Nigerian · Sauce
Yaji
- Easy
- 15 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, aromatics blooming from the first bite, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 150 g kuli kuli, broken up
- 40 g ground dried red chilli
- 15 g ground ginger
- 10 g garlic powder
- 10 g onion powder
- 3 g ground cloves
- 2 ehuru seeds, toasted and ground
- 1 tsp ground uda
- 15 g salt
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
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
- Dry the kuli kuli in a low oven or a dry pan until a piece snaps cleanly instead of bending.
- Grind it in short bursts so friction does not warm it and press the oil back out, then blot the powder between sheets of paper if any oil shows.
- Sieve it, regrinding the coarse bits, until it runs light and dusty through the mesh.
- Fold in the chilli, ginger, garlic, onion, cloves, ehuru, uda and salt, then sieve the whole blend once more so the cloves spread evenly.
- Store it airtight in the dark and use it while the groundnut still smells sweet.
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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