Ewedu Soup for your pleasure.

You can either buy fresh ewedu leaves this means that you have to pick the leaves from the stem, as you only need the leaves. Or you can buy the frozen leaves from the Asian/ African grocery shop, this would have have been picked. I have used the fresh one and I’ve picked and washed the leaves. Place the water in a pot, add a small stone of potash or 1/2 tsp of potash and bring water to boil.

Pour in the washed ewedu leaves and leave to continue boiling in the water, until soft.

Check to see if the leaves have soften once the are soft enough, pour this in the blender (or you can use what we call Ijabe (this is like a small short broom) to manually chop the leaves). Otherwise, pour in a blender and use the pulse button “P” a couple of times to chop the leaves, you don’t want this all smooth.

Otherwise, pour in a blender and use the pulse button “P” a couple of times to chop the leaves, you don’t want this all smooth.

Pulse a few time until thoroughly chopped but not smooth.

Pour the soup back in the pot and place back on heat, add the iru (locust beans)

Add some cray fish, it better to use the ground crayfish. Add 2 tablespoon of grounded egusi (grounded melon seeds, this is optional) you can have it plain if you prefer.

Add salt and seasoning cube to taste. Please note that you need to be fast as possible so the the soup still maintains its greens and still drawy. The beauty of ewedu is in its drawiness i.e its sliminess (if there’s any word as such)

Ewedu is usually paired with its twin sister “Gbegiri” and eaten along with Amala. It was once said that if yoruba people were to have their own flag it will be in the colours of these 2 soup, “Ewedu & Gbegiri” Ewedu is a very rich source of folic acid, my grandma used to make me just eat or lets say drink this soup on its own being anaemic. In recent times, the health benefits of ewedu has come to light, it has been known to include vitamins such Vitamin A, B & C and high in fibre.