Today (May 4th), was probably the first time in over two months that I had left work before 6pm because we have a major website launch coming and I'm doing what I can to make sure it is a success and I had some meetings this evening. After going to my meetings, I had time to go get groceries, my stomach was screaming and there was no food in my house (this hardly happens).
Dear friends, it is a bad idea to go grocery shopping while hungry, everything jumps out yelling buy me, EVERYTHING. At first, I came in just trying to get onions and peppers, soon my basket decided to have meat, then potatoes somehow got there. By the time I was at checkout, I think someone decided I also needed okra to eat Eba. Sha, we thank God for self control because I only added tomatoes and gizzard to it.
So I quickly drove home hoping to throw something together, catch a food coma before going to sleep. Luckily my garri stash was still well-stocked, I had chicken in the fridge ready to go. I had now gotten more ingredients, so once I got into the kitchen and set up my music it was time to turn up.
Remember that time I made ofe-owerri? I had some ingredients left that I didn't finish from preparing it. While I was getting my ingredients together, a scary thought popped into my head. Oh my God! What if I switch out the cocoyam process, replace it with an okra base and just continue from there? Holy Shit that would be awesome! Giddy with excitement, I begun my new invention or fusion.
THE PROCESS
As usual, the general recipe is the same as ofe-owerri, I used chicken and chicken stock instead of beef. I added bell peppers(red and green ) which gave it amazing color in my opinion and habanero peppers to spice it up a bit. In my excitement I didn't even use my gizzard, maybe in my second attempt.
Once the aroma began to make my mouth water, I had to start getting my pounded yam ready. There was no way I could exercise patience this close to what I thought could potentially be greatness in my own kitchen. The whole time I was just ready to taste the goodness of God. Don't let me wait if I don't have to please.
Soon my pounded yam was ready and I had served myself a dish of whatever this was. For the first time, I paused to think, what would I even call this? What had I just done? Does this even make sense? Would this be copied? After all, imitation is the ultimate form of flattery. Is this how someone discovered *insert soup name*, named it and now it is a thing? In fact let me just google it.
All I want to say, Thank you Google for bursting my bubble. Nonetheless, I will ignore google's suggestions that Otong soup exists. I have made an ila asepo variation of the aforementioned. I 'dun' care what the facts are. Allow me be great on this one. Thanks.
