Egusi Soup (Melon Seed Stew with Greens)

Variations

• Fried versus boiled egusi: this recipe makes the lumpy kind. Frying the egusi in the oil first and stirring it in gives a smooth, even body instead. Same ingredients, different texture, and Nigerian households divide on it.
• Efo elegusi: the Yoruba version, with far more greens.
• Egusi and okra: okra alongside adds its own slipperiness — calulu explains that mucilage.
• The meats: goat, ponmo (cow skin), stockfish and smoked fish are all normal alongside beef, and a mixture is considered better than any one of them.
• The seed: with no egusi, ground hulled pumpkin seed is the nearest thing. Different aroma, same setting behaviour.

Tips

• It thickens by the opposite route to fesenjan. There the walnuts break down completely over two or three hours and emulsify their own oil into a smooth sauce. Egusi is close to 30 per cent protein, and that protein coagulates with heat — so rather than dissolving it sets. It is none of the methods thickening a sauce lists: not starch, not roux, not reduction, not collagen.
• Not stirring for ten minutes is the whole recipe. Stir while it is setting and the lumps break up, and broken they do not re-form. What is left is a thick porridge.
• The paste's stiffness sets the size of the curds. Too wet and it disperses the moment it lands; too dry and the middle stays powdery. It should cling to the spoon rather than run off it.
• The palm oil rule from red red applies here too: unrefined red palm oil has a low smoke point and an assertive flavour, so it is a seasoning rather than a frying medium. Let it smoke and that aroma is gone.
• Oil rising is the doneness sign — common across West African stews, and here it is the seed's own oil pushed out as the protein sets.
• Do not toast the seed. Toasting is more fragrant and it denatures the protein early, so the lumps will not hold.
• Greens in the last three minutes. Ugwu weeps a great deal of water once cooked and will loosen the body you have just built.