Abak Atama Soup

Hello All,

Have you missed me? After my coffee cake post, I just sort of disappeared. I promise I have great reasons. My siblings came to visit me so I was so pre-occupied with being the perfect hostess and tour guide that I kind of neglected my blog for a bit. I mean you understand right? We had such an awesome time sight seeing and even for me, i discovered things about San Francisco that I never knew. Oh the magic of visitors! This abak atama soup has been on my mind for a while mostly because of my grandma. She used to make it all the time with periwinkles and although I was not a huge fan of it growing up, I did like the process of sucking the periwinkles. Unfortunately, being out of Nigeria, periwinkle with the shell is a luxury to come by. I once found it in toronto at a Chinese grocery store (Oceans supermarket) but after that, I have searched far and wide. Oh well, this post is dedicated to my grandma. Her birthday is in June and for some reason she is not sure what her exact birthdate is, so I am choosing this random day in June to celebrate her. Enjoy my Abak Atama soup recipe.

p.s : I used ingredients available to me. You can always jazz it up with smoked fish, periwinkles and other interesting elements you find. Also Abak is the efik word for Banga.

Recipe for Abak Atama Soup

Ingredients

2 cooking spoons of palm nut cream or 3 cups of palm fruit juice

1 small bunch of atama leaves (shredded)

1 pound of beef

1/2 pound of shaki (beef tripe)

1/2 pound of Kpomo (Cow skin)

1 medium piece of stock fish

1/2 cup of crayfish

1/2 piece of Uyayak (aiden fruit) – Deseeded

1 tablespoon Chilli powder

1 tablespoon crayfish powder

Seasoning Cubes

Salt

Method

If you are using palm nuts from scratch, wash, boil, pound and extract the juices to make 3 cups of palm nut juice. If you are using the canned palm nut cream, mix it with 3 cups of water.

Season and boil your meats (beef, tripe, cow skin) halfway as the rest of the cooking would be done in the palm nut juice.

Bring to boil the palm nut juice and and add your meats and continue to boil. If it gets to thick or dry, add some water.

Season your soup at this point using salt, pepper, seasonings, uyayak and crayfish powder. Make sure not to over do on the salt as it may be over powering. If you have issues with salt, you can skip it all together and just rely on the seasoning cubes and crayfish powder.

Add your crayfish pieces, stock fish and any other elements you wish to add to the soup at this point.

Once the soup starts to thicken, add your atama leaves and allow to simmer for an extra 3-5 minutes.

Serve with Pounded Yam, Eba, Fufu or any swallow of your choice.

Uyayak