Ẹba & Okra Soup

UNINTENTIONALLY VEGETARIAN WEST AFRICAN FOOD

My diet has changed very much as an adult. The first major change occurred when I left home and went off to uni. For the first time I was away from my mother's cooking, which consisted mainly of a rich variety of West African food. Depending on where we were on the globe, the range would vary a bit based on which ingredients she could obtain. In South Africa we ate a lot more corn and spinach. In Senegal we ate a lot more rice and fish. In the United States, well, we ate all sorts of crazy things.

Ironically, most of the ingredients are available in England, more so than in places like South or East Africa. That's probably because people of West African origin are heavily represented in the UK immigrant community.

The other day I was craving some of the food I grew up eating. It'd been quite a long while since I even attempted making the stuff myself. I'm not too shabby in the kitchen, but I'm nowhere near capable of making actual tasty West African food.

ẹba

There's a blissfully simple meal, however, that even I can make. It consists of a starchy dough and vegetable soup and a tomato based stew. I decided to go ahead and make this meal.

The dough is made from granulated cassava called "Gari" which you can find in virtually any delicatessen in London. It's also eaten in Brazil, but usually as a side dish. In fact, this entire dish is also eaten in Brazil in a slightly different formula.

Gari is a starchy carb so it forms a dough when exposed to hot water. It can be mixed and eaten immediately after adding the hot water. It does taste better, however, when left for about 10 minutes in the hot water for the granules to slightly cook before mixing. When done that way, the dough appears and feels smoother.

It comes in different varieties; colours and tastes, from tasteless to sour, from white to yellow, depending on how it was made. The yellow colour is from the addition of a little bit of palm oil I believe.

Side note: Gari can also been consumed like a cereal - with cold water. Some people like to drink the sour type as is, but the non-sour type tastes great with sugar and milk.

The resulting dough is called "Ẹba" (eh-bah) and can be eaten hot or cold. It can be stored without a refrigerator and eaten for up to a few days - reheated or eaten at room temperature.

Okra Soup

Ẹba is traditionally eaten with fingers of the right hand, though some people use cutlery these days. Small boluses are swallowed without chewing. The closest European meal I can think of that you eat in this way is mashed potatoes, even though that's not quite as solid as ẹba.

In order to facilitate this process, it is usually taken with a sauce with a slippery consistency. That's where the okra soup comes in. While being the most nutritious part of the whole meal, it's practical function is to serve as a lubricant to ease the passage of the bolus through the oesophagus.

Fresh okra is chopped up into small pieces and brought to boil in a saucepan of water. Some people add extra things into the mix. I've seen prawns and even mushrooms, but I think that just complicates things. My grandma, God rest her soul, also used to add something called iru (ee-roo) which are locust beans. Iru, apart from being a superfood, it also tastes similar to stock, and gives the okra soup and incredible taste.

I didn't have any of the above, so I simply added a pinch of salt for taste. You have to be careful not to overcook the okra because the sliminess decreases with time exposed to heat. Also, the longer you cook it, the less nutrient benefit you get from it.

Tomato Stew

This is the most complicated part of the meal, one which I admit I will never master. I just can't ever get it to taste right. There's so much variety in the way this is prepared as well that you can develop a signature of your own.

Traditionally it includes a variety of proteins; meat and fish of different kinds. In some restaurants it is listed with the prefix "Assorted" to signify this point. I didn't make it with any meat or fish at first, but threw in a pair of chicken breasts as an after thought after the fact, which I ate with a different meal.

The base is simple. It consists of tomatoes, peppers, onions and chillies. These are blended together into a paste which is then stewed in a pot with other things. As mentioned earlier, it's the "other things" that make or break the stew. See below "Side note" for how even the slightest tweak in ingredients can cause issues :)

My particular stew also included garlic and tomato paste to give it more colour. I added salt to taste, vegetable stock and lots of oil. Sadly I didn't have any palm oil, so I settled for sunflower oil instead.

Side note: People from the east and west of Nigeria nick-named each other based on how each group prepares this meal, or similar ones. The easterners call the westerners a term that denotes the fact that they use "too much oil" in making the stew. The westerners on the other hand call the easterners a term denoting that they make their version of ẹba too hard "like stone" and are able to eat it apparently without needing to drink water.

The three parts of the meal can be served in the same plate or bowl, but many people like to separate the solid part from the liquid part in case you don't finish the meal and decide to store it away. It's also a lot more tidy in my opinion to separate them.

I rated my efforts at about 6/10, which was quite good for my skill level. My mother would be mortified if she ever got to taste my work haha.

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Unintentionally Vegetarian

I've used the term "vegetarian|" because I realise that "vegan" extends beyond just the diet. You can be a vegetarian and wear leather shoes for instance. Most vegans wouldn't do that.

It dawned on me a while ago that veggies wouldn't have too hard a time eating a West African diet. All they'd have to do is not add meat or fish to things, and they can pretty much eat most of the stuff. This above meal for example, it was vegetarian until I added the chicken breasts to the tomato sauce at the end as an after thought. Otherwise the whole thing is plant based, including the oil.

I mentioned locust beans earlier, which is a form of traditional flavouring for food. It has a very unpleasantly strong smell, but tastes like heaven once used (in small quantities) in cooking.

There're also natural plant based meat substitutes such as iṣapa that tastes a lot like meat, but are dried fruit (it may be a vegetable, I'm not sure to be honest). Pumpkin seeds are also cooked in a way that they taste similar to a kind of cheese - but with a lot of flavour and spices.

I don't think any of these meals were specifically designed to be vegetarian. I think they just are, unintentionally.

Peace & Love,

Adé