Nigerian · Soup
Ofe Ogbono
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile.
Ingredients
- 80 g ogbono, ground fine that day
- 150 ml red palm oil
- 900 ml stock from the boiled meats
- 400 g assorted beef and ponmo, boiled tender
- 100 g stockfish, soaked soft and picked over
- 40 g crayfish, ground
- 1 tbsp ground dried chilli
- 1 tsp ogiri okpei
- 100 g ugu leaves, shredded
- 1 seasoning cube
- salt
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSoaking dried goods back to life
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 off the heat and stir the ground ogbono into it until you have a loose, smooth paste with no dry specks left.
- Bring the stock to a simmer and thread the ogbono paste in slowly while stirring, so it disperses instead of seizing.
- Hold it at a low uncovered simmer, stirring now and then, until a spoon lifted from the pot pulls a thread that stretches without snapping.
- Add the meats, stockfish, crayfish, chilli, ogiri and seasoning, and bring it back to the barest simmer.
- Scatter the ugu over the surface, stir once, and take the pot off the heat while the leaves are still bright.
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.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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