Hello wonderful hivers, welcome to
another creative Sunday, hope you all had a great week, and here is me wishing you all a fulfilled weekend, starting with the preparation of Afang Soup which I will be sharing with you all the making process.

_{Image edited using canva}

Afang soup is a very popular soup in Nigeria, mostly ranked as the most delicious soup because of its rich recipe which is all nutrient-packed, and the original source or should I say owners of this soup are the Calabar people, also Akwa Ibom state, the afang leaves grow vast in our rain forest and farms as a climbing plant. Another name for afang leaves is "Okazi", this is s common name by the Igbos.

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Apart from its rich taste, Afang soup also has numerous health benefits, the reason why it is a favourite to so many I'll be listing a few of these benefits.

• it acts as an antioxidant, therefore purifies the blood

• it reduces blood sugar

• it improves eyesight

• helps give glowing skin

• it improves heart health etc and so many more, you see why afang soup should be part of your meal at least once a week, in my family, we can't stay a week without cooking afang soup.

The recipes needed for Afang Soup are

• Afang leaf

• Waterleaf

• stock fish

• Meat

• dry fish

• Periwinkle

• Cameroon pepper

• Palm-oil

• crayfish

• seasoning cubes

• salt

• Cowskin(Ponmo) etc.

Preparation Process

Before you start cooking, the leaves and other ingredients need to be properly washed, then the afang leaf is sliced and pounded using a local mortal or blender, anyone you prefer, but I mostly prefer using my local mortar and pestle, as it doesn't make the afang leaf smoothly blended, which should be the right texture. The water leaf is also properly washed and sliced, not blended this time, and the peri-winkle needs more vigorous washing till the water you used in rinsing becomes clean, the tail of the periwinkle should be chopped off so you can easily suck it out of its shell.

Cooking Process

• The meat, cowskin alongside the fish is first parboiled, adding your seasoning cubes and salt to taste

• Next, you add your sliced waterless to the pot and leaves to simmer, the ratio of the water leaf to afang can be 2:1

• You would notice the water leaf becomes lesser in the pot and its water extracted, now you add other ingredients, like pepper crayfish, giving it a good stir.

Note that you don't need to add any water, the stock from the meat and water from the water leaf are enough to see the soup to the end, in fact, afang soup runs on a lot of palm-oil, so you need more of it.

• if you didn't add your periwinkle in the first process, because most people like to parboil it differently adding a bit of salt, you can add it to the pot now.

• Finally, the palm oil and afang leaves goes in, taste for salt and enough seasoning according to your preference, leave to simmer for about 5 minutes, then bring the pot down.

Your delicious Afang soup is ready. You can pair it with semo, fufu, or garri, it goes with all swallows (morsel). I paired mine with eba made from garri(cassava flakes) so delicious!

So tell me, have you heard or tasted Afang soup before, how was your experience, I can't wait to read all your replies.

Till we meet in the kitchen again,

_{All images used in this post are mine.}

Thank you for reading❤❤