Nigerian · Soup
Goat Meat Pepper Soup
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg goat on the bone, in 4 cm pieces, fat left on
- 6 uda pods (grains of Selim), toasted
- 2 ehuru (calabash nutmeg) seeds, toasted and cracked
- 5 g uziza seeds
- 1 onion, chopped
- 20 g ginger, grated
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 Scotch bonnets, left whole
- 40 g ground crayfish
- 1.5 litres water
- 12 g fine salt
- 20 g scent leaf (efirin) or basil, torn
- 10 g utazi leaves, finely shredded
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts
Allergen screen
Found: 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
- Toast the uda, ehuru and uziza in a dry pan until they smell of woodsmoke and camphor, then grind them to a coarse powder; bought ready ground, they taste of nothing.
- Put the goat in a pot with the onion, ginger, garlic, salt and just enough water to cover, and simmer with the lid on for 40 minutes. 40 min
- Add the ground spice, the crayfish, the Scotch bonnets and the rest of the water, and simmer uncovered for 1 hour more, until the meat gives easily at the bone and the broth smells of the toasted spice rather than raw goat. 60 min
- Unlike the goat water, the bonnets stay in whole to the end here and the heat is meant to build; lift them out early only if you are cooking for someone who wants it mild.
- Take the pot off the heat, stir in the scent leaf and utazi and cover it for 3 minutes; the leaves should wilt, not cook. 3 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
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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