bowl, carefully drain this off. Then add another portion of fresh clean water and if you notice any more chaff floating then drain off. 
4. Finally add enough water to cover the gari, add sugar and iced cubes, serve with the sea food medley.