I totally forgot about the lunch I had the other day with Charles!

Charles is a friend of mine from uni, who is doing a PhD in Rheology of Electro-Rheological Fluids (ERF's). Charles started his PhD at the same time as me, and did his undergraduate course in Chemical Engineering also here at Sydney Uni.

He wanted to have lunch so we could chat, and stuff incase I finish and dissapear into the work force without getting to catch up before I go, and since he lived nearby he offered to cook lunch. Since he is Nigerian by birth and raised there until he came to Australia for study, he offered to cook traditional nigerian food, so I thought that would be great.

The dish he cooked was really beautiful. A mixture of smoked fish that had been stewed to soften and make stock, with prawns, and Okura that had been blended, with some salt, and chilli stuff. Due to the okura content, it was very thick and sticky, but it is made to be that way. The dish is completed with semolina flour cooked so that you get a big blob of it.

The way you eat it is with your hands, traditional style. You knead off a small blob of the semolina and work it in your hand until it is soft and malleable, then forming a small patty, you use it to scoop the sticky stew so it coats the patty and swallow it. According to Charles, you can chew or swallow it whole depending on your preferences and size of the blob you make. Apparently my first attempt was very good compared with some other people Charles has fed food to as I didn't make a mess and it went rather smoothly. I couldn't quite figure out how they could stuff up such a simple process of shoving a blob of food into your mouth haha.

It was really nice, salty, spicey and sticky. I should bug him for the recipie and see if there are any ingredients I would need to know specifically about to make it. He also mentioned that it is hard to get good nigerian foodstuffs, though he knows one place that imports it but he misses proper nigerian smoked fish, where it is smoked to extreme dryness and hardness compared with what you get here.

We then also had a really good talk about a few things here and there =) A really nice lunch and afternoon, so thank you Charles.

He's currently writing up a paper and hoping to start writing on his thesis soon. I think he will also finish this year, just a little behind me =P