How to Prepare Ewedu Soup

How to Prepare Ewedu Soup

Just as Nigeria is dominated by lots of ethnic groups, the
country is likewise blessed with scores of foods from which to choose. Since
delicacy demands that the belly is filled with sumptuous kinds of foods, this
post will be focused on how Nigerians –particularly the Yoruba’s –prepare one
of their lovely soups known as “ewedu’’
(with the botanical name corchorus
olitorious
).
But before we plunge into the procedures for preparing this
palatable soup, we first have to enlighten each other on the peculiarity of ewedu and how much it is valued by
those who cherish it.
Ewedu is a green
plant and it is undoubtedly one of the important soups cherished by the
Yoruba’s. Barely would you find a culturally-inclined Yoruba person who
wouldn’t cherish the delicacy ewedu adds
to dishes. Though ewedu is also
cherished by a few other Nigerian tribes, the soup is irrefutably indigenous to
the Yoruba group –one of Nigeria’s dominant ethnicities native to the South
West.
Are you worried about pleasing your Yoruba man with some
lovely ewedu soup? Or you’re a
housewife who has no knowledge of how delicious ewedu soup could be prepared? Are you an Igbo who is much
interested in having a taste of some lovely Yoruba soups?
If you fall into any of these categories, this post is
definitely centred on you. Now, get yourself well spruced up and take note of
the subsequent steps required to prepare some appetizing ewedu soup.
First and foremost, we would love to get you acquainted with
the essential ingredients for preparing a dish of ewedu soup. But before that, you would have to make a choice
concerning the number of persons to be served the soup. If for instance, you
wish to dish up the ewedu soup to a
family of about 6 persons (particularly including few gluttons), be ready to
fill a somewhat spacious pot with sufficient water. Likewise, the amount of
ingredients to be listed here will greatly depend on the number of persons to
be served the ewedu –or funnily, how
spacious the bellies of your guests are.
Meanwhile, the steps to be
provided below and the amount specified for each ingredient will best suit any
ewedu soup meant to be moderately served to about three or four persons.
Right here, you have the ingredients
at your fingertips:
–         
One or two cubes of Maggi
–          A little amount of salt
–          
A small-sized and well trimmed broom (this is
used for mashing the soup)
–         
About one teaspoon of Kan-un (potash)
–         
Ewedu leaves already plucked from the plant
stalk
–         
About 1-2 cups of water
NOTE: The ewedu stew is best prepared without the addition of any other leaf
plant. That is, you don’t add another leaf plant while your ewedu is boiling. This, actually, is
due to the condition that the ewedu
leaves tend to become very slippery while boiling.
⇒   Pour about 1 or 2
cups of water into your cooking pot.
⇒   When the usual
boiling point has been attained, wash your ewedu leaves thoroughly and pour
them into the cooking pot.
⇒   Place the teaspoon
of potash into a half-full cup of water and wait for the potash to saturate
⇒   Empty the water
into the cooking pot and wait for the stew to boil for about 5-8 minutes
(Meanwhile, this will make the leaves become very soft)
⇒   Keep the cooking
pot away from the fire and get the short broom
⇒   Keep the short
broom within your hand and start using it to pound the softened ewedu leaves
until they become very tiny bits
⇒   After that, return
the cooking pot to the fire point and add the other ingredients (which include
salt and maggi)
⇒   After adding the
ingredients, let the soup boil gently for a few minutes, probably 3 to 6
minutes
With this done, your ewedu soup is
ready and can be enjoyed with several foods such as eba, fufu, amala, etc.