Cooked beans (Èwà)

• Pick impurities out from the beans
• Place in a large pot and add;
• water to double the volume of the beans
• tomatoes and/or pepper paste to taste
• sliced onions for flavour
• any of the mentioned species (dry) can also be added
• You can also add meat or fish.
• Cook until the beans are soft enough to eat.
• Then season with salt to get the exact taste that you want.

Eat by itself, with rice, corn, bread, yam or gààrí

Hulled cowpea

• Soak in water for about 10 minutes
• Drain the water, and rub handfuls of it firmly between the palms several times (It must be done in quick successions)
• Fill the bowl with water and mix the cowpea with it
• Pour off the floating hulls and then repeat steps 1-4 until almost all the hulls are removed
• Remove the remaining hulls individually.
• The dehulled beans can be dried before grinding if it is to be kept in this form
• It can also be grinded in this form to make the paste

Cowpea

We will be talking about cowpea (beans) for some times now. The beans type am referring to here is Vigna unguiculate though many other legumes are used in cooking though out Nigeria. There are various varieties of this cowpea commonly referred to as beans in Nigerian market. All varieties are similar in nutritive value but local preferences exist. The common ones are either whitish or brownish in colour. Cowpeas are high in soluble carbohydrate and protein. They also contain some minerals but are low in oil. In Nigeria, cowpea is a valuable source of protein because of short supply of animal protein.

For storage sake, it is better to buy the ones that are well dried and free from insects , insect holes and are not discoloured. They should be picked to remove foreign materials and debris. A proven way of keeping cowpeas in bulk is by keeping them in an air tight container with some fingers of dry pepper preferably ‘ata wewe’ in a cool dry place.

Cowpea can be cooked as a whole or as processed paste.

Banga soup with beef

Ingredient	Handy measure
Beef	12 pieces
Palm fruit pulp	2 cups
Dry pepper	1 tea spoon
Fresh pepper	4 ata rodo
Onion	1 small size
Tomato paste	1 dessert spoon
Okro	8 small sizes
Atariko	1/2 tsp
Rigije	1/2 tsp
Salt	to taste

Put palm fruit pulp with the meat in pot and make the pulp up to 5mt with water. Boil till the meat is tender. Add the g rinded onion, fresh pepper and finely chopped okro with the remaining ingredients and cook uncovered for about 15minutes.
It can be served with cooked cassava starch, tuwo or pounded yam


N.B: Cooking is best done in local clay pot