Nigeria – Ofe Akwu

By Verdzekov Bernard

Palm nut soup also known as Ofe Akwu is a delicious African delicacy made from creamy extract got from pulverized palm nut fruit. In Africa, and Nigeria to be précised, the women must know how to cook. That is an extra and wonderful boost for her finding a man she could get married to. Not only Nigeria has this habit but we have Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa and many more African countries. But the countries I know that take this attitude serious is Nigeria and Cameroon. The men make sure their women the marry can cook well, not only cooking well but African/traditional dishes in particular (Our traditional dishes). Cameroon has this particular cuisine, but their style of preparation is different from that of Nigeria. Follow instructions below to prepare Ofe Akwu;

Ingredients:

• Palm nut fruits
• Smoked fish 
• Ground crayfish 
• Pepper
• Smoke dried meat 
• Onions
• Some meat stock 
• Scents leaves 

Process 

• Processing the palm nut fruit is what takes time in this entire cooking process. boil the palm nut for about an hour. Let it boil and cook perfectly well. Using a local mortar and a mortar pestle put the palm nut in the mortar and pound well. This will form a palm nut paste after pawning. Using a sieve, sieve the paste into another pot, squeezing the hot palm-nut shell to remove more paste. Do like this until the paste is removed all. Set the palm nut chaffs aside.
• Put your meat in water and wash well. Cut the meat into small eatable slices. Put the meat in a pot, add in water with slice onions and pepper. Let it boil for about 25min. let the meat get ready well so as to ease chewing 
• After it has boiled, add crayfish and stir well.
• Into the pot of the palm nut paste, turn the boiled meat with all ingredients and meat stock about 3 cups and reduce heat.
• Stir well and allow the soup to simmer till it thickens. F to thick you could add some more meat stock. 
• Add your scent leaves and allow for about 10-15min more.

• This cuisine is best eating with Kwacoco. To prepare your kwacoco, cut your plantain leaves, warm and cut into small sizes.
• Clean the skin of the coco and grate using a grater. Add salt to taste stir well and put in the plantain leaves. Rap or fold the plantain leaves in a rectangle shape. 
• After folding all, take some of the plantain leaves and put in the bottom of the pot. add some boiling water, then start placing you’re the folded plantains in the pot. put it in an organized manner. Turn on heat and allow pot for about 40-1hr. check and remove if tender and ready. 

Serve with Your palm kernel soup. You could still serve this cuisine with Rice as seen on the pic above. But with kwacoco, it is more traditional and acceptable.

NOTE:

The chaffs from the palm Kennel, don’t throw them as waist. It is still very useful. spread on a wide paper and keep it out in the sun. Make sure it drys well. This could take 2-5days. After it is dry you crack the palm Kennel and eat what comes out of it and the chaffs, you could use it to light up fire in your three stone fire side kitchen. This is easy.

Enjoy…