A Simple Recipe For Eguisi Soup(Melon seed)

Hi foodies, last weekend, I woke up, having the rarest of feelings. I've always been a snack or snappy food girlie but I woke up feeling like eating a good solid food and Eguisi soup paired with baked cassava flakes came to mind because its my favorite soup. I headed to the market and got cooking.

Egusi is what we call melon seeds here in Nigeria, and it is definitely the heart of one of our favorite soups. It comes from a special kind of melon we grow here too. The fruit itself isn’t sweet like watermelon, but the seeds are the real deal. After harvesting, we dry the seeds in the sun and peel off their shells to get the creamy white seeds inside. When grounded, they give our soups a rich, nutty taste and make them very nice and thick.

My ingredients included:

1. Three cups of Melon seeds
2. Some beef and cow skin (kpomo)
3. 5 pieces of big red scotch bonnet peppers
4. A cup of palm oil
5. Some pieces of dried fish
6. 2 small onions
7. One small bunch of Pumpkin leaves(ugu leaves)
8. Seasoning cubes
9. 1 cup of deshelled periwinkles
10. A cup of dried crayfish
11. Salt to taste

All “cups” in this list of ingredients refer to the small Nigerian market cup (the empty 70g tomato paste tin, about ⅓ of a standard measuring cup).

Steps:

1. Wash the beef, cow skin and dried fish and put it in a pot. Add 2 seasoning cubes, and a pinch of salt to taste. Add two cooking spoons of water and bring to a boil till the meat gets soft.

1. I ground the melon seeds at the market using an industrial grinder because I don't have a blender at home.
2. I pounded some scotch bonnet peppers in a mortar. I ground it with two small bulbs of onion because, in as much as I love the taste of onion in my food, I dislike the sight in my soups. So I ground the pepper and onion into a very smooth paste.
3. I also ground my dried crayfish at the market as well.
4. I plucked my pumpkin leaves from their stems and sliced it.

1. After prepping my ingredients, I put an empty pot on the fire to heat up.

2. After heating the pot, I added my palm oil and allowed it to heat up too.

1. I added my ground melon seeds and allowed it to fry for 30 seconds while stirring it.

1. I then added 1 small cup of water (about 80–100 ml, roughly the size of a regular tea cup) so I can allow it boil in its juice.

1. After 1 minute of boiling, I added four cups of water, covered the pot and allowed it to boil.

1. After about 3 minutes, I opened it and it had already thicked again and so I added two extra cups of water.
2. It was at this time, I began adding all my ingredients. I poured in my pepper mix, added my meat stock, added in five cubes of seasoning cubes, added in my ground crayfish and added a table spoon of salt to taste.

1. I stirred everything and covered the pot to boil for some minutes.

2. While the soup was boiling, I went ahead to wash my pumpkin leaves to remove dirt

1. After 10 minutes, I opened up the pot and added my washed pumpkin leaves and then my deshelled periwinkles.

1. After three minutes, my Eguisi soup was ready

1. I paired it with baked garri(cassava flakes)

This Garri(baked caassava flakes) was for three servings 😂

You can pair yours with pounded yam, semolina or even wheat.

And that’s how I made my simple, tasty Eguisi soup(Melon seed soup)