Doing What I Know How to do Best on Weekends

I’ve been looking forward to the weekend a lot more, lately. That’s because I know I’m always going to spend it doing what I love to do best which is cooking. My little business has been thriving and in the next few months it will be a year already, how time flies!

Last weekend, I was a little more excited than usual because I had a new customer. Most of my patronages come from people who already know me and have been buying my meals before now. Having a fresh face amongst my returning customers this time, really warmed my heart.

The said customer is someone from a different tribe yet he ordered a meal that originates from my own tribe. This is something that’s so rare. According to him, he has lived in my hometown for years and recently relocated to this area for the purpose of work.
Clearly, he has had a proper experience of my culture in terms of food and lifestyle so I was easy to trust.

The meal on last weekend's menu is called Efere Afang in my dialect, which translates to Afang Soup. It is a meal primarily made of Wild Spanish leaves and Waterleaf. As I had a first-time customer, I took extra care in preparing this meal as I didn't want the outcome to be nothing short of excellent.

I started my preparation by washing all my proteins thoroughly and setting them aside in different bowls. The soup contained beef, dry fish, dry cow skin, periwinkle, ice fish and stockfish.

^{My Proteins}

^{A little blurry, apologies!}

Having set aside my proteins, I proceeded to washing and slicing my waterleaf. My Wild Spanish leaves came precut and grinded so I had that already in place.

Waterleaf

Grinded Wild spinach leaf

I began cooking the soup by seasoning the beef with pepper, salt, seasoning cubes and a little water. I added water and kept cookin till the meat was tender.

Eventually I added my dry cow skin and stockfish and allowed it to keep cooking for about four minutes. When it was ready, I separated my proteins from the stock. In an empty pot, I added a little palm oil, my periwinkle, proteins and waterleaf, and I allowed it to cook.
Waterleaf as the name implies, has water of its own which is released when it cooks and prevents the content if the pot from burning.

I stirred the contents of my pot after it had cooked for about 5 minutes. The next thing I added was my protein stock, some grinded crayfish, dryfish and a little more palm oil.
I allowed this to boil and then I stirred again.

I proceeded to add my wild spinach leaves and I added another batch of palm oil. I let this cook for 3 minutes, then I stirred to mix everything properly and that’s it, my soup was ready!