The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Nigerian · Starter

Asun

  • Intermediate
  • 30 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

fiery · bright · charred · smoky Leads with real fire that builds and stays, acid holding everything up to the light, on a drift of smoke.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg goat leg with the skin on, in large pieces
  • 150 g onion, half quartered and half sliced thin
  • 2 tsp dried thyme
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 seasoning cubes
  • 80 g red scotch bonnet, deseeded and slivered
  • 100 g red bell pepper, cut small
  • 3 tbsp of the goat fat skimmed from the pot, or groundnut oil
  • 1 lime
  • salt

Equipment

Grill

The skills inside

Grilling over live coalsCharring over open flameSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothKeeping the cooking liquidThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

The words inside

Bell Pepper

Allergen screen

Found: peanuts

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Simmer the goat with the quartered onion, thyme, bay, seasoning and salt in water barely to cover, skimming, until a skewer slides through with no resistance.
  2. Lift the meat out, dry it well on a rack, and keep the stock and the fat that rises on it.
  3. Char the pieces over hot coals or under the fiercest grill, turning, until the skin blisters and the edges go almost black.
  4. Chop into rough 2 cm cubes while still hot and tip them into a warmed bowl.
  5. Toss off the fire with the hot fat, sliced onion, scotch bonnet, bell pepper, a spoon of stock and a squeeze of lime, and serve at once.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Charring over open flame 31 recipes

  • The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
  • The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
  • It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
  • Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
  • A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.

Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.

Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes

  • It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
  • It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
  • It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
  • It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
  • Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.

Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Asun The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Nigerian kitchen