Eru Soup (Cameroonian Wild Vegetable Soup)
Eru soup is finely shredded eru leaves cooked down with waterleaf or spinach, palm oil, crayfish, smoked fish, beef and cow skin. It is Cameroonian, most closely associated with the Bayangi of the southwest, and it is one of the country's best-known dishes. Eru is the common name for two closely related climbing vines, *Gnetum africanum* and *Gnetum buchholzianum*, gathered wild from the forest rather than farmed. The leaves are tough and leathery, which is why the method insists on soaking them for hours, or on cooking them with kanwa. That toughness is also why eru is always shredded very finely, much more finely than any cultivated green would be. The pairing with a soft green is not optional. Waterleaf traditionally, or spinach where waterleaf cannot be found, provides the moisture and bulk that eru alone would not, and the ratio is roughly one to one. Palm oil goes in generously and late. The Nigerian relative is afang soup, made by the Efik and Ibibio of Cross River with the same leaf under the name afang or okazi. The two are close cousins: afang tends to be soupier and eru is more finely ground. They are kept as separate pages here because they are genuinely separate national dishes, and that is flagged. The source's health claims about eru's protein and mineral content have not been carried across.
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