Being trained only by your Dad might come with some disadvantages when it comes to culinary skills because you get to learn cooking styles that might not be the norm but are created from a male or convenience point of view.
I could remember the first day when I was asked to cook outside my home—it was in my cousins' home. I went there for the summer holidays. I was 14 years old, and I boasted among my cousins that my culinary skills were better than theirs. It got into a dispute, and to settle it, their mom decided we could do a mini-competition between me and her children. To make the competition equal, my male cousin—Femi, the second-eldest, was asked to represent their family, so it would be a proper boy vs. boy competition.
In my country, most people look at cooking as a girl/lady/woman business, and most boys/men don't know how to cook or have little interest in cooking.
But this cousin of mine was different. Although he was a boy in a family with two girls, an older sister, and a younger one, he was someone who loved to assist his mom in the kitchen, and I heard he started cooking at the age of 8. Unlike me, who had to learn cooking not because of my love of it but because my dad deemed it necessary for me to watch and learn.
The table was set, and it was time for us to show off our culinary skills. The food to be cooked was "jollof rice."
For those who are reading this and don't know about jollof rice, let me tell you a little bit about it. Jollof rice is a West African dish that is made with rice, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and different types of spices and seasonings. Each country or region has its own recipe, and jollof rice differs from country to country. There is always a big debate about which country has the best jollof rice.
Back to my story: I and my cousin were given the same set of ingredients and asked to start. My cousin used the conventional recipe for cooking Jollof rice, which consists of making the sauce first, then washing the rice, pouring it into the sauce, and letting it cook with the cooked sauce and the oil. But instead of using this method, I used a method I had seen my dad using, and that was the only method I knew at the time (I believe this method was only suited to bachelors, maybe). I first boiled the rice, then added the sauce, oil, and ingredients to the rice and let it boil together.
While I was cooking, everyone was shocked at my recipe, and even their mom raised her brows in shock. My other cousins were mocking my cooking styles. Finally, the food was done, and the mom was called to taste the food. Her son's food was hard (that was the most common problem with conventional methods). But mine was softer and well suited to eating and even tasting good. Femi and my other cousin also tasted mine and were surprised by the way it tasted, especially because they hadn't eaten any jollof rice that was cooked in that manner. Although, Femi's jollof rice had a richer taste since the sauce was cooked before the rice was poured in.
Their mom, in her wisdom, finally declared the cooking competition a draw and declared that we both cooked well. It was truly a moment of family bonding, and anytime I get to visit these cousins of mine, we still joke about that moment.
This is for day 10 of #Aprilinleo prompt. To learn about it click here