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There is something about Ogbono soup
that requires both technique and light handedness. The best Ogbono soup
that I have ever eaten is from twenty years ago. Although my mother had
taught me not to ask for seconds when eating outside our home, I asked
for thirds and was abruptly put in my place with that sort of bruising
facial expression that said that I must be very badly brought up
indeed.

Whatever! The soup was that good; well
worth the rebuff. In my mind’s eye, I can bring up the soup in vivid
palm oil colour; not moody dark brown, but beautiful turmeric, lightly
viscose, velvety and embellished with juicy fresh giant prawns.

I have to say that I wish it were not
called “Ogbono” soup. The name is just so inelegant, so heavy, so
frumpy, so mouth contortingly ugly. Even the Yoruba’s “Apon” sounds
equally malignant. It is like naming a beautiful girl without
considering how the letters that make up the name flow through the
lips… I beg your pardon, no matter how time honoured the name is, if
it doesn’t glide around the lips, it somewhat takes away from the
girl’s beauty doesn’t it?

It is a simple soup only in so far as
one considers it from the point of beginning to cook, but I think that
in order to give it its due, one needs to think back to the point of
harvesting bush mango seeds, the ridiculous incommensurate effort in
cracking open thousands and thousands of bush mangoes and saving only
little white seeds that are then dried and sold to market traders.

Ogbono seeds are a major source of
income for many communities in Cross River State. They also arrive in
Calabar from as far away as three days journey from Bamenda in
Cameroun, travelling in large old rice sacks stacked on boats. When I
buy them in N50 heaps from the market, I wonder how anyone can make a
decent living from selling these undervalued imperfect seeds. Another
N50 and I have my roughly ground Ogbono flakes courtesy of a wiry man
who works his arm vigorously at some machine that looks like it belongs
in an archeological museum. The sweetish earthy smell quickens my steps
towards home.

The secret of my Ogbono soup is that
every single ingredient is considered and reconsidered lovingly,
meticulously. Apart from my Ogbono flakes, there is my palm oil.

At Christmas, I received a present of
an eight litre keg of first grade palm oil produced by Real Plantation.
The smell of it is like that of those gorgeous cardiac arrest Ofada
stews. The palm oil is blood red not bright red, and the bottom thick
dark orange coloured sediment is no more than an inch in depth.

My fish is dry-smoked catfish, skin
removed, rehydrated in simmering boiled water. I have often written
about how much I hate the heavy fishy smell of crayfish, made much
worse by grinding it to fine powder and adding it to soups, as
fundamental as crayfish addition is to cooking in Cross River. Yet I
have to recommend some large smoked prawns (crayfish) that I was given
in Calabar.

In the first instance, they are nothing
like the dark red smoked prawns that are called crayfish in the market.
These were carefully smoked to a coral almost pink colour, and have a
delicious aroma. And instead of grinding them to fine powder, I
rehydrate them along with my catfish, thereby drowning away some of
that overwhelming fishiness.

I am not of the school of thought that
onions and Ogbono don’t go together. I in fact use one whole white
onion; expensive but well worth it for giving my Ogbono a subtler onion
flavour than the cheaper purple onion.

For heat, I use both dried and fresh
Cameroonian peppers. There is a logic to this: the fresh pepper is
added to my simmering fish and prawns to flavour and animate them. I
can risk this, since I’m, going to discard of the water and not use it
in my soup. The dry pepper, more mellowed goes into the soup proper.

For anyone wondering why I have to use
Cameroonian peppers, the answer is that they are grown in soil fertile
and dark as chocolate in Santa Mbei, and Akum and Pinyin and in
Bamenda… these peppers are special, and I have not yet found any
peppers that compare in flavour and travelling heat. Last but not least
is a bunch of organically grown Ugwu washed and shredded thinly.

My finely chopped onion, a little
garlic, ginger and a bay leaf are added to heated palm oil. Everything
is sautéed until my onions are translucent. My rehydrated fish and
crayfish are added. Some dry Cameroonian pepper is added, and water,
enough to give the impression of a watery stew. My Ogbono flakes are
mixed with a little palm oil, and then constituted with boiling water
then added to my onion fish water mixture. More and more water is added
until my desired viscosity is reached. A little salt is enough. My Ugwu
goes in at the very end, just before the soup is taken off the fire.

There is nothing left to do but to make some Garri the size of my fist… as usual, and sit and devour!

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