Nigerian food enters the fray thanks to chef Lope
Lope Ariyo is “more than happy to introduce the world to African cuisine”. This time last year, the 24-year-old home cook was sitting her final maths exams at Loughborough University, while entering a Red magazine competition to discover a cook destined to take an African cuisine mainstream.
She fed the judges her signature hibiscus chicken dish, and dazzled them with her contemporary approach to Nigerian cooking, and the result is her debut cookbook, Hibiscus (she’s obsessed with hibiscus).
Lope calls it “an entry point” into West African cuisine, as it blends her British background, growing up in East Croydon, with her memories of the food she ate during the couple of years she spent at boarding school in Nigeria.
“The idea that my cooking style has to be either Nigerian or British just sounds really bizarre to me,” she explains over a slice of lemon drizzle cake. “It’s very hard for me to separate those two cultures, and that definitely shows in my cooking.”
It means she’s battling two fronts though: first, those who “shy away” from trying less wellknown foods and cuisines, and second, those who are loyal to traditional Nigerian cooking methods (and would find Lope’s jollof ‘cauliflower’ rice to be breaking all the rules).
But, says Lope, “you’re getting a generation of people who want to share food and their culture with other people”, and she’s a pioneer of that. In fact, she’s been named the Observer Rising Star of Food 2017, and the cook “who may change the way we see African food in Britain”.
“I love that, there’s so much on my shoulders, but I still love it,” she says with a laugh.
At home, the food blogger became the main cook at around 13. “The only reason is, I’m a very picky eater, so my mum was like, ‘Do you know what? I’m tired of you, just do it yourself,” she explains, breaking off into laughter. “The moment she said that, it was me, opened up to a whole new world.”
When it comes to opening more eyes, and bellies, to Nigerian cooking, Lope particularly wants to convince people of the “many uses for the traditional ingredients that haven’t really been explored yet.”
It helps that core Nigerian ingredients are becoming increasingly available in supermarkets. “When I was growing up, I’d never see Nigerian ingredients in Tesco or Sainsbury’s, now – it’s still in the ‘ethnic’ section - but the fact it’s there is great.”