Nigerians love their tomatoes, so their culinary life has been hit hard by soaring prices across the country caused by a pest wiping out crops.

In some markets you can pay as much as $2 (£1.40) for a single tomato.

The prices have been steadily rising since March - and last month a state of emergency was declared in the tomato sector of one state.

"This tomato crisis is no joke. My mom's friend grows tomatoes and sent us a little box and my mom looks like she's going to cry," one tweeter said this week.

Halima Umar, a journalist in the BBC's Abuja bureau who colleagues say is an excellent cook, says she used to buy a basket of tomatoes a week - but now her family is having to get used to life without them.

"I've tried using preserved tomatoes in sachets as an alternative, but they turn stews sour - and are also expensive because they're imported," she said.

Nigerian food blogger Dunni Obata tried to help out by tweeting a link to her tomato-less stew.

"@DooneysKitchen to the rescue… hoping the price of substitutes don't go up," one person tweeted.

Other recipes are also being shared, including by Olapeju Aiyegbayo, who runs the catering company Zurielle's Pot in Ibadan.

She has helpfully posted videos on her Facebook page, showing how to prepare them.

Though not everyone who has experimented with the various recipes has been so complimentary about how things turned out. One man complained, not naming names: "This lady just messed up my rice and beans with this tomato-less stew... shame on everybody responsible for this tomato crisis."

Ms Obata explains why stews are ubiquitous in Nigerian cooking.

"Wherever in the world a Nigerian is, there is bound to be a stew in the fridge. Even people who don't cook, manage stew," she explains on her blog Dooney's Kitchen.

Nigerian chef and food writer Nky Iweka, who calls herself "the executive Mama Put" - after the colloquial name for food stall vendors in Nigeria - said someone once told her that "Nigerian tomato stew (sauce to the rest of the world) is one of the world's culinary wonders".

"I'm inclined to agree. I use it in all manner of ways: To make bolognaise, as a pizza base, to eat with boiled rice, plantain or yam and of course to make our beloved jollof rice," she told the BBC.

"So when I read about the tomato shortage in Nigeria, I understood their despair."

BBC journalist and tomato farmer Nasidi Adamu Yahaya explains:

The pest is actually a moth called the Tomato Leaf Miner, or Tuta Absoluta and it first appeared in early March. It has mainly affected states in the north: Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna and Katsina, but has also caused mayhem in Plateau and Lagos.

I have some land in Kano, from which I can produce about 30,000 tomatoes - that's about 2,000 big baskets. I was lucky because I planted early and managed to harvest all the fruit by mid-March, but you can harvest until May and those who planted a little later, like my best friend, have lost nearly all their crop.

The moths ravage the whole plant - leaves, tomatoes and stalk. They're like termites devouring wood.

It has cost the sector millions of dollars and affected 80% of farmers. But there is hope for the next season, as the Nigeria's National Research Institute for Chemical Technology has told the BBC that it has developed a pesticide that should eradicate the ravenous moths.

However, Ms Iweka, says the fact that tomatoes have become a culinary staple is ironic as they are not native to Nigeria.

"Traditionally, we would not have used tomatoes in any of the wide variety of dishes we have: Yam pottage, bean casserole, okro soup, oha soup, onugbu soup, nsala soup."

It's the love of rice that has led to the tomato anguish, as "most Nigerians eat rice at least once a day", she says.

"However, we do have other sauces that can be eaten with rice: Ayamase stew, thickened fisherman's soup, curry, various vegetable soups, bean casserole."

And the four quoted cooks have given the BBC permission to reproduce their recipes to help Nigerians through this time of "tomato-geddon".