Nigerian Chicken Pepper Soup

Chicken pepper soup is the most widely made of Nigeria's pepper soups, largely because chicken is the most widely available protein. The structure is the same across the family: a thin, clear, aggressively spiced broth with nothing in it for body, where the flavour comes entirely from the spice blend and the stock the protein gives up. Ehuru is the ingredient that matters. Also called ehiri or calabash nutmeg, it is the aromatic seed that defines the pepper soup profile, and Nigerian cooks are emphatic that nothing substitutes for it. Uziza seed and uda, the negro pepper, complete the blend. Scent leaf, called nchanwu in Igbo, goes in at the very end for aroma. It occupies a specific place in Nigerian life beyond simply being eaten. Pepper soup is what people are given when they are unwell, when they have come in cold, or when they cannot face anything heavier, and it is a fixture of bars and restaurants across the country as much as of home kitchens. Hard chicken, meaning an older laying hen rather than a young broiler, is preferred for the deeper stock it produces, and it is eaten on its own or with rice, agidi, yam or unripe plantain.