Recettes

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Okpa

Okpa is a steamed pudding of Bambara nut flour and palm oil, wrapped and cooked in boiling water until it sets solid. It is the street food of Enugu, and anyone travelling into the city from Onitsha or Lagos will hear the sellers calling okpa di oku, meaning okpa is hot. Bambara groundnut is an indigenous African legume, grown long before peanuts arrived from South America, and it is the same nut behind several dishes across the continent. It is known as jugo beans in southern Africa, and okpa itself is also called igba and ntucha. The seeds come in small pods and are extremely hard, so hard that domestic grinders cannot handle them and only industrial mills will do the job. That is why okpa flour is bought rather than made. Restraint is the principle. Bambara nuts have a good flavour of their own, and the source is emphatic that adding onions and crayfish ruins it, which is unusual advice in Nigerian cooking where those two go into almost everything. Palm oil, salt, stock cubes and pepper are the whole seasoning. The mixture looks alarmingly watery when mixed, and that is correct. The ratio in the recipe gives the right texture, and using less water produces something rock hard.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 25 minMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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Ogidigbo (Igala Food)

Ogidigbo is an Igala dish of fresh corn, blended to a coarse paste with pepper, onion and crayfish, wrapped and steamed until it sets. It is structurally the same idea as moi moi, the Nigerian bean pudding, with corn standing in for the beans, and Igala cooks describe it in exactly those terms. The Igala are a people of Kogi State in central Nigeria, and their food is considerably less documented than that of the country's larger groups. Dishes like ogidigbo do not appear in the general Nigerian repertoire that gets exported, which makes recording it a more useful act than recording another version of jollof. It is everyday food rather than ceremonial food. The corn will not go as smooth as beans do, and Igala cooks say so plainly rather than treating it as a fault. That slightly grainy texture is what ogidigbo is. It is traditionally steamed in banana leaves, which contribute a green note that no other wrapper gives, though the practical alternatives now are the small plastic wraps used for moi moi or recycled tins. Palm oil is the recommended fat and gives the characteristic colour, with groundnut oil used by those who prefer it.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 5 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Taiwo Oladapo · Africook

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Goat Meat Pepper Soup

Pepper soup is a Nigerian category rather than a single recipe, and the goat meat version is among the most eaten of them. What holds the family together is the broth: clear, thin, aggressively hot and built on a specific spice blend rather than on tomato, oil or thickener. Nothing in a pepper soup is there for body. The spice blend is what makes it. Pepper soup spice varies by region and by household but is built around African nutmeg, ehuru, uziza seed and other aromatics, and it is the one ingredient that cannot be left out or approximated. Everything else in the bowl is variable: catfish in the Delta and Rivers, goat in the north, chicken as the widely available option, assorted meat where a household is feeding a crowd. Goat gives it a depth the lighter proteins do not. It also demands time, which is why this is not a weeknight soup unless the meat was cooked the night before or a pressure pot is involved. Pepper soup occupies a particular place in Nigerian life as restorative food, eaten when someone is unwell, cold or worn out at the end of a day, and it is served both as a first course and as a full meal with yam, plantain or rice.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 35 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Debby · Africook

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Easiest Way to Make Ikokore Ijebu

Ikokore is the water yam pottage of the Ijebu people of Ogun State in southwestern Nigeria, and it belongs to them specifically rather than to Yorubaland generally. Ijebu people claim it firmly, and it is one of the dishes by which the subgroup is identified within a much larger ethnic group. Water yam is what makes it. It is a different species from the white yam used for pounded yam, wetter and more mucilaginous, and it cannot be substituted. Grated raw rather than cooked whole, it is dropped into hot stock in loose balls that set as they cook and turn translucent, which is the visual sign the dish is ready. Those balls are the structure of the pottage, and stirring too early destroys them. The other rule is generosity with protein. Ikokore takes beef, smoked fish, smoked prawns and whatever else is available, and Ijebu cooks are explicit that holding back is the wrong instinct. Palm oil, dried pepper and efirin, the scent leaf, finish it. It is a dish made for a household eating together rather than for a single portion, and the source describes it as a family affair, which is how it is generally cooked and eaten.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 30 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Taiwo Oladapo · Africook

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Recettes