Wash your hands after handling the pepper as it stings if you accidentally rub your eyes!Ģ Crush the garlic, ginger and sliced scotch pepper into a paste along with 1 tsp salt in a pestle and mortar (or equivalent).ģ In a large pot, fry the onions in the oil on a medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring often. Deseed and finely slice the scotch bonnet pepper. Photograph: Elena Heatherwick/The GuardianĦ0g tin anchovy fillets in oil (30g drained weight)ġ Finely dice the onions and set aside. Okro soup varies from region to region in Nigeria, in terms of ingredients, consistency and partnering staples. Prepared this way okra thickens soups, stews and sauces – three terms that many Africans use interchangeably. Okro soupīright green okra pods can be pan-fried whole in chilli oil with a little citrus and honey, or they can be finely chopped to reveal silky white seeds and then boiled for a completely different experience. Even though I gave my mum a hard time when she cooked with it at home – clothes smelling of palm oil eau de toilette wasn’t what I was going for back then – it has a colourful aroma that I’ve grown to love. That said, (sustainable) red palm oil is the one thing that I’d encourage you to track down for authentic depth of flavour.
NIGERIAN OKRA SOUP FREE
You can go further still and substitute certain ingredients – feel free to add any meat or fish as you wish.
In a nod to the coastal roots of this dish, I’ve called for anchovies in my recipe, but it could just as easily be made without fish and meat altogether, in which case I’d recommend adding a pinch of smoked paprika to the base sauce. Staying true to what I grew up on, I’ve gone for a tomato base, and instead of cooking the two separately I found it worked just as well in the form of a one-pot dish. My recipe is an amalgam of my favourite memories, updated with some tweaks to ease the preparation. A Nigerian recipe cooked from scratch might call for ground crayfish and prawns – both smoked and dried, and large and fresh – and could be laced with palm oil and local greens such as pumpkin leaf. West African okro soups typically contain both ground and fresh seafood – hardly surprising given they are most prominent in coastal regions.
I once handled three sittings in one day, and got home feeling like I was carrying a baby. The story got around and, when I visit relatives in Lagos nowadays, they always prepare it for my arrival. So well that I once claimed: “If London were made of eba I would eat the whole city!” A quote I live by to this day. It has a distinctive flavour and coarse texture, and offsets the slippery okro soup well. For those who don’t know, eba is a dough made up from hot water and garri, which is mashed, fermented and toasted cassava root. The two were only bound in the hand of the diner, on his or her terms, and delivered into the mouth in matrimony, ideally with eba, my personal favourite of all the possible accompaniments. If okra were a person, she’d have a big mouth and a great story to tell The former was made with a base of onions, garlic, ginger, peppers and assorted meat that was smoothed with palm oil, while the latter was boiled vigorously with water and a little salt. The way I knew it growing up in London, two soups – tomato and okro – were prepared separately, then eaten together. If okro were a person, she’d have a big mouth and a great story to tell. Synchronised steps such as these, taken in tandem by people and food, fascinate me these days. Lady’s fingers have long been a favourite in West African cuisine, and its migration across the globe appears to have followed the movement of the region’s people wherever they have gone. It goes by the name of bhindi in the east, and gumbo in the American south – a word supposedly borrowed from the Angolan noun quingombó (meaning, literally, ‘okra’) in the west where, not unlike the aforementioned soup on which I grew up, seafood and okro are combined with the holy trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper. With time, I’ve come to realise that Nigerians aren’t the only ones who love okro, and that people are raised on “lady’s fingers” all over the world.
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