KO EN ES PT FR Nigerian Side dish⏱ 20 minEdit history

Amala (Yam Flour Swallow)

Name: Amala (Yam Flour Swallow)
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Nigerian
Ingredients: 250 g yam flour (elubo); 1 L water; soup

The Yoruba staple of Nigeria: flour ground from dried yam (elubo), cooked by beating it into boiling water. The yam is dried so it will keep, and the drying is what turns its white flesh brown, so amala's colour belongs to the flour, not to the cooking. Stirred rather than pounded, it is soft rather than stretchy. Pinched off hot, dipped in soup and swallowed.

Ingredients

4servings

yam flour (elubo) · sold as yam flour in African grocers250 g
water · you may not need all of it1 L
To serve
soup · ewedu, gbegiri, egusi or okra soup

Steps

Bring 1 litre of water to the boil in a heavy pot. Take out 250ml and keep it hot; it is what you will adjust the texture with later.
⏲ 8 min
Turn the heat to medium-low and add the yam flour in three lots, beating hard with a wooden spatula after each and pressing the lumps against the side of the pot. Flour that clumps cooks on the outside and stays raw inside, so add the next lot only when the last is smooth.
⏲ 3 min
When it has come together as a stiff mass, pour in 3-4 tbsp of the reserved water, cover, and leave on low for 3 minutes. The water boils and steams the dough.
⏲ 3 min
Beat hard again for 1-2 minutes. It is done when it is smooth and soft and comes away from the side of the pot as one mass. If it is still stiff, add reserved water a spoonful at a time and keep beating.
⏲ 2 min
Scoop it a portion at a time into a wet bowl and swirl to round it. Serve at once, with the soup.

Variations

Amala isu: made from yam flour. The commonest kind, and the one here.
Amala lafun: made from cassava flour.
Amala ogede: made from flour of dried unripe plantain.
Which yam: white yam (Dioscorea rotundata), high in starch, is the one held to make the best amala.

More detail and the reasons why (1)

What it is eaten with: ewedu (a jute-leaf soup) and gbegiri (a black-eyed bean soup) are the famous pair; efo (a vegetable stew), ila (okra soup), ogbono and egusi soup are all usual too.

Tips

The brown is not a burn. Yam flesh is white and turns brown as it dries, and that is amala's colour. A dark amala is showing you its flour, not its pot.
No salt. Salt and heat come from the soup, as with fufu.
How it is eaten. Pinch off a piece, press a hollow into it with the thumb, scoop up soup and swallow without chewing. That is why the soup is the partner and not a side.

More detail and the reasons why (5)

The yam is dried so it will keep. Fresh yam spoils quickly, so it is peeled, sliced, dried and ground, and that flour is elubo. Fufu boils its tuber and pounds it straight away, and treats flour as the shortcut for when there is no mortar ("stirred into boiling water and worked until smooth."). In amala the flour is the dish.
Stirred, so not stretchy. Fufu says of the instant flour that "it just never stretches like pounded fufu." Amala sets out to be exactly that texture. Soft and smooth is done; there is no need to beat it until it pulls.
All the flour in quickly, beaten hard. Polenta rains a coarse meal in slowly and cooks it forty minutes, which is how long water takes to reach the middle of a coarse grain. Yam flour is fine and cooks in minutes. The failure polenta warns about is the same, though: "once the meal clumps, the outside cooks and the inside stays dry powder." So the flour goes in in lots and every lump is broken against the pot as it forms.
Water later, and a little at a time. The reserved water is held back because a slack dough is hard to bring back, while a stiff one loosens with a spoonful. The three minutes under the lid are what cook the inside of the mass.
Serve it at once. Gelatinised starch firms as it cools (thickening a sauce). As fufu puts it, "Cold fufu sets hard and rubbery and will not soften again in the soup", and amala is the same. Wrap leftovers and warm them over steam (serving temperature).