Ewedu Soup
Aperçu
Ewedu is a Yoruba soup made from jute leaves, cooked and beaten until it becomes smooth and slippery, and it is almost never eaten alone. The leaf is Corchorus olitorius, jute mallow, known as ewedu in Yoruba and as molokhia across North Africa and the Levant, where it is cooked quite differently. It has a mucilaginous quality, the same draw that okra has, and the Yoruba preparation leans into it rather than fighting it. The leaves are cooked briefly and then worked with a broom-like whisk called an ijabe until the texture turns uniformly smooth. Its role is as one part of a set. Ewedu is served with gbegiri, the bean soup, and with a red stew, over amala, the combination Yoruba people call abula. Eaten on its own it is thin and mild; eaten as intended, it is the element that makes the whole plate slide. Finding the leaves outside Nigeria is the main obstacle, as the source notes bluntly. Frozen ewedu is sold in African grocers and works well.
