Ijebu Egusi Soup

Happy Sunday!
It's good to be here again this Sunday. I hope you are enjoying your weekend.

This Sunday, I want to share with you the Ijebu people's recipe for Egusi soup.
Until I got married to an Ijebu man, I never knew how to prepare Egusi soup this way. They taught me and I'm now a 'pro' at it. I believe some people have never come across this recipe before.
This is very delicious, it has a different taste from the usual Egusi soup, and it's very easy to prepare.

I also want you to know that I live in a riverine area, where fishing is one of their major occupation and they have a lot of fishes here. So, I came across this very delicious fish. Oh, I don't know how to describe it. It's really delicious. The name they told me is its local name which I can't remember. I don't know what it's called in English. I got the dried one which they say is more delicious than the fresh one. And prepared the soup with it.

A picture of the fish

The ingredients needed are;
Melon seeds
Pepper
Onions
Fish
Salt
Seasoning
Palm oil

The first thing to do is to get the melon seeds, pepper and onion blended to be very smooth. Just like this.

Now, put a clean pot on the stove on a low heat, when the pot is dried, add your oil

heat it for about thirty seconds before adding the blended melon seeds. You can increase the stove to medium heat now.

Allow this to cook for few minutes before adding your salt and seasoning powder. Cover to cook for about three minutes more before adding your already washed smoked fish to the soup and cover to boil for another five minutes before reducing the heat to very low to give the soup some time to steam for about one minute.

Note that this soup is not to be too tick. It's just like it is in my picture. You can add vegetables if you wish but this is how they like it.

After this, the soup is ready to be served with Eba which is their most favorite combination.

I can't get enough of this fish😋 everything in it is edible including the bone, so soft and oily.*

Thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate you. Please, leave a comment and let me know what you think about this soup.

Yours truly @aunty-tosin💕💕