Recettes Nigeria

Banga Soup

Banga soup is made from palm fruit, not palm oil, but the pulp extracted from boiled palm nuts, which gives a soup with a completely different weight and flavour from anything oil alone produces. It belongs to the Niger Delta, and particularly to the Urhobo, though it is cooked across southern Nigeria under several names. Ofe akwu is the Igbo version, and while the base is the same the treatment differs, ofe akwu is usually served with rice, while banga is a soup for swallow. Oghwo amiedi and izuwo ibiedi are Urhobo and Isoko names for it. The same palm fruit base appears well beyond Nigeria. In Ghana it becomes abenkwan, palm nut soup; in Cameroon, mbanga soup. It is one of the clearest examples of a single West African technique carrying across borders and taking a different name in each place. What makes banga specifically banga is the spice set. Beletientien, oburunbebe stick, aidan fruit and the Delta spice blends give it an aromatic, slightly resinous character that is quite unlike any other Nigerian soup. The oburunbebe stick in particular is stirred through the pot and left in it. Fresh fish is the classic protein, catfish above all, though assorted meat and dried fish are equally common.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minMediumNigeria · African

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Edikang Ikong (Vegetable Soup)

Edikang ikong, also written edikaikong or ekaikong, is the vegetable soup of the Efik and Ibibio people of southeastern Nigeria, and it is built on a deliberately generous quantity of two leaves. Ugu, the fluted pumpkin leaf, provides the flavour and the deep green. Waterleaf provides the moisture and the body, wilting down to release enough liquid that the soup largely cooks in its own juices. The proportion matters: this is a soup where the vegetables are the substance rather than a garnish stirred through at the end, and a properly made pot is dense with leaf. Around them sits an assortment that has given the dish its reputation, goat meat, dried fish, stockfish, shrimp or crayfish, periwinkle, palm oil. That density of protein is why it was long known as rich man's food, a soup that announced a household could afford it. It is now eaten across the country and well beyond it. It is the close relative of afang soup, which comes from the same people and follows the same structure. The distinction is entirely in the leaf: afang uses okazi, which is tough and faintly bitter, while edikang ikong uses ugu, which is softer and sweeter. Anyone from the region can tell them apart at a glance. It is served with any of the swallows.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hrMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Ayamase Stew

Ayamase is the green pepper stew of southwestern Nigeria, known almost as widely by two other names, ofada sauce, after the rice it is served with, and designer stew, which is what Lagos took to calling it. It is defined by two things that would be faults in almost any other stew. The peppers are green rather than red, which gives the sauce its unusual dark olive colour. And the palm oil is deliberately bleached, heated until it stops smoking and loses its red pigment, which strips out the characteristic palm flavour and leaves something nuttier and smokier behind. That bleaching step is the whole signature of the dish, and a version made with unbleached oil is a different sauce. Around that sit iru, the fermented locust bean that carries the deep savoury note, assorted meats including offal, and boiled eggs, which are close to obligatory. The name points to a person. Ayamase is traced to Ikenne-Remo in Ogun State and to a woman remembered as Mrs Felicia, Iya Mase, the wife of Mase, who is credited with the dish. It travelled from there into Lagos party food, where its reputation as something special was made. It is served with ofada rice, the short, unpolished local rice whose earthy flavour is the intended partner.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

55 minMediumNigeria · African

Recette de donbuffy · Africook

Nkwobi (Spicy Cow Foot)

Nkwobi is cow foot cooked until gelatinous, then dressed in a thick, spiced palm oil paste and served warm in a wooden bowl. It is Igbo, and it is the definitive Nigerian beer-parlour dish. Its reputation is as something ordered out rather than made at home, a dish for exclusive restaurants and drinking spots, eaten in the evening with a cold beer. That reputation is partly deserved and partly an accident of presentation: it arrives looking elaborate, and the technique is genuinely simple. The paste is what defines it. Palm oil is emulsified with akanwu, potash, also called kaun or edible limestone, which thickens it into a smooth yellow cream rather than leaving it as oil. That reaction is the trick of the dish and is what separates nkwobi from cow foot in sauce. It is commonly confused with isi ewu, which is the same treatment applied to goat head. The paste and the presentation are near identical; the meat is entirely different. Utazi leaf, sliced very fine, goes on top, along with sliced onion. **Uses potash.** Culinary quantities are traditional, but it should be used precisely rather than by eye.

55 minMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook