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I have not met a more finicky soup or met the owner of a
Nigerian recipe so scrupulous about which ingredients are used. Fish is just
one of the details. By the time I had combed Calabar’s Marian market looking
for what the recipe owner described as smoked Songu or smoked local sardine,
toppled some shellfish onto my leather shoes, sweated two and a half buckets,
mistakenly carried off some other woman’s ‘sackamoto’ with a month’s purchase
of crayfish in it; for the very first time, gone to a part of the market called
‘The War Front’ and back, and found neither of the fish described, a line of
Sunny Ade’s Easy ‘Motion Tourist’ began to play in my besieged head: “…Shawa
ni, agodo ni, sarapore o, Omo’ Eja!”. I hear this song isn’t about fish, but
really about some arcane sexual message. This particular line literally
translates as shawa, agodo and sarapore are all babyfish!

Songu is also a species of baby fish smaller in size to the
shawa and agodo. I wonder how people can tell any of them apart. Even though I
was determined to follow the recipe to the letter, I found neither songu (a
Rivers State word, by the way) nor local sardine. The secret of the recipe is
supposedly a combination of three different fish in the soup, one of them being
smoked baby fish. The next day, I called up Mama Deola, the recipe owner. “What
on earth did you say this songu is again?” “You probably won’t get the real
songu, so just settle for some other baby fish,” she said.

O, for goodness sake, I should have just listened to Sunny Ade!

Mama Deola does not use crayfish in this egusi soup, rather, her
songu or agodo or shawa; her smoked catfish, and some stockfish or shinenose.
The absence of crayfish is one of the reasons why I particularly like this
version of egusi.

The smoked babyfish skin is removed and ground up in the dry
mill of a blender, bones and all until it is almost a fine powder. The smoked
catfish is cleaned with salt and hot water in preparation for stewing.

The stew which forms the base of the egusi is made from bawa and
not tatase or sombo. The difference between the three peppers is in size and
sweetness and heat. The bawa is largest of the three, not a sweet pepper, but
not a particularly hot one either, certainly not as hot or as sour as the other
two. The stew is made from a combination of the bawa, one onion or less, and
one or two scotch bonnets. Mama Deola insists that the hot peppers are as few
as possible so that heat is not a distraction from the savouriness of the soup.

The egusi, the ground melon seeds are mixed with salt, water and
onions and mashed together to form irregular dumplings. These dumplings are a
textural and aesthetic characteristic of the soup.

The mixture of peppers is fried in palm oil. The prepared smoked
catfish, rehydrated stockfish or shinenose are added to the stew and fried
along with it. When the stew has developed the mellowness of cooked peppers,
the fish has softened in the stew, and the stew has taken on the flavour of
smoked fish, the egusi dumplings are added with a little water and the stew is
simmered without stirring, until the egusi becomes firm and doesn’t come apart
under the pressure of the cooking spoon. The stew must not become dehydrated. I
find this process of cooking lumpy egusi frustratingly long. When they are
eventually cooked, shredded ugwu and the blended babyfish are added, stirred in
quickly and the soup is taken off the hob so that the ugwu stays fresh.
Stopping the cooking at this point also keeps the taste of the ground fish on
the surface of the soup, like a tantalizing prelude to the main event.

The degree of flavour added by the babyfish cannot be
overemphasised. I was once given a piece of freshly smoked agodo by a friend
from Abeokuta who leisurely snacked on one. The smell of smoke on fresh fish in
my nostrils made my stomach instantly groan with hunger. It is one of the most
incredible things I remember eating. The addition of that wonderful punch of
flavour from the fish is the perfect finishing touch to the soup. Pass the
gari, please!