• Wrewre soup

 Ingredients

– Two medium-sized hard chicken

One small lemon

-Three cups of wrewre (melon seeds)

-Two medium-sized onions

-Four medium-sized tomatoes

-Two tablespoonful of tomato paste

-Six gloves of fresh garlic

-100 grammes of fresh ginger

-One small scotch bonnet pepper

-One sprig of rosemary

A handful of thyme

A handful of sage

Water – about three litres

Salt to taste

Method

Prep the chicken by washing it with lemon juice and removing any remain­ing feathers.

The lemon juice helps to remove the poultry smell.

Blend one onion, half of the ginger, fresh herbs and garlic together. Use a little bit of water to help with the blending.

Place the chicken in your soup pot and add salt to taste, add the spice blends and the blended onion mixture.

Stir and let it season for about 30 minutes. Also add the rest of the onions, tomatoes, tomato paste and pepper.

Also, slice the remaining ginger and add.

Now prep the (Wrewre) by toasting

 it in the oven or dry toasting on the hob.

Before toasting, do check and remove any remaining debris found in it.

When toasting in the oven, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and toast for about 30 minutes. Use a wide oven tray to help spread out the Wrewre for even toasting. Also, stir the (Wrewre) 15minutes into the toasting time to ensure an even toasting.

Start steaming the chicken includ­ing everything else in the pot. You may need to add more water to help the chicken to tenderise to your preference.

Once the (wrewre) has browned lightly, remove it from the oven and mill it into a coarse paste.

Extract the (wrewre) milk by blending the coarse paste with water and using a fine sieve to strain it. Repeat this process a couple of times until the water becomes clear and non-milky. Then throw away the chaff. Use about three litres of water for this process.

Now using a finer sieve, re-strain the milky solution a couple of times to remove as much chaff as possible. The result should be silky smooth milk with little or no grits when passed through the fingertips.

Now check on your steaming pot, the vegetables would have soft­ened up, ready to be removed and blended. Check the seasoning of the chicken and correct with salt.

Blend the onion, tomatoes and pepper. Add it into the soup pot, cover and let it simmer for about 10 minutes until a light layer of oil is formed.

Now add the (wrewre)milk to the pot, straining it once more.

Turn up the heat and let the soup simmer for about 20 min­utes. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer gently until it is cooked to perfection. This pro­cess could take an hour, depend­ing on your heat settings.

Serve the soup hot with fufu, boiled rice, rice balls, boiled yam, boiled potato, boiled ripe plantains or bread or can be eat­en on its own.

Source: Puls.com.gh