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Hello Ladies!
It's a pleasure to participate in this exciting contest. Hope you're all doing great? For this contest by @ngoenyi, I will be making my entry on how I cooked a delicious vegetable soup.

In Yoruba Land, we call this soup, " efo elegusi", meaning vegetable soup containing melon. It is very nutritious and delicious. Different people have different methods of cooking this soup, in that there are different ways of adding the melon to the soup. But most Yoruba share a similar way of making it. For the things to add to it, there is no limit. Ranging from Pomo (cowskin), crayfish, prawn, smoked fish, dried catfish, goatmeat,, assorted meat, snail, beef, chicken to stockfish. One protein that adds rich flavour to it is the stockfish. Always add this. The aroma is irresistible!

For the vegetables to use, you can use vegetable of your choice and you can combine a two or three: Ugu (pumpkin leaves), soko (African Spinach), bitter leaf are mostly used. Each of these vegetables is rich in iron, including other minerals and vitamins that replenishes the body. Combining the three can be a great nourishment to the body and soul😊.

The preparation is simple and the soup is easy to make. Ride with me as I share my recipe😊

Ingredients

• Vegetables (Ugu)
• Melon: 1 milled cup
• Pepper and Tomatoes
• Onions
• Stockfish
• Crayfish : grounded
• Chicken
• Palm oil
• Locust beans
• Seasoning
• Salt to taste

Preparation

First, I cleaned the stockfish with water and salt. And set on heat with some water and salt to boil. This will boil till tender. Stock fish must be chewable, including the bones. So you want to boil till it is soft.
Next, I cleaned the pepper, tomatoes and onions. Then I blitz this together. I kept a medium sized onion bulb aside. I rinsed the locust beans and kept aside too.
I had boiled my chicken the previous night and kept the stock aside.

Preparing the melon, I diced the medium onion into a plate, added the milled melon and mix together to get a paste without adding water at first. Then I gradually added little water to get the consistency I want, it should be light, not too thick and not wtaery. It should be a light paste. This will be added in scoops to the soup, so that it can form sweet lumps , we call it "egusi siso" in Yoruba.

Finally, I washed the vegetables in salt and water thoroughly and kept in a sieve.

Making The Soup

• Heat the palm oil, add some diced onions. Let it sauteed for some minutes on medium heat.

• Pour in the blitz pepper. Stir up. Add your grounded crayfish, boiled stock fish with its stock, chicken stock, seasoning and little salt. Stir all together.
• Allow to cook under medium heat for 5 minutes, add the chicken and leave to cook well till the pepper is almost done. Add water if it's getting thick.
• Scoop in the melon with a spoon, or preferably use your hand. I always wash and use my hand, you can control the scoop putting it in small amounts. Small lumps cook faster.

• Do not stir, just add some water over the lumps if the soup is already thick and cover the pot.
• Leave to cook for the 10 minutes. Stir and check if the lumps are cooked. Taking a bit to taste will tell. If not add some water and leave to cook for another 3-5 minutes.
• Lastly, add your washed vegetables and stir in, reduce the heat and leave to cook for 5 minutes.

Soup is ready!!!
You can serve with any swallow you enjoy or white rice. It's very tasty and nourishing.

Thank you all for reading my entry.
Inviting @alexanderpeace @eliany @mandate to participate.