Bukky's Nigerian Tomato Sauce

My friend from forever, Bukky, shared her recipe for the tomato sauce that she makes all the time. It was very simple and very yummy so I'm sharing it here with you.









Cut in chunks and put in blender:

1 lb tomatoes (she said she fills up her blender)
1 medium onion
2+ cloves of garlic (to your taste, there's no such thing as too much garlic here)

Blend. Then heat a pot on the stove until it gets very hot. Add

1 T of oil or so

When it gets really hot, throw in

Some sliced onions just to flavor the oil, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of one.

When onions are translucent, pour the tomato mixture into the pot. Add:

1/2 small can of tomato paste
Meat (lb of ground beef or chicken pieces if you're not vegetarian, I threw in a can of mashed vegetarian Swiss Steak and it was great)
Chicken broth (powdered or cube like Knorr, to taste)
Curry powder (also to taste)
Thyme (to taste)
Hot pepper, chopped (optional, she uses 1-2 habaneros, I'm too chicken so I just put a bit of powdered cayenne pepper)
1-2 bay leaves
Salt to taste

Stir well, wait until bubbling, then cover pot slightly, lower heat and cook forever. Well, she said at least for 40 minutes until there's sauce splattered all over your stovetop, and then you know it's done. I waited, let it simmer and bubble for 40 minutes and sure enough, my stovetop was splattered all over with tomato sauce and I felt like I had achieved the proper Nigerian tomato sauce. And it was good. Especially served over cous-cous.

Soymilk

After much thought about all the soymilk we buy (which we mostly use for cereal during the days Jeremy works and we don't have time to make a proper breakfast) and all the other added who-knows-what they add in the stuff to make it thicker and taste more like cows' milk, I have decided to start making soymilk from scratch, which is an easy enough process. It also has the added benefit of the beany flavor that I love which is usually mostly removed from most brands on the shelf here. So today was my first attempt. I called my mom to get the recipe from the person I've watched make soymilk the most. She gave me the following:

Measure 2 cups of dried soybeans. Soak overnight in approximately 10 cups of water for 12-24 hours.
Drain and rinse beans several times in cold water. The soaked beans will come out to approximately 5 cups of soaked beans.
Puree 1 cup of soaked beans with 1 cup of water in blender until smooth. (You can probably do this 2 cups at a time depending on your blender). Continue with this 1:1 ratio until all beans have been pureed.
You can either 1) pour the puree in large saucepan, add 4 cups of water and bring to boil over medium to high heat or 2) strain the puree first through a sieve or cheesecloth (the way my mom always does it). This time around I thought maybe more soymilk would be extracted from if I boiled it all together so I used Method 1.
Stir constantly to avoid burning the milk. Then simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Strain through sieve or cheesecloth (for Method 1). I recommend you wait a bit until the soymilk has cooled down significantly before straining it so you can squeeze the milk out better (without burning yourself or enveloping yourself in steam--like I did). I added about 4 more cups of water to the soymilk because I found it too thick and put about 3 T of honey (or you can use sugar) in it to sweeten it and make it more palatable for us. Ahn had a beautiful description with her recipe that I just found now. She also recommends that for a richer taste you can soak some peanuts with your beans the night before and/or add a few drops of vanilla afterwards. If you have a hold of pandan leaves, you can boil the milk with a pandan leaf for the pandan flavor. Experiment to see what is best for you. I used only 1 cup of dried beans for this and filled a small 1 liter or so pitcher. I read somewhere that it keeps for 3 days so I didn't want to make too much. It really is not hard to do and if you want to avoid those extra preservatives or thickeners, this is the way to go.