I talked to Onwuachi recently to discuss our new series, Wednesday Night in America, and to find out how some of these dishes—the Nigerian recipes he still makes for himself and the ones he makes at his Washington, DC, restaurant Kith/Kin—might fit into a modern cook’s weeknight repertoire.
He was quick to respond that Nigerians eat “a lot of stews” (some of them fast, others not so much)—a sentiment echoed by the home cook I spoke to for this project. That means that a few of these recipes take a little bit longer to prepare than you might be willing to commit to on a weeknight, but that’s what Sunday prep-days are for. Plus, they reheat like a dream.
Here are five Nigerian meals Onwuachi would happily cook on a Wednesday—or, for that matter, any night of the week:
1. Egusi Stew
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Pearl Jones
Onwuachi calls egusi stew “Nigeria’s most popular dish,” though he might be conflating its popularity with his own adoration, since he also notes that it’s the definitive favorite of everyone in his family. It’s a dish his mother (a Texas-born caterer with roots in Louisiana and Jamaica) learned to make from her then-husband’s cousin because it was a favorite of Onwuachi’s father’s; she continued to make it after their divorce because she liked the taste just as much as he did.
The stew is made with the large seeds of the egusi, a melon that looks like a watermelon on the outside and a giant cucumber on the inside. The flesh of the melon is bitter and inedible, but the seeds are toasted and ground, and they help thicken the stew, which is seasoned with pungent crayfish powder, bright ginger, spicy Scotch bonnet chiles, and iru (fermented locust beans that can be purchased fresh, dried, or ground into a powder). Onwuachi’s recipe contains goat, but other versions call for beef or seafood.
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