Abacha African Salad Recipe (Abacha ncha with Ugba)

• Dry fish, Fried fish, or Pomo(As desired) 

• 1 large Red Onion 

• 4 Garden eggs 

• 3 Utazi leaves (Gongronema latifolium)

Step 1: Dissolve the potash in a small bowl of luke warm water. Stir well and set this aside.

Step 2: Place the dry Abacha in a medium sized bowl. Pour boiled water over the abacha in the bowl. Leave to soak in a bowl of water for about 20 mins. This helps soften as well as increase it’s size. Once it’s soft enough, leave to drain in a sieve

Step 3: For this, i’d be using kanda also known as pomo. If you buy from the local market, you need to clean it properly. To clean, get an iron sponge and scrub the inner part thoroughly With a sharp knife, scrape the outer part also then rinse. Cut it up into smaller pieces then place in a pot of water. Add salt to taste then leave to boil for about 10 mins. Drain off the water then set aside.

Step 4: Rinse the Ugba, Wash and chop the utazi leaves, Wash the garden eggs and chop if you like, Slice the onion rings.

Step 5: In a pot, pour in the palm oil. Add the potash mixture with a sieve making sure you don’t pour in the residue along with it. Stir consistently till the palmoil and potash mixture turns into a yellow paste

Step 6: Add the salt to taste, crushed seasoning, Ogiri paste, ugba (ukpaka), dry pepper,pomo, Crayfish,ground ehu , then stir very well till the mixture is well incorporated.

Step 7: Finally, gently add the drained abacha into the mixture and mix thoroughly till it’s well incorporated. At this point, the Abacha is ready to be garnished and served BUT………….

If you like your abacha warm as some people do, you can heat it up a little on a burner.

Step 8: Garnish with the sliced Utazi (Its quite bitter so i’d advice you use sparingly), Garden egg, Onion rings and Fish

Serve with a Cup of palm-wine for that breath taking feel 😉