HEALTHY EATING ~ Naija Style 🍽

Importance of Eating Healthy.

According to Rudy Mawer, the foods you eat have big effects on your health and quality of life.

Although eating healthy can be fairly simple, the rise in popular “diets” and dieting trends has caused confusion… For more information, please check www.healthline.com/nutrition/healthyeating. At this point, I’ll be shifting our focus from dieting to African Tropical foods, commonly eaten in Africa..

First, let’s start from Nigeria.

One of Nigeria’s popular dishes aka soups is what the Efiks/Ibibios call “Afang soup”.

Soooo 😋 yummy, trust me for those of you who haven’t tried this dish before, after this article will want to go ahead and cook this special wonderful delicacy. But before we move on to the recipe and preparation, I would like us to know that Afang soup is a soup rich in meats, vegetables and palm oil. If you are averse to palm oil then this soup might not be for you. Some people actually make this oil free, but Nooooo, this soup isn’t supposed to be oil free. The oil is the real deal in this recipe. I am sure the originators of this soup will agree with me.. Oil compliments most vegetable soups like Afang and Edikang ikong. Having tasted Afang with oil, I doubt you can convince me to ditch oil in this recipe.

What is Afang made of?

Afang is made from afang vegetable (okazi in Igbo) and waterleaves. Actually, waterleaves are easily accessible here in Nigeria, but for those outside Nigeria and Africa, I doubt there’s a possibility of finding them. And so you can substitute waterleaves for frozen spinach. But you can’t substitute Okazi for any thing, that’s the star of the show.😊😊
Alright fam, lets get started..

Recipe Ingredients

4-6 cups Meat stock (add more water as needed)
1/2 cup Ground crayfish
1/2 tbsp fresh grounded pepper
1-1/2 to 2 cups Palm oil
2 large onions chopped
300g Beef meat
350g Cow feet
300g Shaki
350g Stock fish
1 cup periwinkle (optional, with or without shell)
907g frozen spinach or lamb lettuce or 1kg waterleaves
500g Okazi
Salt – to taste
2 or 3 Stock cubes
2 pieces of dried fish (clean and deboned)

Recipe Procedure

Wash, slice and squeeze water leaves, and set aside. Slice Afang leaves thinly, pound or blend and set aside. Please note: the dry leaves are tougher than the fresh leaves, so try to grind it as fine as you can.
Cook your assorted meat and stock fish with chopped onions, one stock/seasoning cube and salt to taste. Cook until tender.
Then clean the dried fish in hot water. Debone them and add fish to the pot to cook.
Add the remaining stock cube and pepper to the pot. Mix well then add periwinkles (if you are using any). Cover the pot and leave to boil for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, add the waterleaves and leave to simmer until leaves turn completely gray. Then add your Palm oil, ground crayfish and allow to boil for 4-5 minutes. Make sure you stir properly.
After that add the okazi, correct seasoning if necessary, allow to simmer again for 2-3 minutes.

Your Afang is ready, bring down and serve hot with any of the following: Semovita, Eba, Fufu, Wheat meal, Amala, Usi(starch).

Alas, we have come to the end of this article. Hope you enjoyed every bit of it.. Please don’t fail to comment and share your thoughts as well. You’re welcome.

Waiting for your positive replies 😍 😍

Love y’all

See you in my next article.

Victoria Francis