Spinach Egusi Soup With Stockfish and Shrimp

This is my usual egusi soup recipe, somehow like this first one, with spinach but with the egusi cooked in the soup. This time also, I had just been to the African store, and had a new supply of stockfish, aka okporoko or panla.


Ingredients

3 cups Ground Egusi
5 pounds of your choice of beef, cut
1 pack of cut-up dried cod (okporoko/panla)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large tomato, diced in large pieces
2 tablespoons of ground crayfish
3 teaspoons of ground pepper
1 cup of palm oil
2 cubes of maggi
2 packs of frozen chopped spinach
1 Pack of frozen large tailed shrimp
Salt to taste

How I Make Palm Oil Bitter Leaf Soup

I would have titled this Banga soup but I've noticed that the people to whom these named soups are supposedly native to are quite touchy when the soups are made from creative recipes different from the ones they're used to. When I was growing up, my mum would make something similar to this recipe and we would call it palm nut bitter leaf soup in Igbo which I later found was quite similar to what is called Banga. In this recipe, palm nut is replaced with palm oil.

Ingredients

5 pounds of beef
3 fresh peppers
1 medium sized onion
3 heaped tablespoons of crayfish
1 pack of frozen shrimp
1 pack of dried bitterleaf
1 teaspoon of mixed native soup spices
3 ladlefuls of cocoyam flour
5 ladlefuls of palm oil

How to Make Nsala Soup - also called White Soup

Ofe Nsala is one of the soups I believe that is native to Asaba, it is also prepared in other parts of Nigeria and called White soup in general because most times, it is cooked without palm oil. The pale greenish color comes from the utazizi leaf and maybe some of the spices.

Nsala is sometimes made for new mothers, and should be usually liquid enough to be sipped from a spoon, but some also prefer the thicker version. There are probably as many recipes for cooking Nsala as there are people who have ever cooked it, but this is just my simple recipe.

Ingredients

5 pounds of your choice of meat, here I use Chicken Drunsticks
6 Cafish Filets
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large tomato, diced in large pieces
2 tablespoons of ground crayfish
3 teaspoons of ground pepper
2 cubes of maggi chicken
2 tablespoons of ground dry Utazizi or Utazi
3 teaspoons of Nsala spices mixture
5 Ladle spoons of poundo yam powder for thickening
Salt to taste

Menu Ideas - How to Make Amala, eat with Ogbono

I've blogged about how I prepare my ogbono soup with Okro and this is a continuation. Most Nigerian soups are eaten with a variety of foo-foo, from poundo yam, cassava, amala, and eba. Some have added blended oatmeal to the list as well as mash potatoes. Today's menu idea is using amala, which is dried yam flour, also called Elubo by Atala. The preparation is simple;

Ingredients

Elubo
Water

Directions

1. In a medium sized pot, bring the water to a slow boil. Also heat some water in an electric kettle, or set aside some of the boiling water in a cup.
2. Add the Elubo flour to the water in the pot, and stir.
3. If it is thick, add some boiled water from the kettle. If too soft, add some more elubo.
4. Continue to stir until you get your desired consistency, it should ideally be smooth in texture without lumps.

Boiled Potatoes With Celery and Tomato Stew

I love vegetable sauces, I like that between 15 - 25 minutes I have a ready meal when I need it. I can either stir-fry, fry, steam or just saute a mix of my choice of vegetables and voila! Food is ready. Celery is one of those vegetables I got introduced to after I left Nigeria, and I fell in love with it's refreshing taste and flavor. I had to be sure how it is cooked, and unlike most vegetables, this actually requires 15 - 20 minutes to be well cooked.

To make this stew, you need the following;
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
A small bunch of celery stalks with some hearts if possible. Washed and sliced
Four medium sized tomatoes, chopped
Half a medium sized onion, sliced
Ground pepper,
Salt and spices to taste.

How I Cook Ogbono Soup with Okro

Ogbono is a taboo for Asaba people, according to my dad. My dad was a traditional man, though a Christian, and I loved that he kept us grounded to our culture. The story goes that back in the days, Asaba people could eat whatever they liked including Ogbono. Most of them followed traditional religion, and were worshippers of Onishe, a river goddess.

Onishe treasured purity, and her color was white, which meant that all her followers only came to her shrine wearing akwa ocha. On a certain day, a man ate Ogbono, unknowningly stained his clothes and still came to worship. Onishe was not happy, and banned the drawy soup ingredient since it made her worshippers sloppy and dirty. Since then, a lot of people discarded it from the menu.

We grew up in Enugu, but my parents, from their own parents, were used to not cooking or eating Ogbono. My mum made her okro soup with enough okro and vegetable to thicken the sauce. So ogbono was not something I was used to until I went to boarding house, where without it, our soups would have become rivers of water with oil floating on top. Of course I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

My Afang Soup Recipe with Okazi and Spinach

This was my first time of cooking Afang soup, ever, and I'm very happy at how it turned out. On one of our irregular trips to the African store, I picked up Utazi for my Nsala and when I saw a dried vegetable pack labelled Okazi, I also picked it up. I knew it was used in Afang soup, I had eaten it before and remembered it was a bit similar to Edika Iikong soup. I had made the latter before and thought, hey, I can make Afang with that recipe too.

To give kudos to whom it is due though, this would have been a disaster if not for coming across Eya's Afang recipe post before I made my soup. She mentioned that her Afang was pounded/ground. I was confused, but almost overlooked it. Her Afang was fresh and leafy, while mine was dry, store-packed and already cut. Still, that stuck.

Thank God for the internet. When I was ready to make mine, I googled ground Afang, and up popped some other Nigerian recipe sites. One specifically mentioned that when you buy dry, cut, store-packed Afang, you had to soak it in hot water for at least an hour, and then blend like a smoothie. And so the cooking began, with my adapted recipe below...

How I make Egusi Soup with Spinach

Egusi soup is one of my favorite soups and I usually have it in the freezer after making a big pot. Sometimes I have to wait for a trip to the African store in order to make it, or I use what I have at home. Of course the basics have to be there, like the egusi itself, but most of the other ingredients can be improvised. This particular recipe is quite simple and traditional, as you'll see.

I cook two types of Egusi, one with bitterleaf and with the egusi boiled in the meat stock, and the other type with a more bland vegetable - ugu, kale, spinach, waterleaf - and I fry the egusi in the oil I'm using. This difference in preparation makes for a change in taste, flavor and texture and I love the versatility it gives me. Below is my recipe for the Spinach Egusi Soup.