Nigerian · Main
Ayamase
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with real fire that builds and stays, wood-smoke running underneath.
Ingredients
- 500 g green tatashe peppers, deseeded
- 80 g green scotch bonnet
- 200 g onion for blending, plus 150 g sliced
- 400 ml red palm oil
- 3 tbsp iru
- 400 g shaki, boiled tender
- 300 g ponmo, boiled
- 300 g beef, boiled with the stock kept
- 4 eggs, hard boiled and peeled
- 3 seasoning cubes
- salt
The skills inside
Frying the paste until the oil splitsSalted water & the float test
Allergen screen
Found: egg
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
- Blend the green peppers, scotch bonnet and the 200 g onion coarse, then boil the blend down in a wide pot until it is almost dry and jammy.
- Heat the palm oil in an open pot over a strong flame with the window wide open until the red fades to pale straw and the heavy smoke thins; never cover it, never walk away from it.
- Cut the heat, let the oil settle for a minute, then fry the sliced onion and iru in it until fragrant.
- Add the reduced pepper and fry over medium heat until it darkens and the oil rises and pools on top, around twenty minutes.
- Stir in the shaki, ponmo, beef and a splash of stock, season, simmer until glossy, then bury the eggs in the stew to warm through.
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.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
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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