A Stockfish soup from Nigeria.
Ingredients
2 cooking spoon crayfish
1 medium stockfish(cut and pre soaked)
6 tomatoes
1 large tatashe/red pepper
2 Onions
6 scotch bonnet peppers
2 maggi/stock cubes(
3 Cooking spoon palm oil
1 cup of ground egusi
2 cups or one medium bunch of pumpkin leaves/spinach or bitterleaf
Salt
Method
Clean and wash the meat or chicken, put in a pot add some salt,1 chopped onion, 2
chopped peppers (chilies) and 2 cubed seasoning, cook until it is tender, and keep it
aside.
Wash and boil the stockfish until it is soft. Clean the dry fish with salt and then soak in hot
water to kill any insect and remove sand and stones inside the fish.
Grind 6 tomatoes, tatashe ( red bell pepper) and the remaining pepper together. Chop
the remaining onion. wash and shred the pumpkin/ugwu leaves.
Heat the palm oil, add the chopped onion, allow it to fry for 2 minutes and then pour in
the ground tomatoes and pepper paste. Stir and allow to fry for 10 – 15 minutes or until the
ingredients settle at the bottom of the pot and oil is floating at the top.
Add the ground egusi and mix until the egusi and the fried sauce is well mixed to form a
yellowish paste. Allow to cook for 5 minutes(stir at interval to avoid burning)
Pour in the meat and stockfish stock and then stir to check for constitency,add water (if
necessary) to form a dropping constitency. Allow to cook for 10 – 15 minutes and add the
dry fish, ground crayfish, boiled stockfish, cooked meat, maggi cube and salt to taste,
allow to cook for 5 minutes.
Finally add the pumpkin/ugwu leaves (or washed bitterleaf or spinach), stir and allow to
simmer for 3 – 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
Serve hot with pounded yam, semovita or eba.