COW LEG OKRO SOUP...

Growing up, the very sight of okro would have me bawling my eyes out! i did not like it at all and even only started tolerating it maybe 2 years ago and got to start enjoying it last year. Well it may have something to do with a chat my mum had with me about my very selective palette (especially with soups)... It kinda went like this, "you never know who you will end up with in life, will you say you won't cook so and so because you don't like it or would you deprive your kids of food they could potentially like yada yada yada..."

Well here we are...

2kg Cow Leg (with the bone)

2 Cups Cleaned Periwinkles

250grms Stock Fish

11/2 Cup Ground Crayfish

500grms Okro

1 Medium Sized Bunch of Ugwu

2 Cups Chopped Uziza

1 Onion (Chopped)

1 Cup Palm Oil

2 Seasoning Cubes

Salt and Pepper

Wash your cow leg thoroughly pop in your pressure cooker, bones and all. If you toss out the bone you lose potential flavour that it could be adding to your soup. 

Season with salt, pepper, seasoning cubes and onions, Add water to cover and set it to cook for 30 - 40 minutes. If you aren't using a pressure cooker, you will have to give a lot more time for the cow leg to cook and keep adding water until it is tender. 

While your meat cooks, wash up and chop you ugwu finely (on the left) and your uziza leaves (on the right) a bit more roughly and set aside.

Uziza is an amazing herb used in a number of ibo soups and other recipes. It has a spicy, almost hot taste and packs amazing flavour. There is a huge difference between soup cooked with uziza and one cooked without.

Chop or grate your okro. I like to do a bit of both so that i get the "draw" from the okro but still get some chewy bits. 

Wash periwinkle, pour a little water over it with a pinch of salt and set aside preferably in the fridge until you're ready to use.

When your cow leg is tender, transfer meat and stock into a big cooking pot. Please always be careful when opening a pressure cooker, people have suffered severe steam burns from being too much in a hurry.

Add stock fish and allow to cook for another 10 minutes. if your stock level is low, add some more water until it come just up to the level of your meats.

Add crayfish and periwinkles and taste for seasoning. Cover and allow them all to party for another 5 minutes.

The rest of the cooking is going to happen really quickly cos we want our veggies nice and fresh, nothing worse than over cooked, brown overly soft okro. yuck!

Add palm oil to the pot, stir and immediately add chopped/grated okro and mix it all up. Cover for 5 minutes only. Add ugwu and uziza, stir and take off the heat immediately. Never mind the heat will cook down your vegetables but still leave them nice and fresh.

Serve up and eat with eba or semolina.

Enjoy!
:)