This recipe is a combination of my favorite vegan peanut soup recipe and a popular green soup called Ebnu Ebnu.
What is green soup?
When I was a kid, I vividly remember my mother making green juice, Ebunuebunu Juice. A dark green soup of cocoyam / taro leaves mixed with boiling soup. It was the soup I used to drink when the snails were in season, and for some reason it was always delicious when it rained. It’s one of the least popular soups in Ghana, but it’s full of flavor and nutrients.
It’s a soup that comes back over and over again when I need a boost of nutrients and iron. This particular recipe contains peanuts for healthy fats. This will change the name of the dish from ebunuebunu to nkatekonto (peanuts and contomile / cocoyam). If you would like to try peanut butter / peanut soup alone, check out my peanut soup recipe (click here)
Things necessary
- mushroom: These will be the basis for all planted Ghanaian soups. They have a great meat flavor, give a great texture and make a really fragrant soup base. I love to mix and use dried mushrooms purchased from supermarkets in Asia.Today I’m using a mixture of tea tree and shiitake mushrooms
- Aromatics: Onions, tomatoes, ginger and scotch bonnet pepper are essential in Ghanaian soup. If you can’t handle the heat, you can skip the scotch bonnet or substituting with milder peppers.
- green: This dish uses turkey nuts (Twi name is Kwafuswa or Abedre) and spinach. Traditionally, this soup is made from fresh taro / cocoyam leaves and turkey nuts. Leafy vegetables are essential, but both the right amount of plant-based iron that I absolutely need.
- Veggie Bros: Bouillon bro broth paste is a great way to add flavor to your soup, so I completely switched to something better than bouillon bro broth paste. Now I don’t even add spices to my soup anymore. We will also add an organic unsalted bouillon cube to further enhance the taste. Miso is also ideal for moire umami.
- peanut butter: You have to use natural unsweetened peanut butter. This is the only kind of peanut butter / peanut paste used in Ghana.
- Flavor additives: This recipe uses prekese (Tetrapleura tetraptera) and whentia (selim grains). These are not recommended in nature, but are highly recommended as they give the soup such a wonderful aroma. Preques is usually found in green soups and palm nut soups. Both spices have medicinal properties.
material
- 2 cups of dried mushrooms (used by mixing shiitake mushrooms and tea tree mushrooms)
- 2 tomatoes
- 2 onions
- 1 scotch bonnet pepper
- Ginger thumb size 1
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1 cup of turkey fruit (Abedor) **
- One small prekese
- 5 whole grains of selim
- A heap of 1 tbsp better than bouillon paste.I don’t like the taste of beef or chicken
- Organic unsalted vegetable bouillon cube 1 cube
- A large handful of spinach 2
- Assortment of fresh mushrooms-you can add as many as you like-I like fresh oysters and trumpet mushrooms
- 1 block, carbide tofu
- water
Instructions
Put 8 cups of mushrooms and water in a pan and boil.
When everything was boiling, I took about 2 cups of water out of the pan and mixed it with peanut butter. Boil the sides of the peanut butter in a small saucepan over medium to low heat. (This is to cook peanut butter faster. See my peanut soup recipe for another way.)
Next, I put the tomatoes, scotch bonnet, and onions in a pan with mushrooms and boiled them until the skin started to peel off from the tomatoes.
After putting tomatoes, onions, scotch bonnet and ginger in a blender and mixing with 3 cups of water.
I put the mixture back in the broth and brought the broth to a boil.
The soup is boiling, so I used a match to “roast” it to prepare the preques, but a lighter is better. Just put a flame on the prekese. This will give off a scent.
After roasting, we added priques and selim grains, which are superior to bouillon and bouillon cubes.
By now, peanut butter would have been cooked sideways for about 20 minutes, you can add the peanut mixture to a larger pan and bring it to a boil.
You can also add fresh mushrooms and tofu.
Bring everything to a boil until the bubbles start to disappear and the oil begins to collect on top.
In a separate pot, boil the spinach and turkey nuts in water for about 10 minutes until the turkey nuts are tender.
Transfer turkey nuts, spinach, and about 1/2 cup of boiling water to a blender. Blend and put back in the pot. Also, 1/2 of the fiber left in the strainer was added to the soup. (This is my preference, but if you need a lighter soup, you can discard everything left in the strainer)
When the oil starts to build up, simmer everything for 10-15 minutes.
Note
Turkey berry is optional. They can be found fresh in some African stores, but most can be canned. Do not buy dried turkey nuts (gnangnan). These are for Ivorian cuisine and look red.
