Duro’s website confides that his Spring/Summer 2010 collection was inspired by Picasso’s Mosqueteros, feather textiles from ancient Peru and 125th Street, Harlem. The lunch that he’s about to make, however, comes straight from his mother’s kitchen in Nigeria: plantain omelette.
“When I was a child,” explains Duro, “my mother, for a real treat, would make omelette with fried plantain on the side. It was usually either omelette on toast, or plantain as a main meal – to have both together was just incredible.”
He makes plantain omelette a lot during fashion week, it transpires. It keeps him calm: “It’s either that or a kir royale, and the colours are so good in a plantain. Jamaicans use them green, but in West Africa we like the ripe, yellow ones.”
To the uninitiated, plantain looks like a big banana, but it has a more subtle taste. It is delicious and it’s incomprehensible that we don’t eat more of it here, though not perhaps to the extent that Duro once did: “When I lived in Paris for two years, I ate it every day; I was addicted. I had to cut down.” Luckily, fashion week this year is going well, so he hasn’t eaten it in such quantities. Nevertheless, between us we managed to polish off a whole pan of fried plantains, and that was before Duro had even started on the accompanying omelette.
“Food was a big thing in my childhood,” he says. He grew up in Nigeria. His grandfather was Head Man of his tribal village and Duro has pictures of him on the wall in a wonderful headdress and tribal robes. “I need home-cooked food. If you buy fresh food, you appreciate what you’ve got and think about how to cook it. These eggs,” he says, rooting about in the fridge, “come from Scotland, for instance.” He breaks eight of them into a bowl; it’s going to be a very big omelette.
“An omelette is an omelette is an omelette,” he says, “but add plantain and it becomes something else altogether. You can put anything you want in an omelette – my mother’s would include potatoes, onion and corned beef…”
He carries on chopping onion, cherry tomatoes and green peppers. More plantain gets fried in oil, until it turns a glorious, golden sticky brown. “In Nigeria,” explains Duro, “you’d put the cooked plantain onto plantain leaves and squeeze the oil out, but here you drain it on paper napkins. You can have plantain like this with a meat sauce, or you can roast it with fish in the oven, put it with mushroom sauce and a salad, or even have plantain chips. Or sometimes, in Nigeria, they do whole plantain sliced in half, seasoned with salt and drizzled with oil and grilled, then eaten with peanut butter…”
Plainly, it’s the world’s most versatile veg. We eat Duro’s plantain omelette as a very un-Nigerian rain pours down outside; it’s rich, fresh and grassy, with banana top notes and a sweet and salty edge. No wonder he's addicted.
DURO'S Plantain omelette
Serves 4
2 plantains, sliced
8 eggs
1 onion, chopped
half an African hot pepper, finely chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
6 cherry tomatoes, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
a handful of chopped chives and parsley to decorate
olive oil
Serves 4
2 plantains, sliced
8 eggs
1 onion, chopped
half an African hot pepper, finely chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
6 cherry tomatoes, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
a handful of chopped chives and parsley to decorate
olive oil
Heat some oil in a large pan, add the plantain and cook until golden brown on both sides. Remove and leave to drain on paper towel. Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Heat some oil in another pan until hot, salt the eggs and tip them into the pan. Turn down the heat. When the omelette is almost cooked, add the chopped vegetables. Continue to cook until the omelette is done and then put under a hot grill for a couple of minutes to brown. Sprinkle with chopped chives and parsley and serve immediately.
Sourced from: http://rubbishmag.blogspot.com
Interview by Carolyn Hart
Photography by Emma Hardy
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