Nigerian · Main
Efo Riro
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, real fire that builds and stays, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 600 g efo shoko, washed, shredded and wrung dry
- 300 ml obe ata din din, or blended tatashe and scotch bonnet reduced thick
- 150 ml red palm oil
- 200 g ponmo, boiled soft and cut into strips
- 200 g beef, boiled with the stock kept
- 120 g smoked panla, flaked and boned
- 40 g crayfish, ground
- 2 tbsp iru, rinsed
- 150 g onion, sliced
- 2 seasoning cubes
- salt
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never brownedFrying the paste until the oil splits
Allergen screen
Found: fish · shellfish
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
- Warm the palm oil until it thins and loosens but well short of smoking, then soften the onion in it with the iru.
- Stir in the pepper base and fry until it tightens and the oil separates back out, about eight minutes.
- Add the crayfish, panla, ponmo and beef with a ladle of the beef stock, and simmer until the meats take the colour of the stew.
- Fold the wrung greens through in two additions on the barest flame, with the pot left uncovered.
- Check the salt and serve while the leaves are still bright and separate rather than collapsed.
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.
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned 198 recipes
- No colour anywhere: tipped under the light the pieces are translucent to pale gold, with no tan edges, no brown tips, and no browned flecks suspended in the fat.
- The pan is quiet: a low steady hiss, not a crackle. A crackle means the moisture has gone and browning has already started.
- The largest piece pressed against the side of the pan collapses without resistance and with no crunch left at its centre.
- The fat is still clear and loose in the pan and the pan floor is clean: nothing caught, nothing browned on to deglaze, because there was never any fond to build.
- It tastes sweet and mild with no raw allium bite at the back of the throat, and none of the roasted sweetness that belongs to the next technique up the heat scale.
Where it goes wrong The heat was too high and nothing covered the pan, so the pieces took colour before they softened; the finished dish carries a roasty sweetness where it wanted a clean one, and the pieces are still firm at the centre under browned edges.
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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