There are always abundant new year’s resolutions flying about with the arrival on the new year. The one that I always tend to follow for about a week is the healthy fad! With that in mind many cooks and chef of Instagram have many ideas of how one can eat and live healthy. One such cook, Dooney, replaced the high calorie melon seed in the traditional Nigerian efo soup with pumpkin seeds. I decoded to give this a shot.

As I was prepping to cook the soup, I realised in my haste I picked up the seeds with the shell still on. As I don’t have eternity to peel them I looked in my pantry for what I could substitute pumpkin seeds with.

There you have it, Pine Nuts Efo!

Oil-Less Pine Nuts Efo

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper

½ medium white onion

1 scotch bonnet

4 cloves of garlic

1 cup of pine nuts, finely chopped

1 cup of cooked prawns

½ garden egg or aubergine, cut in medium chunks

150g of stock fish, pre soaked

1 cup of fried or smoked wara (optional)

5 cups of chopped fresh spinach

1 Knorr cube

Method:

Toast the pine nuts in a pan for about 3 minutes and place aside. In the mean time, in an electric chopper or food processor, combine the bell pepper, garlic, onion and scotch bonnet and blend. Heat the blended combination until all the liquid evaporates. Add the fish, Knorr cube, garden egg and wara if you are using, making sure all ingredients are combined properly. At this point add the toasted pine nuts and the chopped spinach and combine thoroughly. Leave to simmer for 5 minutes and then add the cooked prawns and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Serve with rice or tuwo.