Mechoui (et autres aliments locaux)

It's almost 50 years since I became vegetarian, but I do sometimes serve meat to others. Last Saturday we celebrated Superman's birthday (a week late, due to the earlier security problems), together with his Management Team. This called for a special occasion kind of meal.

We ordered a Mechoui d'agneau - a whole lamb that's been slow-roasted for about 10 hours.

It arrived on a tray, on the head of a small woman. She seemed in a hurry to take it off, so I helped her. Underneath was a coiled up scarf, providing insulation between the tray and her head. I held out my hands to feel it - it was really hot! I made a sympathetic face and we both collapsed in giggles.

The lamb looked disturbingly .... lamb like ... being roast whole with its little ankles tethered together with wire. All together now, "Aaaah". However the assembled crowd seemed to have no problem digging in, and also enjoyed the vegetable tagine and tabouleh salad I'd made to go alongside.

There were enough leftovers that we invited other people over for dinner the next night too.

I promised this would be a blog about 'Life and Food in Niger', but so far there's been so much life that I haven't managed to write about food! Time to correct the balance.

I wondered, moving here, what local produce would be available? Although this is an arid country, there are fertile areas, and we see a lot of crops being grown alongside the river.

The crops are really seasonal - just now we're in carrot season, and you see these bright vegetables being pushed over the bridge and up to market areas all the time. The cart-pushers tend their cargo well, sprinkling them with water through the day, and covering the tender green parts with banana leaves or damp hessian.

There are lots of other vegetables on sale too - many familiar - such as these, pictured in baskets in my pantry (though note the tiny lemons - we have more of these growing on a tree in our garden).

And others, not! I had to do quite some research to figure out these - they are called Yola in the local Hausa language, and they are a kind of aubergine. And - strangely - they are grown in just one specific, very small, village in Italy, where they are called 'African Aubergine'. The place is called Loco Rotonda, and I was there in July!

In terms of more manufactured food products, there's a range of syrups used to make drinks - Bissap (hibiscus) being the most popular, but also ginger, tamarind, lemon.... I made up some Bissap for Superman's birthday party, adding what seemed to me like loads of sugar as I was informed that Sweet is Good here. I asked the female Management Team members if I got the proportions right - they said I did, but I should have added fresh mint to the jug. Who knew?

Also on the sweet side, there's Nigerien honey - which comes from the more fertile area near the border with Niger. Sadly, we won't be able to visit there because of the security risks from Boko Haram and others.

I store the honey in the larder, standing in a dish of water to deter the little ants who share the national obsession for sweet things! The sugar lives in the fridge. In the background you can see some vinegar from Sierra Leone - with exciting pictures of vegetables on it, but turning out to be just vinegar and colouring, and also a small bottle of Nigerien 'Vanilla Flavour', which is all flavouring and no vanilla.

And there is a tradition of pastoralism - livestock being moved from area to area for grazing - which means there is dairy production. I've found excellent local yogurt, and this very good brie-like cheese.

This cheese is very welcome as we soon discovered that almost anything imported is very pricey. The exception seems to be booze. We worked this out by looking over one particularly enormous grocery bill, and discovered that we'd spent the equivalent of €30 for a bottle of whisky and 5 bottles of (decent French and Italian) wine, and €36 on three types of cheese! A classic case of 'live local, eat local'.