Naija Chop: Egusi Soup & Semo

As some of you may know, I have been living in the land of expatriates for the past couple weeks, after stumbling onto the most awesome housesitting gig yet. This was fantastic for many reasons (air conditioning! running water and hot showers! imported American toilet paper!) but the well-equipped kitchen meant I could finally cook for myself, which was not so great for my local food stories. However, a week-long trip to Kano provided great relief in that department.

Thanks to Katie's most wonderful network up there, I was able to stay with several different families throughout my visit. One of my most memorable nights, though, was with her good friend Grace, who taught us how to make egusi soup, arguably the most popular dinner in Nigeria. I don't know if it counts as "evocative" or "emblematic" (high orders that stress me out for blogging purposes) but it certainly seems close enough after my own long delay on this post.

So, without further ado, I humbly present to the Cohorticulture scavenger hunt committee and to the interwebs at large, a lesson in Egusi preparation, made in the courtyard of Grace's small concrete bungalow in the "village" outskirts of Kano. Tony Bourdain would be at home here right?





Like with all Nigerian foods, you start with palm oil. A LOT of palm oil. Like a quart or two. Grace emptied out most of this bag, promising that she was actually reducing the amounts since some foreigners don't like it as much. This explains a lot about why half my pants don't fit anymore.





Next, you add ground up melon/pumpkin seeds (the yellow bits) and a ton of local spinach (the green chunks). The palm oil (red stuff) envelops these and basically deep fries them, along with some onion, dried pounded crayfish, lots of hot pepper, and Maggi bouillon "flavor cubes".






At the end you can add your meat--chicken, goat, beef, or fish. Since all of the goat and beef was gone for the upcoming Sallah festival, we got fish. If you're lucky, it's freshly roasted fish from the market like this one. If you're not, it's the much stinkier dried fish. Both are sold in markets and roadsides from big trays precariously balanced on the top of people's heads. Oh, and if you are really really lucky, someone takes the time to piece them apart and remove (most of) the prickly bones inside, which I still haven't acquired the skill to remove and often swallow whole by accident. Also note awesome bending--another necessary skill I haven't acquired.





And that's your soup, giant puddle of deep frying oil and all. Mmmm. Next up, the starch. Tonight, we made semo, which is basically a huge mound of sticky cream of wheat. Here is my friend Bic, helping stir in the semo flour over the modified trashcan/cooking bin.





For extra fanciness, Grace swirled each lump of finished semo in a calabash shell to give it that round professional look. Note also the food coozie/thermos, brilliant and ubiquitous solution for life with microwaves. Here we were saving some for Grace's husband.






Finished setup. The giant portion size of that carb component also explains a lot. And if you look closely, you can even see the wedding sticker on my bowl, a favorite party swag item for all kinds of celebrations.





... But of course, we actually didn't have light, so here is what it all looked like without the camera flash. Unfortunately, my fingers were too sticky with palm oil to actually bust out the camera during eating, but the idea is that you pinch off small balls of the semo (or any other starch) and use your thumb to indent it and scoop out the soup. Messy for me even with light, but super sloppy without. But still completely delicious.