Ofe Owerri (Meat and Taro Soup with Dried Seafood)
Ofe owerri is a rich Igbo soup from Eastern Nigeria, thickened with pounded cocoyam and loaded with meat and dried seafood. It is often named among the most expensive soups in the country, because the pot holds beef or goat, cow skin, stockfish, snails, dryfish and crayfish together. The cocoyam gives body, palm oil gives color, and okazi and ugwu leaves finish it with a green, slightly bitter edge.
Instructions
Start the cocoyam first, since it takes the longest. Put it in a pot with enough water to cover, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then simmer until tender, adding more water if the pot runs low.
Drain the cooked cocoyam and peel it. Pound it in a mortar until it turns smooth, sticky and stretchy.
Put the meat, cow skin, stockfish, snails and seasoning cube in a separate pot. Cook them in their own juices for 15 minutes.
Pour in extra water and stir in the dryfish. Then add the ground crayfish and the palm oil.
Drop in the pounded cocoyam in small lumps and stir well. Keep cooking over high heat until the soup thickens to the consistency you like.
Stir thoroughly, then add the grated habaneros, the okazi and the ugwu leaves. Bring back to a boil and stir again.
Taste and adjust with salt and more seasoning cubes if you want. Stir once more and take the pot off the heat.
Serve hot with eba, semo, starch or wheat.
Make it personal.
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