My sister just had a baby boy. He is so gorgeous, such a perfect blessing. I tell her that she was just a vessel to bring him into the world, to me. She thinks I am joking.

After the birth, the doctor advised her to add more iron to her diet and she was slightly anaemic. As the resident chef, it was my duty to make sure I incorporated foods rich in iron into her diet. I immediately thought of spinach, broccoli, in short loads of greens. I knew exactly what I was going to get once I got to the store.

As a UK girl, I always find everything in America is oversized, it scares me. I thought my local Asda groceries store here in Aberdeen was huge until I entered her sister store, Walmart over there. My lord! I was so lost. It took me forever to find anything, eventually I stumbled upon the vegetables aisle.

As I was picking the vegetables and greens on my list I came across collard greens, I had heard so much about them especially in African American movies but I had never tried them before. I picked up a bag to experiment with later.

I made a creamy sauce and substituted spinach with the collard greens, the result was amazing. The collard greens retained their crunch and didn’t wilts easily. They also don’t have as much water as spinach so my sauce remained thick and I used less cream. I served this sauce with boiled sweet potatoes.

While eating I started to think how great this would be for the Nigerian egusi (melon seed) soup however I wasn’t sure I could get collard greens in the UK.

I was still dreaming of this egusi soup when I got back so I consulted Prof. Google. To my surprise I found out we do have them here in the UK and they are called Spring Greens. I was so happy. I didn’t waste any time in ordering some!

 

Ingredients:

1 red bell pepper

1/2 medium onions

2 cloves of garlic

2cm ginger

1 scotch bonnet (ata rodo)

4 tbs of palm oil

1 tbs of ground crayfish

120g ground egusi (melon seed)

500g of lamb, boiled with spices and herbs, retain 1 cup of the stock

100g of dried fish, wash and cut into strips

250g of Spring Greens

all purpose seasoning

Directions:

1. Blend the peppers, onion, ginger and garlic together. I used a chopper.

2. Heat the palm oil in a sauce pan on medium heat and then add the pepper mixture. Fry until all the water evaporates.

3. add the crayfish

4. sieve the stock from boiling the meat into the pan.

5. add some seasoning if required and simmer for about 3 minutes

6. Add the ground egusi and cook for another 5 minutes

7. Add the meat and fish

8. Add the collard green, cover and simmer until the collard greens are cooked. I served it with yellow garri.