It was a public holiday, and since we observed it at work, my roommate and I decided to try Oha Soup. One of my local delicacies. Being Igbo by tribe, I have seen it prepared several times at parties and at home. My roommate was excited.
We wanted to try new things, and that was how we went to market together. Got all the needed ingredients. While at the abattoir, my roommate developed an instant craving for pepper soup, and without hesitating, we included that in the agenda. We ended up doing two different meals on the same day.
We decided to go with pepper first since we wanted to eat that first and make the soup for the next day. We washed all the meat, steamed with seasonings, and pounded one tiny seed in the mortar.
These seeds kind of have a bitter taste but a hot scent. The pepper soup came out delicious; we boiled our rice and started eating. After which we began the Oha.
We boiled the cocoyam till done, pounded it, and prepared our meat. As this was going on, the kitchen was already giving out appetizing aromas, and with our stomachs filled, our voices were a clear description of happiness. Things were going well until it got to tasting.
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My roommate, out of curiosity, dipped the spoon into the pot, dropped some quantity on her palm, and leaked. She frowned and shook her head. An expression I didn't understand. I got it from her and tried, and immediately my facial expression changed. "Why does this soup taste bitter?" "My efforts seem to be wasted," I said with a sad face.
"Don't be sad; it has not gone wrong completely since the soup. Maybe it won't be very obvious when we combine it with soup."
I didn't see any truth in the hope she was trying to put in me. I suggested adding water to dilute the bitterness, and that was going from frying pan to fire. The bitterness remained, and now the soup is extremely watery, and the oha wasn't much to help add a bit of thickness.
We left to cook longer and expected it would help reduce the water quantity. In the process, it started burning beneath, and the leaves became too soft. The end result of the kitchen saga didn't give us a perfect Oha soup. We managed to eat the soup for just a day and got tired.
As we examined what had led to that destructive result, we remembered we didn't wash the mortar after pounding the tiny seeds. We used the mortar to pound the cocoyam. Since we had pepper soup, it served as our savior before we started thinking of what to cook.
