Nigerian · Starter
Nkwobi
- Advanced
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with real fire that builds and stays, warm spice humming through the middle, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg cow foot, sawn into 5 cm pieces
- 1 onion, 150 g, halved
- 1 stock cube, crumbled
- 8 g fine salt
- 5 g food-grade edible potash (akanwu or kaun), stirred into 60 ml warm water and left to settle
- 250 ml red palm oil
- 20 g ground dried crayfish
- 10 g ground dried chilli
- 2 g ehu seed (calabash nutmeg), toasted and ground
- 15 g utazi leaves, shredded as fine as tea
- 1 small onion, 80 g, in rings, to serve
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsKeeping the cooking liquidThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
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
- Simmer the cow foot with the halved onion, stock cube and 5 g of the salt in water to cover until a skewer slides through the skin with no resistance and the liquor is sticky on the lips, about 2.5 hours. Lift the meat out and keep 100 ml of the liquor. 300 min
- Pour the settled potash water carefully off its grit into a jug and throw the sediment away.
- Put the palm oil in a wide bowl and beat the potash water into it a spoonful at a time: it turns from loose red to opaque yellow and thickens enough to hold the line a spoon draws through it. Stop at the turn, whether or not all the potash water has gone in.
- Stir in the crayfish, chilli, ehu and remaining salt, then slacken with the reserved liquor until the paste drops heavily from the spoon.
- Fold the warm cow foot through until every piece is coated, and pile the utazi and onion rings on top.
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.
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.
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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