There are relatives whose names you hear for years before you finally meet them. When you do, something unexpected happens. They don’t feel like strangers; they don’t feel completely familiar either. You know you belong to the same family. You just haven’t learnt each other’s stories yet. That’s what these ingredients have felt like.

Over the past few years, we have found ourselves returning to fonio, teff and bambara beans.

Each one introduced itself differently. One arrived after a search that crossed countries. One surprised us in the most unexpected place, and one had been sitting patiently at the table all along.

The first conversation

Every relationship begins with curiosity. It rarely arrives with confidence. More often, it arrives with questions, a little awkwardness and the willingness to stay long enough for familiarity to grow.

The first time we cooked with teff and fonio, we were surprised by how hesitant we felt. One of us is a chef. The other is a food photographer and stylist. Both of us develop recipes, and together we’ve spent years asking ingredients what else they can become.

Standing in front of ingredients from our own continent, we realised that knowing about something and knowing how to begin are two very different things.

Have you ever met a relative for the first time? You know you belong to the same family, but the conversation doesn’t come naturally. There is a little awkwardness. There’s a pause, then someone asks the first question.

Everything changed when we stopped asking, “What should I make?” and started asking, “What else can you become?”

Fonio

There are relatives you hear about long before you meet them. Their names come up in family conversations. Someone mentions where they live. Someone else recalls a story about them. Over time, they begin to feel familiar even though you’ve never actually met. Meeting fonio felt a little like that.

For Jane, the first challenge wasn’t learning how to cook with it; it was finding it. While working on the recipes for TAMU, she knew fonio belonged in the book. Finding it, however, proved far more difficult than expected.

Living in South Africa, where ingredients from across the continent don’t always travel as easily as people imagine, the search became a conversation in itself. A friend travelling from West Africa agreed to bring some back. There was only one surprise. When Jane asked if she could bring fonio, her friend paused, “What’s fonio?” We still think about that question.

Africa is vast. Its ingredients have travelled different journeys. An ingredient can be part of everyday cooking in one region and remain almost unknown in another.

Livhuwani, living in the United Kingdom, can order fonio online today and have it arrive at her doorstep tomorrow. Jane, living on the African continent and writing recipes for an African cookbook, had to wait for someone travelling from West Africa to carry it home.

Eventually, the grain arrived. Jane opened the bag and ran the tiny grains through her fingers. Then came the same awkward question that begins so many new relationships. Now what?

She did what cooks do: she experimented, tried again and then little by little, the awkwardness disappeared. Fonio found its place in her kitchen. One day it became a salad. Another day it replaced rice in jollof, and then later it found its way into a smoothie. (You can find these recipes in the TAMU cookbook).

Like so many good relationships, these recipes all began with one simple question: “What else can you become?”

teff

It’s easy to think you’ve come to know someone simply because you’ve known their name for a long time. That was teff.

Ask someone about teff and, if they’ve heard of it at all, chances are they’ll think of injera. For good reason. injera is one of the world’s great breads.

It is a remarkable expression of culture, craftsmanship and community. For many people, it is impossible to think of teff without thinking of the dish it has become famous for. For a long time, that was where our own conversation with teff ended. We admired it through injera. We respected it through tradition, and we never really thought to ask it another question.

Then, while talking through this article, we discovered something that made us both laugh. A few years earlier, Livhuwani had made a chocolate teff pudding. Jane had made gluten-free chocolate teff brownies; neither of us knew the other had reached for chocolate. Working years apart in different kitchens, we had both arrived at the same place.

There was another surprise. Both recipes used the whole grain itself instead of teff flour. The combination worked beautifully. The teff brought warmth and depth to the chocolate without overpowering it. Neither of us expected the pairing to work so naturally, but it did. That small coincidence changed the conversation.

We stopped thinking about teff only through the lens of injera and started seeing it as an ingredient we were still getting to know.

That made us want to spend even more time with it.

Bambara beans

The older we get, the more we realise who has been holding the family together all along. It is rarely the loudest person in the room. More often, it is the grandmother whose wisdom has never needed announcing. She doesn’t speak often. She doesn’t need to, but when she does, everyone listens.

Bambara beans remind us of her.

Across South Africa, they are easy to find if you know where to look. They fill bowls in village markets, appear on roadside stalls and are sold by women who have been cooking them for generations. Among the Venda people, they are known as phonda. In parts of East Africa they are called njugu. Across the continent, they answer to many different names, each carrying its own memories, recipes and stories.

Like the grandmother at the table, they have never asked to be the centre of attention. They have simply continued showing up. Feeding families and doing what they have always done.

When we are younger, it is easy to overlook what has always been there. The familiar has a way of becoming almost invisible. It is only later that we begin to recognise its value. Bambara beans ask very little of us, only time. They ask us to slow down while the pot simmers. To wait, to trust that good things rarely arrive in a hurry.

Recently, we found ourselves asking Bambara beans the same question we had asked fonio and teff: “What else can you become?” The answers surprised us. They found their way into salads, dips and recipes neither of us had imagined before. Each new recipe felt like another conversation. Another opportunity to get to know them a little better.

That is what the people closest to us do. They keep revealing new parts of themselves, not because they have changed, but because we have spent long enough together to finally notice. Bambara beans feel like that, and we have a feeling we’re only just getting to know them.

Continuing the conversation

The best relationships don’t end after the first meeting. They grow. One conversation leads to another. One meal becomes the beginning of the next. The more time we spend together, the more there is to discover. That is what these ingredients have given us; not all the answers. Simply another reason to return to the kitchen. To cook, taste and ask another question. We hope they do the same for you.

Visit a market and come home with an ingredient you’ve never cooked before. Make that recipe you’ve been saving. Experiment, get it wrong and try again. Ask, “What else can you become?”

Support the farmers growing these ingredients, the market traders selling them, and the writers, chefs and food storytellers helping to carry their stories from one generation to the next.

Relationships are built by spending time together. The same is true of food. The more time we spend with an ingredient, the more it reveals itself and, every now and then, the more it reveals about us.

The world is only beginning to wake up to ingredients like fonio, teff and bambara beans. We hope this piece becomes part of that awakening. More than anything, we hope it inspires you to begin a conversation of your own.

We can’t wait to see where it takes you.