Pawpaw Soup

The Tiv soup of Benue: strips of unripe pawpaw dried in the sun, then simmered with palm oil, ground egusi, and beef, and eaten with pounded yam

Origin: Makurdi & the Benue Valley, Nigeria

From the journey of Papaya.

Nigeria calls the papaya pawpaw, in the British usage, and Yoruba calls it ibepe. It came to West Africa with the Portuguese in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, along the same sea roads that brought the chilli, the groundnut, and the cassava, and it has been growing wild around compounds ever since, bearing fruit within a year of a seed being dropped. Most of it is eaten ripe and raw. The Tiv of Benue State, in the valley that Nigeria calls the food basket of the nation, do something else with it: they take the fruit unripe, cut it into thin strips, dry it in the sun, and cook it as a vegetable in soup. Drying concentrates the flesh and gives it a slightly chewy, almost meaty texture that fresh green papaya does not have, and it also makes the crop keep, which matters where the tree fruits all at once and the market is a long walk away. The soup itself is built the way the soups of the middle belt and the south-east are built: palm oil, ground egusi melon seed to thicken, beef and its stock, onion, and heat. It is eaten with a swallow, pounded yam or eba, and is a dish of the home and the compound rather than the restaurant, which is why the written record of it is thin.

Ingredients

Pawpaw

  • 400 g unripe pawpaw (green papaya), peeled, seeded, and cut into thin strips

Soup

  • 500 g stewing beef, cut into 3 cm pieces
  • 1 onion, half sliced and half chopped
  • 2 stock cubes
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 120 ml red palm oil
  • 150 g egusi (melon seeds), ground to a coarse powder
  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies, blended to a paste
  • 2 tbsp ground crayfish
  • 600 ml beef stock or water

Method

  1. Spread the pawpaw strips on a tray and dry them in strong sun for a day, turning once, until they are leathery but not brittle. In a low oven, 70°C for three to four hours does the same work.
  2. Season the beef with the sliced onion, one stock cube, and the salt, add a little water, and simmer covered for 30 minutes until tender. Keep the stock.
  3. Heat the palm oil in a heavy pot until it thins and loosens, add the chopped onion, and cook for two minutes.
  4. Stir the ground egusi into the oil and let it fry gently for five minutes, stirring, until it smells toasted and begins to clump.
  5. Add the chilli paste, ground crayfish, remaining stock cube, and the reserved stock, and simmer for 10 minutes.
  6. Add the dried pawpaw strips and the beef and simmer for a further 15 minutes, until the pawpaw is tender and has taken up the oil.
  7. Check the salt and serve hot with pounded yam, eba, or fufu.

Notes

Fresh green pawpaw can be used without drying and takes about eight minutes to cook, but the texture is softer and less interesting. Egusi is the seed of a bitter melon relative, not of the sweet melon; buy it already hulled and grind it dry.

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