Across Nigeria, you’d be hard-pressed to find recipes where the kola nut manifests in anything but its popular iteration: broken in bits. That is, unless you go (even) farther east to the land of the Yakurr people in Cross River, where yedem’blong shines. It is a dish of bright green, fresh okana leaves (also known as afang or okazi), pomo, dry fish, garden eggs and kola nuts. Its name is derived from yedem (that which is of men) and blong (things) to literally mean ‘things that are of men.’ I’m not sure that this has gendered implications because everyone is allowed to partake of yedem’blong. The platter, typically set out for friends and family members, is accompanied by a hot pepper sauce, fragrant with toasted ehuru and sometimes studded with roasted groundnuts, or toasted, chopped ogbono. To enjoy? Leaf wraps are made, filled with slivers or chunks of kola nut, dry fish and other delights, then dipped into the pepper sauce before eating. To drink? Palm wine works well. 

I first tried this in 2017 and fell deeply in love. After eating the leaf wraps, I spooned the leftovers on chunks of boiled yam, some mashed yam, and topped with shredded greens, dry fish broken into bits, pepper sauce, pomo, and garden eggs with chunks of kola nut. It made me think of Nnu Ego when she first arrived in Lagos to meet Nnaife, her second husband. The day after her arrival, Nnu Ego wants to go to the market so she can cook for her husband, but she is exhausted after a long night of her husband getting to know her. Her brother-in-law who’d brought her to Lagos advises, ‘Don’t go to that market today; we shall use the fish and the yams we brought.’ I feel as though if she knew about yedem’blong, she might have assembled it instead of responding with, ‘But your brother’s friends will come to eat the food cooked by a new wife—suppose they realize that it’s only fishy soup and no meat?’ Her brother-in-law replies with a sympathetic smile, ‘I will tell them that I like only fishy soup.’

Yams feature in this book, from start to finish. As gifts for Ona—Nnu Ego’s mom—at Nnu Ego’s birth; for Nnu Ego’s hand in marriage with her first husband, Amatokwu; during the yam harvest when this same husband’s love has turned sour; in a welcoming dish of pounded yam and okazi soup when she arrives in Lagos to meet Nnaife; and in the delicious, life-giving yam stew—or pottage—Nnu Ego’s neighbour, Iyawo Itsekiri, makes that restores health and life to Oshia, Nnu Ego’s son. I think Nnu Ego would have enjoyed this dish. 

But back to the kola nut. Yedem’blong is one of two recipes I know where the kola nut is venerated by the palate. The other? A kola nut drink from the first comprehensive cookbook on Nigerian cuisine, Miss Williams Cookery Book (1957) by Nigerian author Miss Rhoda Omosunlola Williams (later Mrs Johnston-Smith). In the book, Williams shares a recipe for a kola drink where the kola nuts are crushed and infused in sweet, hot water—like tea. And though I’m familiar with kola nuts and the connection to cola drinks, I had never thought of a variation of the drink as something that also existed at home, in Nigeria. The recipe opens with, ‘Choose red kola nuts.’ And so I do, carefully checking that the kola nuts have more than two lobes as the one-lobed or two-lobed ones have spiritual significance in Igbo cosmology.

Miss Williams wisely advises readers to make sure the mortars they use are free of pepper. Her final words? ‘Only people who eat kola like this drink; and they prefer it taken hot.’ And so I set out to make it, and on the journey, feeling my way about and making it up as I go along, I think about Nnu Ego and her resilience even in the face of great disappointment. I think of the questions of love and worth she battled with, sometimes with a guilty conscience; like when she was mean to a guest of her co-wife, Adaku, who was away, and then shortly after, on Adaku’s return, welcoming this same guest with kola. Honour given, depending on the circumstances.