Egusi ✦

Graines d’egusi

What it is

The melon it comes from is grown for nothing else — the flesh is too bitter to eat — and the sprawling vines earn their keep shading yam and cassava fields while the seed matures. Roughly half fat and a third protein, milled egusi behaves like a curd rather than a thickener: it sets into soft lumps instead of dissolving, which is the whole point of the soup named after it.

In the kitchen

Drop the milled paste into hot oil and leave it alone for three or four minutes before you touch it. Stirred early it disperses into a grainy sludge; left to set first, it breaks into the soft lumps the dish is built on.

Goes with

Red palm oil (dendê) Chili pepper Crayfish Molokhia Onion Spinach Dried shrimp Beef

Same species

Watermelon

Also used with

Ashanti pepper

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