Abenkwan

Ghanaian palm nut soup, the fruit cream simmered with smoked fish and garden eggs until the oil breaks bright orange across the surface

Origin: Accra, Kumasi & the Gold Coast, Ghana

From the journey of Oil Palm.

Abenkwan is the Twi name for palm nut soup, and in Ghana it occupies roughly the place that a Sunday roast occupies in England: it takes the best part of an afternoon, it is what a household cooks when people are coming, and everyone has an opinion about whose mother makes it correctly. It is eaten with fufu above all, the pounded cassava and plantain that is scooped and swallowed rather than chewed. It is built from the same pressed fruit cream as Nigerian banga and is a noticeably different soup. Ghanaian versions are lighter and rounder, thickened partly with blended garden eggs, the small bitter African aubergines, and seasoned with far less of the forest spice that defines the Delta version. The two traditions sit on opposite ends of the same coast and use the same tree entirely differently, which is a fair summary of West African cooking generally. The palm has been worked on this coast for a very long time indeed. Carbonised palm nut shell turns up in enormous quantity at Kintampo in central Ghana from around 1700 BCE, in volumes that indicate processing rather than gathering, which makes abenkwan an unusually direct descendant of a Bronze Age technology.

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg fresh palm fruit, or 800g tinned palm nut concentrate
  • 600 g goat or beef on the bone, in pieces
  • 200 g smoked fish or smoked turkey, in pieces
  • 4 garden eggs (small African aubergines), or 1 regular aubergine
  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 onion, halved
  • 3 scotch bonnet chillies
  • 2 tbsp ground crayfish
  • 2 stock cubes
  • 1 tsp ground dried chilli
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 2 litres water

Method

  1. Boil the palm fruits until the flesh is soft, thirty to forty minutes, then pound and extract the cream with hot water exactly as for banga, straining and repeating until the fibre gives nothing more. You want about 1.5 litres of thick orange liquid. With tinned concentrate, whisk it into 1.5 litres of hot water.
  2. Separately, season the meat with half the salt, half an onion, and a stock cube, and simmer in just enough water to cover until nearly tender, about forty minutes. Keep the liquid.
  3. Boil the garden eggs, tomatoes, the remaining onion half, and the whole chillies in a little water for ten minutes, until soft.
  4. Blend those softened vegetables to a smooth purée and set aside. This is what gives abenkwan its particular body and mild bitterness.
  5. Bring the palm liquid to a simmer in a large pot and cook uncovered for twenty minutes, until it thickens and the oil begins to show.
  6. Stir in the blended vegetable purée, the meat with its cooking liquid, the smoked fish, ground crayfish, remaining stock cube, ground chilli, and salt.
  7. Simmer uncovered for a further twenty-five to thirty minutes, stirring occasionally. The soup is ready when a distinct layer of bright orange oil floats clear on the surface and the whole has reduced by roughly a quarter.
  8. Taste for salt and heat. Serve with fufu, and do not skim the oil, which is the point.

Notes

Garden eggs are worth seeking out from an African grocer; a standard aubergine gives the body but not the faint bitterness. Skimming the surface oil, which some cooks are tempted to do, removes both the colour and the flavour the soup exists for. If the finished soup tastes flat, it usually wants salt and crayfish rather than more chilli.

The Gastrographer

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Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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