Tales by the Fireside

I add salt to my taste and sit back to await the reward of my labour - beans and ripe plantain with a sprinkle of vegetable. My favourite. The delicious aroma has already begun to assault my olfactory lobes. As the smoke from the pot dances gently as it makes its way to the ceiling where it disappears; my thoughts drift back into time.

Father never failed to remind us, his sons, that we come from a long line of great cooks.

''My father was such a great cook that the white man, John Holt, employed him speacially to be preparing his meals,'' he would say.

''And he learnt from his father, your great grandfather, the art of cooking. He had no rival in the whole village.''

Those were the sermon he regaled us with whenever we gather to wait for mother to serve dinner.

''All of us (him and my uncles) are so good that our wives cannot do shakara for us when it comes to food. We'd just enter the kitchen and prepare something that would make them die of shame,'' he would declare.

We always listened with as much relief as pride. Relief that we would not undergo the arduous task of learning how to cook, and proud that we belonged to that exclusive class of a dying breed; our culinary skill was forged right from the womb.

Mother always smiled in whispered amusement whenever she encountered him delivering those lines to us. She never uttered a word.

Then mother lost her mother and had to travel to the village.

On Sunday morning, I was ill and could not attend Mass with my siblings.

Father decided to fry akara before the others return from church.

I was so excited about the idea I had to leave my sick mat to run the little errands - bring oil, wash the spoon, look for the match stick.

Everything was moving smoothly. The beans had been ground into a paste, the frying pan and oil were ready, the heat from the stove was already burning my skin. I did not mind. The joy of crisp akara and hot pap for breakfast enveloped me like darkness on a moonless night.

Finally, it was time for father to scoop spoonfuls of the beans paste into the frying pan. That was when it began.

Every paste that hits the oil travels smoothly through the oil, like a stone cast into the sea, and settles at the bottom.

I have watched mother perform this same chore on more than a hundred occasions. This was different.

''Papa, why is the akara not standing on the oil?'' I asked.

He looked at me, returned his stare to the frying pan and frowned his brows as if he was pondering my question.

I waited for his reply. He continued to gaze at the fire.

I repeated my question.

''Go and get me more oil,'' he snapped.

I sauntered off to fetch the gallon from which he poured more oil into the frying pan.

An hour later, we were eating breakfast in silence. Father was munching at the oil-soaked akara furiously; my elder sister was unusually quiet; my euphoria had turned to agony.

A cousin told me how they passed through a similar ordeal when they were kids. No sooner had their mum gone on a trip than their dad served them a hint of what to expect for the next three days their mum would be gone. He prepared Jollof rice with the pepper almost outnumbering the rice seeds. And then he added the obnoxious smelling Ogiri to spice up the dish. The entire family developed a hole in the anus.

The bobbing sound of the lid against the pot jolts me back to the present. The aroma of my handiwork has already drifted into every nook and cranny of the entire house and has spilled into the compound. I could hear the barking of the dogs.

I lift the lid, stir the contents for the last time, and using my hand towel, I bring the pot down. Lunch is served.

Then it hit me.

I had forgotten to add onions.