For you reading this post, Ekpang Nkukwo must be your best meal or one of your favourite with sincerity. Everyone loves it, especially the Calabar and the Akwa-Cross people. It’s one of their best delicacy since the beginning of time and it’s eventually spreading round the globe.
If you are here to learn or to know how to cook this delicious dish, whether you’re from Cross River State, Akwa-Ibom or not, then this is the right place to be, for the guidelines below will guide you as simple as there are written to make sure come out as the best cook. Please remember not to miss any of the steps.
Ingredients:
- 5 tubers of Cocoyams – grated into a paste (when buying, ask for the tiny ones for Ekpang Nkukwo, not the ones for boiling)
- Half wateryam – also grated into a paste
- Mfi (Periwinkle with the shell)
- One bottle of palm oil
- Ibat (dried fish)
- A cup of crayfish
- 5 cubes of maggi
- Fresh pepper
- Ntong leaves or iko leaves-shredded (they are all spice leaves)
- A bunch of young cocoyams leaves, shredded for wrapping( you can ask someone to help you shred the leaves for wrapping the cocoyams into the tender leaves)
- Ikpa, i.e. ponmo, cut into tiny bits
- Snail (optional)
- Salt to taste
Preparation:
- Put some palm oil in the pot to cover the base of the pot, pour in the periwinkes.
- Mix the cocoyams with the wateryam, add sallt to the mixture and knead.
- Wrap the mixture into the cocoyam leaves, little by little.
- After wrapping and arrangin in pot, add pepper, crayfish, maggi cubes, dry fish, ikpa and every other ingredient on the top of the food.
- Pour in some hot water. This is to prevent it from getting burnt while boiling and also note; do not stir it until it is done.
- When it is done, use a spatula to stir it gently and mix the ingredients.
- Do not stir it vigorously or else it will end up looking like egusi soup.
- After it is well browned, add more palm oil and other ingredients as you wish.
- Allow to boil more, you can then taste the cooking as the itchiness from the leaves and cocoyam has now been neutralised.
- Bring it down and serve it hot.
They you go, your Ekpang Nkukwo can now be enjoyed as you suckle those periwinkle alongside licking your fingers. Remember to masticate gentle, else you’ll run into a periwinkle or mfi shell.
Note, this recipe is for Ekpang Nkukwo and not Ekpang Otor.