Another weekend of culinary gymnastics with my girlfriend came and we decided to try a local delicacy of the south-south(southern culture) of my country and it was mind blowing. As days rolled into weeks and weeks into months, my eating out days is gradually going into oblivion, whether I like it or not, that life will soon become a story for my kids when tell them tales of what I eat out before meeting their beautiful mom(🥰😁). She’s fantastic cook just like my dear mom of blessed memory, I’m an average cook too which isn’t so bad for a man, hence I’m all ready to try and learn newer menus and dishes at a whim without bitching about it.
The first image is showing my first task, the difference to shades of blends after my girl had picked the perfect spices and peppers with onions. She grouped them in three categories and I didn’t bother to ask why, I just followed the do-order: “babe I’m ready, come do the blending”
Took me about 30 to 40 minutes to finish it all, the power output was low(current) hence my blender was doing a bit of a slow task. All in all, the different blends were completed and my girl was cleaning up the chicken wings she ordered for from a nearby farm.
You can see her hands, she’s good with division of labour(haha), goddammit I’ll let her go through all that stress alone anyways. Mama didn’t raise a lazy fella my brothers and myself use to tease each other. What I despise doing is washing dishes, but as full grown adult I have no choice yeah? Also, if I was the one washing the peppers and tomatoes 🌶 🍅 , I’ll still be sulking with itching on my palms and hands. I can’t explain why, but it feels my hands are on fire anytime I wash up peppers to blend or chop.
It’s really amazing how my girlfriend does that professionally(so I called it), the handling techniques I have no clue how she learnt it. Just look at the image above and see how she washed them clean and sliced all separated in bowls with their specific usage in the course of the meal preparation. Below is the different texture I was instructed to blend those peppers separately, I think I did a fine job too yeah? 😁
Edikaikong is not my native dish(not my cultural delicacy), my girl grow up from a diverse and rich cultural background, she even speaks three different local languages if not four. Ain’t I a lucky man?
So Yeah, you get my point? that’s where she got the talents for cooking different cultural meals from and she never says no anytime I suggest another dish different from what I was used to. Like I mentioned, Edikaikong is a Nigerian soup made with vast amount of fresh vegetables and abundant of meant and fishes.
Let me go into details of processes and the ingredient needed for data purposes, if you are reading this, this is your cue. Not as complicated as it looks below in the last picture, The ingredients we used in preparing this delicacy include the following:
- Beef
- Chicken Wings
- Edible Cow skin(Ponmo)
- Fresh Mackrell(later fried)
- Dried fish
- Smoked fish
- Powdered Crayfish
- Periwinkle
- Red bell pepper
- Habanero
- Onions and garlic
- Pumpkin leaf, water leaf and a local vegetable called Uziza leaf.
- Palm oil or vegetable oil(We used vegetable oil because we ran out of palm oil🤦🏽♂️).
Truth is that, there are lots of variations in making this vegetable soup. However, this particular method is a recipe tailored by us, yet we arrived at the same destination: a delicious mouth watering green veggie soup filled with different fresh edible leaves. Below is a numbered procedure:
- Wash the beef thoroughly before cooking and seasoning. Add spices and salt, slices of onion, cumin, oregano and basil. Then set on fire (on the gas burner) and cook for like 40 minutes till the meat is fully tender and edible. You can perceive the sweet odour when it’s cooked well.
- Wash the edible cow skin(ponmo) and set in a different pot to boil, the sauce from the boiling is irritating to some people(my girlfriend inclusive) so you can pour out or used in the cooking.
- Wash both the fresh iced Mackrell and the dried and Smoked fishes. Devine the smoked and dried fishes while the Mackrell is frying(deep frying, air frying etc).
- Blend the onions,garlics, ginger, bell peppers and habenoro together, have some yellow pepper sliced. and keep it aside.
- While the meat is still cooking, have all the green leafy vegetables carefully selected and washed. Then chop and cut them finely and put them in different bowls.
- Once the edible cow skin(ponmo) is cooked, chop to bits(not so tiny) and take put in right inside the pot containing the cooked beef.
- Add the different varieties of the shredded fishes that has been washed and deboned. Also add the slice Habanero, add the grounded crayfish into the bigger cooking pot where the beef and cow skin has been added on fire.
- Put the neatly washed periwinkles, and then stir to mix the content of the cooking pot. You can add some seasonings of your choice. Let it simmer on fire for sometime till the water content is really low.
- Now add the blended pepper mix, also add few drops of palm oil and cook for about 10mins.
- Stir and cover the pot, let it cook on low to medium fire.
- Add the chopped uziza leaf(local green vegetable) now, also add the chopped water leaf and the pumpkin leaf. Allow to cook for about 5mins. After which stir and let it simmer again for another 5mins.
- There you go .. you Have your edikaikong soup right before you as you can see below before we removed it from the gas...Tadaa!
The local deli goes with different carbs and proteins like Rice, Yam, potatoes, Peas(Beans), Garden eggs, Semovita, Poundo Yam or Potatoes etc. Depending on your carb intake, eat proportionately with the Edikaikong leafy vegetable soup anytime of the day.
Bonapetit!
All Photo taken with my smartphone