Ogbono soup

When I mentioned to Auntie Victoria that I was learning how to cook, I didn't expect her to offer to teach me. And even when she did offer, I didn't really think she'd follow through. I've had dozens of offers from women all around town, each wanting to teach me how to cook Nigerian food, but no one has set a date yet.

Auntie is different. Our families have been friends for years and years, and she meant business. So she arrived yesterday afternoon, and we started to cook. The one thing I find most frustrating about Nigerian cooking is that there are no recipes and no measurements. Everything is done from memory, and all quantities are eyeballed. So I watched carefully as Auntie did all of this, taking notes as we went.

Fortunately, I'd remembered to thaw the stew pork I'd bought the day before, so we rinsed it and threw it into the pot with some salt, green onion (the bulb end), and a Maggi bouillon cube. We let it heat awhile, then added water to cover the meat. While that cooked, Auntie taught me to use my new mortar and pestle to grind the dry okra she'd bought at the open-air market. “If you find pieces that are too strong,” she said, “just take them out and throw them away.” We set that aside. Then we put some dried crayfish into the mortar and pounded it to powder. Auntie cut up some more green onion and added it, and we pounded them together to make a paste.

The meat water was boiling happily away by this point, so we added another Maggi cube and a spoonful of palm oil, then the crayfish-onion paste. This was followed by the dried okra and some fresh okra Auntie showed me how to cut up. (Okra's not in season, so most of what we used was dried.) Finally, we added the ground, dried ogbono – some sort of vegetable for which I know no English name.

And in a moment, we had soup!

Then Auntie helped me to make the tuwo – playdough-like starch eaten with any kind of soup. I'd bought semovita, so she showed me how to cook it. First we boiled the water. (We boil all our water.) Then Auntie made a paste with a little bit of water and a little bit of the semovita. She stirred it until there were no lumps and then added it to the boiling water. She brought out a wooden paddle and stirred the pot of starch until it was smooth. Then, still stirring, she added the rest of the semovita powder. The starch became thick, like mashed potatoes, and she commented I might need to build up my arm muscles to be able to stir it! She kept stirring until it was quite thick, then turned off the burner.

We placed the pot on the ground, where she sat, and we spread out two pieces of plastic. She took a plastic saucer and scooped the semovita from the pot onto the plastic – 2/3 on one piece for my husband and 1/3 on the other piece for me. She scraped out the pot using the saucer like a spatula, and we wrapped the blobs of semovita in the plastic. Then she shaped them into more-or-less circular balls (look kind of like bread dough) about 6” to 8” in diameter. (It was too hot for me to handle, but her hands are used to it.) And we put the packages into a plastic flask to wait for my husband to return home from work.

So now I've seen it done and have it written down, to some extent, so – I hope – I can do it myself someday soon!