Yeah, we all have that one particular dish that is unique to our tribe. Once the name of the dish is mentioned anywhere, at any point in time, you already know the tribe.
Have you heard of these dishes; Afang, Edikang Ikong, Ekpang nkukwo, Atama, and many more?
You would be able to tell by now that these dishes are unique to the Akwa-Ibomites. There is no party of a typical Akwwa-Ibomites that you wouldn't see these dishes, if not all, at least one must be there.
All of these dishes are highly nutritional because of the combination of the vegetables, meat, and fish used in preparing them. They are rich in minerals and vitamins too.
During my sister's wedding, even though she was getting married to a man from another tribe, we still made sure that our traditional dish was available to be served. She got married to a Yoruba man. On the day of the wedding, we saw that her husband's people came along with their traditional dish too. As the food was served, we noticed that a full cooler of Afang soup and fufu had already finished. It turned out that all the guests at the party couldn't resist the taste of the Afang soup, even those from the other tribe, they kept asking for more, good thing they had enough to eat until the cooler became empty. This is just to make you understand how delicious this dish is.
In other to prepare afang soup, also known as Okazi in some other tribes, a few ingredients need to be ready and available to use.
Afang soup
Afang soup recipe
Ingredients for Afang Soup
Sliced Okazi/Afang leaves
Water leaves
Red palm oil
Beef, Kanda, stock fish and Dry fish
Ground crayfish
Pepper and salt (to taste)
Stock cubes.
Periwinkle
Photo of afang leave.
I would have really loved to share step-by-step pictures because that's what I love doing as you all would be able to understand it all. I apologize for that, however, I'm going to try to make it as easy as possible.(lets scratch this)edited. reason at the end of the post.
Prep time.
What I do after making sure that the afang leave is sliced is to pound or ground it. It makes the leaves smooth in the soup after it is prepared.
For the waterleaf, the good ones are selected from the ones that aren't needed, then it is sliced.
The tail end of the periwinkle is usually cut of from the rest of the body, this would make the process of sucking it out easy.
It is important to make sure that all these things are properly washed so you won't end up having sand in your soup, it's very important. There is a special way I know that periwinkle is usually washed in other to get rid of the dirts completely. After cutting the tail end, pour it into a bowl that has a lid, pour a little bit of water inside the bowl. Shake it in an up and down motion continuously. When you open the lid to check the periwinkle, you would see a lot of dirt in the water. Change the water then repeat the process again until you see that the water you've changed is clean enough. I hope you understood that.
Cooking Direction.
For about 10-12minutes, you will bring to boil till it is done the meat,(beef), Kanda, stockfish with some diced onions, salt, pepper, Maggie and a little quantity of water. When the meat are done, you go ahead to put in the dry fish. I wait till the meat is done because the dry fish doesn't need to stay as long as the meat before it get soft.
I don't always bother taking out the meat but I do remove the fish because I don't want it to get scattered in the soup.
With the meat and stockfish still in the pot, Pour in some palm oil, pepper and crayfish, and make sure to taste it so as to confirm that it has your desired taste. Add those ingredients moderately then bring it to boil.
When it starts to boil, pour in the Afang leaves, waterleaf, the dry fish and periwinkle. Leave to cook for a few minutes till the afang leave becomes soft and the water is almost dried. Finally, let it to simmer for 5 minutes. The Afang soup is finally ready and can be eaten with any swallow of your choice. (Pounded yam, fufu, eba etc.
Would you like to try preparing this? If you are a Nigerian living in Nigeria, you know where you can always gets the items to prepare it, it's easy. If you're not a Nigerian and you don't live in Nigeria, I really don't know, I'm sorry. But you can look it up on google, it may be sold in your place too but may be called something different. Hehe
I mentioned earlier that I do not have a picture of Afang soup to upload.
Afang soup
I have been on the internet searching for free images of afang soup but still couldn't find any. All the ones I saw had watermarks. I just had to call her on phone and I wasn't disappointed.
The credit for these Afang soup images goes to her.
That's all for now, thanks for reading.
Also published here