Tag: African

Honey for the Beans

“Sweet” is one of the last ways most people would think of describing a plain legume, and yet that’s exactly how ewa oloyin got their name. Otherwise known as honey beans, these humble cowpeas are a beloved Nigerian staple, indispensable to the national cuisine. Reasonably, the name comes from the Yoruba language, where ewa means “beans” and oloyin means “honey.”

Don’t let their modest appearance fool you. Beneath those unassuming beige skins lies some of the creamiest, most versatile legumes you’ll ever cook with, ready to earn a permanent place in your pantry.

What Are Ewa Oloyin? Meet Nigeria’s Beloved Honey Beans

As you might have guessed from their short, ovoid shape and signature “eye,” ewa oloyin are closely related to black-eyed peas, but they’re a distinct variety of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata). They’ve been cultivated throughout West Africa for centuries, thriving in hot, dry climates where other crops struggle. It’s the kind of tenacious plant you can count on when times are tough, asking for little in return while even improving the soil by fixing nitrogen as it grows.

Sweet Beans: What Do Ewa Oloyin Taste Like?

As one might expect from a nickname like honey beans, these legumes have a natural sweetness that’s more pronounced than you might expect based on looks alone. Comparable to roasted sweet corn or toasted chestnuts, they’d give adzuki beans a run for their money, should their paths ever cross. Mellow, mild, and perfect for winning over picky eaters, a properly cooked pot of ewa oloyin can make a bean believer out of anyone.

As they cook, their starches convert to sugar, creating a viscous, amber potlikker that’s genuinely honey-like. The beans become remarkably creamy, striking that sweet spot between buttery and hearty. They can melt into a velvety stew or mash effortlessly into dips and fritters. Every spoonful feels rich and luxurious, even when made with minimal ingredients.

Nutrition For Days

Like most legumes, honey beans are nutritional overachievers hiding in plain sight. They’re naturally rich in plant-based protein and dietary fiber, making meals more satisfying while providing slow-burning energy that sticks with you long after you’ve left the table.

They also deliver an impressive lineup of vitamins and minerals, including folate, iron, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus, all while remaining naturally low in fat, cholesterol-free, and gluten-free. Pair them with rice or another grain, and together they provide a complementary amino acid profile that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

How to Cook Honey Beans, Quick and Creamy Every Time

Ewa oloyin have thinner skins than most cowpeas, so soaking isn’t strictly necessary. What you can’t skip is sorting them first. Always pick through your dried beans to check for stones before getting started.

  • On the stove, cover them with fresh water by about 2 inches. Bring to a boil before reducing the heat to a gentle simmer. Depending on the age of the beans, they’ll be ready in about 40 – 60 minutes. Resist the urge to add salt too early; seasoning toward the end of cooking helps ensure the skins stay tender.
  • In a a pressure cooker, cook the beans on high pressure for about 20 – 30 minutes, then let the pressure release naturally for the creamiest results.

One of the best parts of cooking honey beans is the broth they leave behind. As they simmer, the cooking liquid thickens into a glossy, amber potlikker with a subtle sweetness all its own. Don’t you dare pour it down the drain! It can be stirred back into the beans for extra richness, used to thicken soups and stews, or simply spooned over rice to soak into every grain.

Whether you cook them until they’re just tender or let them soften into a velvety mash, ewa oloyin are remarkably forgiving. In fact, many of their most beloved recipes celebrate beans that are cooked well past al dente, embracing their creamy texture rather than fighting it.

Akara (African Bean Fritters)

Perfect Pairings

Simple stews are where you’re most likely to find ewa oloyin in Africa. Ranging from mild to fiery, brothy to thick enough to eat with a fork, these hearty bean dishes are everyday comfort food, stretching humble ingredients into meals that are deeply satisfying and remarkably nourishing. The most popular pairings include:

Ewa Riro (Nigerian Bean Porridge)

Time-Honored Dishes and Contemporary Ideas

Honey beans are wonderfully versatile, making themselves at home in both traditional Nigerian cooking and modern plant-based kitchens.

They’re best known for starring in dishes like ewa agoyin, where impossibly tender beans are served beneath a deeply savory, smoky pepper sauce, or ewa porridge, a one-pot meal simmered with tomatoes, onions, peppers, and warming spices. Ground into a smooth batter, they become moin moin, a savoy steamed bean pudding, or akara, irresistibly crisp fritters with fluffy, creamy centers.

Beyond those classics, these beans are happy to improvise. Swap them in anywhere you’d normally use black-eyed peas; fold them into soups and stews, scatter them over salads, blend them into dips, or mash them into burgers and patties. Their mild flavor plays well with everything from fiery chiles to fragrant herbs, making them the kind of pantry staple you’ll find yourself reaching for again and again.

Akara (African Bean Fritters)

Sweet Beans, Sweet Dreams

In Nigeria, ewa oloyin have become so deeply woven into everyday life that you’d be hard-pressed to find a household without them. More than merely filling a bowl, these beans have completely won me over. Creamier than black-eyed peas, sweeter than adzuki, and so naturally delicious, they’ve made me reconsider my usual legume rotation entirely. Putting “honey” in the name isn’t just poetic, it’s a promise they actually keep.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)5 Comments

Cook This Book: Tamu

I know remarkably little about African cuisine, but what I do know, unfortunately, is that I’m not alone in that. We consider ourselves a global society, immutably interconnected from here on out, and yet outside of Africa, which is the second largest continent on Earth, the food is largely lost in translation.

Even in the most diverse, metropolitan cities in America, where so many other cultures are celebrated, finding a restaurant specializing in any African food is like striking gold. I mean that both in the sense that the chances of it happening are exceedingly rare, and if you do happen to luck out, you’ll be truly rich.

That’s why I was so quite frankly thunderstruck by the depth and breadth of culinary knowledge contained within the pages of Tamu: A Journey Through Africa’s Plant-Based Cuisine by Jane Nshuti.

Right out of the gate, this is different from the average cookbook. Written with a distinct perspective and zero pretense, Ms. Nshuti manages to bridge the divide between instruction and inspiration seamlessly. She stays true to her heritage, writing from only her perspective and experiences to share a genuine, personal account of a life lived through food.

Ingredients are explained, not dumbed down, refusing to pander to the lowest common denominator. If you’re hungry to learn, all the tools and information you need are right here, at your disposal. Ravenous to expand my own palate, it was a revelation to read about so many ingredients and dishes that have never even been my radar before.

First off, Africa is not a monolith. Elegantly illustrating this point, recipe chapters are divided by country of origin, each one part of Ms. Nshuti’s personal path. Debunking the misconceptions that African food is “too starchy, too heavy, and too meaty” with every turn of the page, the fact that the whole book is vegan wouldn’t even register if not overtly stated. Having grown up with limited means herself, it feels like a wildly affordable luxury every time I sat down with a new dish in front of me. Abundance is implied; joy is inherent.

Green Banana Curry (page 96) from Tanzania provided my first real introduction to matoke, which are confusingly referred to as simply “green bananas” in most cases. No, they’re not unripe Cavendish bananas nor plantains, matoke are small, starchy, and vaguely reminiscent of white sweet potatoes when cooked. Stewed with coconut milk, spices, and vibrant fresh vegetables, the dish is positively dazzling. It’s an easy entry point towards appreciating the understated magnificence of this misunderstood staple.

Egusi Soup (page 164) from Nigeria had been on my wish list for a very long time. Egusi seeds, derived a melon distantly related to the watermelon, are ground into a coarse paste to form the rich foundation of this stew. Eggplant, mushrooms and soy strips take the place of animal protein, though you could easily adapt that to anything you have on hand. Spiked by the heat of habanero, dawadawa seeds (fermented locust beans) add an irreplaceable complexity that’s utterly crave-worthy. Perhaps it’s an unorthodox addition, but I thought that a dollop of shito makes it even better.

My only critique is that while the photo shows some sort of greens cooked down into the mix, there’s no mention of anything of the sort in the recipe or accompanying text. Further research tells me that ugwu (fluted pumpkin leaf), uziza leaf (pepper leaf), bitter leaf, or waterleaf are traditional inclusions, while spinach, kale, or collard greens are common alternatives outside of Africa.

Banfora Cakes (page 206) from Burkina Faso are often described as pineapple Welsh cakes, which fall somewhere between scones and pancakes, cooked on a hot griddle. I’d like to further confuse the uninitiated by saying that they remind me of sweet biscuits, crispy around the edges and fluffy on the inside, perfectly at home on the dinner table if not for the finishing sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on top. They strike me as the ideal solution to urgent cravings, since they use basic staples and come together in roughly 30 minutes from start to finish.

Umureti Wa Okara (page 19) is just one example of how the author maintains her distinct perspective in honoring traditional African foods while also using their inspiration to create her own unique dishes. A simple chickpea flour omelette gets a new lease on life with the addition of pan-fried okra and fresh cilantro. It blurs the boundaries between nations, speaking fluently in the universal language of a good meal. That said, my omelette quickly turned into a scramble, failing twice to hold together as intended. Purportedly just a single serving, it easily turned into two, or even three if served with a side.

Some chapters are necessarily shorter than others. Relaying memories alongside recipes flowing naturally from storytelling to suppertime, each page is a reflection of the Ms. Nshuti’s life; nothing more, nothing less. For places that made a bigger impact on her passion for cooking, there are naturally more recipes inspired by those experiences. There’s no breathless hyperbole pushing the reader along. Instead, we’re only asked to follow, if we’re hungry and curious enough, to learn more.

“Tamu” can be translated as sweet, pleasant, nice, or tasty, depending on who you ask. All seem like fine explanations for the contents of this cookbook, though I’d argue it deserves greater praise than that.

Hannah (BitterSweet)6 Comments

Fritter the Day Away

From the beginning of time, when humans discovered fire and the very concept of cooking itself, fritters have bubbled up across all cultures. Defined primarily as battered and fried morsels, the specifics that flavor these nuggets are limitless. Vegetables, fruits, or proteins could be the main feature, or a combination, or none of the above. The dough could be raised by yeast or baking soda or eggs, or left unleavened altogether. Served at any meal from day break to nightfall and in between, fritters can be sweet or savory, spicy or mild, served hot or cold. When you start trying to pin down exactly what a fritter is, it might be easier to describe what it isn’t instead.

Most Americans are familiar with simple, comforting fritters born primarily in the south; apple fritters are a staple lining in any decent pink doughnut shop box, while corn fritters are essential summer snacks. The French have beignets, while Italians call them bigne. Pakora hail from India, binding together bits of onion, potatoes, cauliflower or other vegetables in savory, seasoned chickpea flour.

While I could write a whole dissertation about the diverse world of fritters, I’d like to draw attention to a less celebrated sort today: the black eyed pea fritter. Known also as accara, this legume-based variant is primarily found in Africa. You could almost think of them as falafel from another motherland. Dried pulses blended coarsely with spices, fried until golden and crisp, they’re irresistible eaten out of hand as a snack, but work well in everything from sandwiches to salads.

This recipe comes from Chef Philip Gelb, who in turn adapted it from Bryant Terry. I was fortunate enough to first taste this beloved street food first hand, at one of his cooking classes eons ago. They were part of a lavish Jamaican spread including jerk cauliflower, calaloo, run down stew, and peas and rice, but I daresay they stole the show. Paired with a tart, tangy, sweet, and spicy tamarind chutney, I have a feeling you’ll fall in love with them, too.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)9 Comments