Uncooked Women

Before Nigerian food can take its place on the world stage, there's work to do at home. Nearly 70% of food shipped abroad gets rejected over poor trade facilitation, and 60-65% of harvests are lost before they even reach a market. Nigeria exports raw ingredients, but struggles to export finished, shelf-stable products. In this episode of Uncooked Women, two Nigerian-owned hospitality brands ar...

How did a food blog started to promote a small business end up on Anthony Bourdain's radar? Food innovator Atim Ukoh, known as Afrolems, shares how her blog became a launchpad for a feature on the Lagos episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, where she, her mother, Iquo Ukoh, and Ozoz Sokoh made Nigerian food history on screen. In this episode of Uncooked Women, Adaorah Oduah talks with A...

10 years ago, Chef Nkesi Enyioha launched HSE Gourmet, a rare Nigerian-owned, woman-built restaurant serving gourmet comfort food inspired by her travels, from aromatic pho to a hearty beef pot pie.  What started as a private catering service became a cafe, then almost by accident, a full restaurant, and today, HSE is a homegrown staple of Lagos' dining scene. In this episode, Adaorah Oduah talks...

Why did an imported seasoning cube become a kitchen staple across West Africa while Iru aka dawdawa, the umami-rich fermented locust bean used across West African cuisine, never got the same shot? In this Season 2 premiere of Uncooked Women, award-winning food writer Adaorah Oduah sits down with Chef Moyo Akinbo, founder of the Atije Experience and winner of The Kitchen Season 1, and a researcher...

Chef Wu keeps it spicy in and out of the kitchen. After running a successful Afro-Caribbean food catering business in London, she moved to Lagos to start Oùnję Co. — her hospitality consultancy firm. Braised ox cheek pepper soup, and plantain brûlée are some of the dishes she serves at private dinners, and on the side, she’s on a mission to make Nigerian hospitality better ‘One Bite at a Time’. Sh...

Cobi-Jane Akinrele wants Nigerian female farmers to get paid. She’s the founder of The Aké Collective, a health and wellness company that’s making fonio more accessible. After leaving the Cambridge countryside for Lagos, she planned to start an agri-tech business in Jos after completing her NYSC. But, when she met women growing and selling fonio for extra income, she changed plans and business mod...

Jumoke Toyobo makes a delicious garri sorbet. Known in the kitchen as Chef TYB, she’s a private chef and restaurant consultant who serves immersive dining experiences with menus that match her diverse culinary background. From pub kitchens in Portsmouth to Michelin starred restaurants in London, and now recently back from a gastro-tour of North America, she joins Ada & Lamisko to chat about th...

Inside Chef FT’s Toronto apartment, you’ll find him serving guests fusions like banga risotto with sea snails, and garri tostadas finished with a honey bean puree. What started as a barbecuing gig evolved into Lamuren Inc., his company that curates contemporary Nigerian dining experiences across Toronto, and most recently New York. Ada & Lamisko dig into his life as a product designer by day a...

Mosun Aderinokun, and her elder brother Dare, are the brains and bartenders behind Quacktails - a mobile cocktail bar and delivery service that’s refining the classics with fresh syrups and seasonal produce, while also mixing up signature cocktails like the Sapele ginger and the Okoroshi. Ada & Lamisko kick-back with co-founder Mosun who walks them through the ABCs of drinking, a brief history...

Anjola Awosika has one of the most mouthwatering Instagram accounts in Nigeria. If you’ve eaten it, Anjola has most likely shot it. He tells Nigerian food stories through photography and film and is elevating West African food, one shot at a time. Ada & Lamisko dig their way into his journey from baker to blogger and finally founder of Ata Rodo Magazine.

Ada and Lamisko are officially back from sabbatical! Their kitchen, now under new management, presents the menu for this episode: Nigerian-Kazakh-Surinamese fusion origin stories, lightly roasted ex-business partners, and the podcast lore as the final apéritif. Enjoy!

When Nestle and Unilever introduced Maggi and Knorr bouillon cubes to West Africa almost 70 years ago, they took over an informal umami market run mostly by women. Before bouillon, we used fermented beans and seeds like iru and ogili, to deepen the flavours of our soups and stews. Today, both Maggi and Knorr market their seasoning cubes to Nigerian women as a means to the end of modern womanhood -...

In Nigeria, street food means tasty portable snacks like Àkàrà and Suya, but it also means bowls of pepper soup and loaded plates of rice and stew served from the many bukas that crowd street corners. Street food culture is run by the city with the most streets - Lagos, the port city that used to be a center for international trade. These Lagos streets keep most of Nigeria's working population...

The West African jollof wars are friendly internet banter about an umami-rich rice dish beloved across the region. When we’re not fighting about who makes it best, we’re reluctantly agreeing that the region owes the recipe to Senegal, the real winners of the Jollof war.  Food historian, writer, photographer, and all-round jollof connoisseur, Ozoz Sokoh, joins us to talk about the significance of W...

Amos Shackleford initially arrived in Lagos from Jamaica to work on the railroads, but he would go on to make Nigerian food history. When Shackleford started his bakery from Ebute Metta in the 1920s, he would use his business savvy to feed a growing appetite for bread across the country. On this episode we stop by one of our favorite restaurants in Lagos - Jamksi - to eat some hardo bread, the anc...

Every bottle of Budweiser or Heineken is made to taste the exact same wherever you’re drinking around the world…and that gets boring. Cue, Craft Beer & Craft Breweries — smaller breweries that are popping up everywhere and making refreshing new twists to the world’s most widely consumed alcohol. Think pepper infused beers, or yam beer! They may seem new or even outlandish, but craft beers borrow f...

During the #EndSARS movement, several small businesses paused their day-to-day operations to feed thousands of people for FREE. On this episode we reflect on the anniversary of the #EndSARS protests and how food and those vendors gave Nigeria the longest protest it’s had in the past 4 decades. Special thanks to Taedo Bills whose song - ‘25’ is featured in the opening credits of this episode.

On this episode, the uncooked women dig into one of their favourite things - restaurants that provide food they didn’t have to cook! We head to the Syrian Club, a restaurant and social club that’s been in Lagos since the 80’s, to speak with Tamer about migration into Lagos and all the food that has come with it. The restaurant industry has become a natural hub for the migrant population and these...

We’re back baby! It’s a brand new season of connecting the food we didn’t cook to just about everything. Join us as we eat our way through Nigerias rich gastronomy and connect the dots between food, history, politics and ourselves as eaters. Stay tuned and subscribe!