Sunday 26 August 2012

Groundnut soup

groundnut soupThis week’s Sunday lunch was at B’s flat just below ours. B is from Mali originally and he cooked us a traditional dish from across most of West Africa, groundnut soup , which we ate with and ram meat stew with rice and plantains, all yummy. It is strange that here in Nigeria stews are called soups, and soups don’t really exist – but then what is a soup but a watered down stew!

Basically it is onions and tomatoes, tomato paste cooked in water with lots of  different seasonings – black pepper, salt, celery slat, ground bay leaves, dried fermented onion spice, sumbala and of course chilli or pepe as they call it here in Nigeria. No  oil is used . The vegetables or meat if you are using it are then boiled in this and finally the ground groundnuts are added or peanut butter is you shortcut the nut grinding stage and then cooked until it thickens. I first encountered this in Mali but didn’t get a chance to taste it until later. If you love groundnuts you’ll love this. If you’ve tasted SE Asian peanut dishes like Satay, then you should try this.

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