Cooking for Someone from Home When You Are Far from It

Ask anyone who has lived abroad for a while what they miss, and after family they will name a food. Not a restaurant food. A house food. Egusi the way one particular aunt made it. Kenkey from a specific stall. Jollof cooked over charcoal at a wedding nobody can quite date. You cannot send that in a message. But you can cook it.

If things are going well and you have reached the stage of meeting, or of sending each other photos of your Sunday, consider this: one of the most quietly powerful things you can do is make the dish they mentioned missing.

A few practical notes for those of us cooking in Canadian kitchens.

Find your shops. Most cities now have an African grocer or three, and the Caribbean shops carry a great deal of what we need: yam, plantain, dried fish, palm oil, pepper, ogbono, crayfish. Ask the person at the counter; they know who is from where and what they cook. If you are somewhere small, the bigger shops in Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Calgary and Edmonton will post.

Adapt without apologising. The scotch bonnets here are milder. The tomatoes are wetter. The chicken tastes different. You are not making a lesser version; you are making the diaspora version, which is its own tradition now, and it is the one your children will miss one day.

If you are cooking for a first visit, do not attempt the twelve-hour dish. Choose something you have made many times and that will forgive you if the conversation runs long. Keep the meal a background to the talking, not a performance.

If you are the guest, eat. Praise something specific. Ask who taught them. Offer to wash up, and mean it. If the food was not quite right, that is not what the evening was about, and you will both know it.

And if you cannot cook at all, say so cheerfully and take them to the place that does it best. Sitting across a plate of food from home, six thousand kilometres from home, with someone who understands why it matters, is a good enough date for anyone.