Okra soup with smoked catfish
Serves 6. About 1 hour 15 minutes, or 35 minutes without the meat.
Ingredients
- 500g beef chuck or goat, cut into 3cm pieces (optional)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 150g smoked catfish pieces
- 500g okra
- 1 or 2 red habaneros, or 2 tablespoons Pepper Mix Sauce
- 3 tablespoons red palm oil or vegetable oil
- 1 stock cube (beef or chicken)
- 2 tablespoons ground crayfish (optional, from African grocers)
- 200g baby spinach, roughly chopped
- Salt
Method
- If you are using meat, put it in a saucepan with half the onion, a pinch of salt and 750ml water. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes, until tender. Keep the cooking liquid.
- Meanwhile, put the catfish in a bowl, cover it with just-boiled water and a pinch of salt and soak for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse, pick out any bones and break it into chunks.
- Wash the okra and pat it dry. Trim off the stalks and chop it into small pieces, about 5mm, or pulse it briefly in a food processor. The finer you chop it, the more silky and stretchy the soup becomes, and that texture is the point of okra soup.
- Heat the palm oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and soften the rest of the onion for 3 minutes. Add the habanero (whole and pierced for gentle heat, or chopped, wearing gloves, for more), the catfish and crayfish, and the meat with its liquid, or 750ml water if you skipped the meat. Crumble in the stock cube and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the okra and cook uncovered for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring now and then, until bright green and tender. Stir in the spinach for the last 2 minutes and season with salt.
- Serve hot with eba, fufu or plain rice.
Tip: Don't overcook the okra or it loses its colour. Pepper Mix Sauce is a quick way to get the heat and depth of a Nigerian pepper base: stir it in with the stock. Smoked fillet catfish has fewer bones, and any other smoked fish works too.
