Afang Soup / Okazi Soup

I fell in love with afang soup as a teenager when our calabar maid at the time made it for us at home. I couldn’t believe I had missed eating such a delicacy all the while. As much as I loved that soup I never learned how to cook it. Well lets just say, I never really had any reason to learn how to cook it. Besides, each time the cook was making afang, it just looked too complicated cos he would use a motar and had all sorts of vegetables in d kitchen and I just wasn’t ready to crack my brain. When I got married, I couldn’t eat afang except when I visited my folks or bought it from a local restaurant around…but all this changed recently.

Hubby and I went to a local restaurant as usual to order afang and pounded yam only to be disappointed. The soup wasn’t fantastic at all and it was really expensive. That was when hubby put his foot down and said “I must learn how to cook afang soup”.  Well…I did…and I must say…I’m really good at it. Since I started cooking afang soup…hubby and I have never eaten it at a restaurant cos it would feel like a sin…hahaha!

Well below is the recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Afang leaves / okazi leaves

Water leaves

Yellow chilli peppers

Cameroon pepper (this is the dry version of the yellow chilli pepper)

Meat and pomo

Dry fish and stock fish

Crayfish

Dry pepper

Seasoning

Palm oil

Method

• Wash, season and boil the meat
• Wash and soak dry fish and stock fish in hot water
• Blend crayfish and set aside
• Wash and chop the water leaves and set aside
• Wash and chop the afang leaves
• In a mortar pound the chopped afang leaves and yellow chilli pepper

Note – a blender can b used for this but I prefer to use the mortar and I usually don’t pound to smooth texture cuz hubby doesn’t like that version. So do feel free to pound or blend till you get the smooth texture.

• When the meat is soft, add the dry fish and stock fish to the boiling meat, add crayfish, dry pepper and some plam oil and allow to boil for 5mins
• Add in the pounded afang leaves and allow to cook for 3mins
• Then add in the water leaf for 3mins
• The afang soup is ready.