For now, let’s begin with corn mosa.
This is Nigerian corn mosa, and I wager it is related to hot water cornbread from the American South.
She served them with a sprinkling of sugar. Experiencing this inspired me to research so I could better grasp the origins of mosa, and trace it as far support as I could.
William describes corn mosa as being made from eyin ogi “(93) mosa (masa) is made by grinding the ‘eggs’ (eyin) with sugar, adding a little water, moulding into lumps, and frying in oil.”
In his April 1951 paper, Yoruba Cooking, the second of two papers on Yoruba cuisine, he describes the corn fritters referenced in Yoruba food as Lapata, and describes how it is made.
- Between 1912 and 1959, the West African Currency Board (WACB) issued pounds and Shillings and acted as the primary bank for British colonies of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast and Nigeria. It was succeeded by the Bank of Ghana in 1958, Main Bank of Nigeria in 1959, Bank of Sierra Leone in 1964, and The Gambia Currency Board in 1965.
- The Nigerian Naira and Kobo were introduced in 1973, replacing the Nigerian Pound and Shilling, and remain to this day though the kobo is all but gone. Everything is priced in Naira.
- Lumps of sugar were popular for decades before cubes were invented and generally a lump represented a teaspoon of sugar.
The 1852 A vocabulary of the Yoruba language lists akara-lapata as a cake made of maize.
In conclusion, there were historically multiple fritter like corn-based dishes, and nothing went to waste.
The huge bowl she had was complete of corn snacks, which were extremely light – and it’s no wonder as she carried the huge bag of the snacks together with ease, something she wouldn’t have been able to do if the fritters were heavy. She had three types fashioned from dried corn I think.
This all began because one day in 2018, or 2019, I came across a food seller hawking corn mosa at New Advertise, Oniru – Lagos. For a minute, I thought the soft corn mosa was made from fresh corn but it is additionally anticipated that it is a different cooking process that shapes the outcome.
Nigerians love crunch, and soft, and crunch :). And then you have the crumbs sold in small bags which colour-wise look like they are from the darker fritters. I call it the love for krum-krum.
In this case, I think the lighter coloured mosa were either made with fresh corn or fried once, and the deeper brown ones which were crunchy, were made with dry corn and maybe fried twice.
He made his opening travel to Nigeria in 1937 at the age of 25. During his a lot of periods of residence in Nigeria, he and his wife Berta Montero Bascom assembled one of the foremost collections of books and art of the Yoruba people, their folklore, and background.”
He “was the earliest American anthropologist to do field work among the Yoruba public of Nigeria. Over the next 23 years he spent a total of 5 years among the Yoruba, learning their culture and folklore and describing in detail all aspects of their life.
But who was William Bascom?
The final ingredient listed was Fried oil, which changed in the 2002 edition to Oil for frying.
The other one is plantain or banana mosa, part of the quartet or sextuplet of Nigerian Small Chops.
It is one of two mosas, fritters I recognize in Nigeria.
So what else do the recipes tell?
It moreover struck me that lapata and hot water cornbread made in the American South bear some resemblance to one another, at least ingredient-wise, if not shape.
N100 is 100 Naira
Eyin ogi is furthermore described as grits of some separate, generally of the corn fibre, kernels (?). A reference to eyin is made related to yam “similar yam grits.”
The earliest one showed two examples – soaked corn that was integrated, seasoned and then split in two.
They say something on sugar, and you see divided types from the Jack Frost brand to “unnamed” cubes likely St. Louis sugar in a blue packet which dominated the market for decades. Some reflections:
Then there was sugar, also noted by expense not quantity.
There is too a cross-reference together with the Kudeti Book of Yoruba Cookery. Bascom in the footnotes suggests that sugar here is a substitute for salt, reflecting European impact.
From the descriptions he gives, while lapata is made together with whole fresh or dried corn, mosa is made alongside the remains from preparing ogi. Whilst there’s pepper in lapata, no mention of that is made in the case of mosa which features sugar. These appear to be two distinct dishes.
At first I thought lapata was the same as corn mosa but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Ogi is a fermented corn product made by soaking dry corn kernels in water for a few days, changing the water daily till it ferments then rinsing, grinding, and passing to distinct the fluid starch from the chaff.
From my basic knowledge of Yoruba, and ogi, I translated eyin ogi – eggs of ogi.
This day, that wouldn’t hold well as a route of speaking to quantities because value and quantity don’t correlate the way I envision they might have done in the past.
The other thing is that in all 4 recipes the ingredients list is alike. In all 4, the opening ingredient, some gentle of corn, related to ogi – a pap known as ogi, akamu, pap, was “eyin ogi” referenced by the price and not by quantities.
They highlight currency changes from 1940 to 2002. Some notes:
Share all.
So what do you know on lapata, corn mosa, and hot water corn bread?
I have several copies of the Kudeti book – 1940 revised, 1965 2nd edition, 1979 3rd edition, and the 2002 repackaged. It is interesting or should I say, I locate it fascinating to review the recipes and observe changes – to ingredients, words, methods, and greater. The differences speak to multiple things – changes in currency for example.
As for me, I’ve done my bit :).
So what’s eyin ogi?
The skins are again floated and caught in a strainer, using water from the top of the second pot so that the explanation does not become too diluted.
The coarse particles of the flesh of broken kernels, understood as ‘eggs’ (eyin, eyin ogi), and the unbroken kernels, which remain at the bottom of the opening pot, are put back into the mortar and pounded again or are ground on a grinding stone. Any kernels and ‘eggs’ which still remain are pounded or ground again, the treat being repeated four or five times, or extra if new corn has been added, until so little remains at the bottom that it is not worth while continuing.
