Kitchen day: "Onkongobong" on the beats

Hello Steemians, hopefully you are all doing great today. Today, i was nostalgic. I felt like having a feel of what my grand mom used to cook for us when we were around her and i decided to cook it myself. Onkongobong all the way and I'm certain you would like to know how i went about it.

Onkongobon as it's locally called in the north west part of Cameroon is a leafy vegetable grown in this part of the world. In English it's called fluted gourd or fluted pumkin.

Two weeks ago, i bought some fresh onkongobong leaves from some farmers who brought out their farm products to sell at the road side on my way back from dropping off the kids for their holiday self esteem program. Once at home, i showed @janicenini how to clean, slice and fix the vegetable. She actually plucked the leaves from the stem, washed and cut then into tiny portions, crushed them together with salt using the hands (using the cloth-like washing motion), rinsed twice with clean water, squeezed it out and kept it in the freezer.

Plucking of leaves by @janicenini

Washed onkongobong leaves

Crushed and rinsed onkongobong leaves

Fast forward to today...

Ingredients:

• Garlic
• White pepper
• Tomatoes
• Onion
• Meat
• Eggusi
• Seasoning cubes and salt
• Thyme
• Ginger
• Grounded basil leaves
• Vegetable oil

Complement:

• Semi ripe plantains

HOW I DID IT

I initially boiled the washed meats with some seasoning cubes and salt. I equally added some onion and thyme to give the meat a great flavouring.

I heated some of the vegetable oil and fried the tomatoes and some of the sliced onion for about 10mins.
Then I mixed the grounded eggusi with the meat and stock and a little more water just to have a slightly watery paste into the frying tomatoes and onion. My grounded garlic, basil leaves and white pepper and ginger were added at this point too. I equally added a few seasoning cubes to taste and just a little salt because the raw washed onkongobong leaves already had some salt in it. I cooked this mixture for about 15mins to be sure the eggusi was ready, while constantly stirring to avoid burning at the bottom.

While this was happening, I peeled and put my semi-ripe plantains to boil.

When the egussi was ready and I made sure the taste was as what I wanted, I then added the sqeueezed raw onkongobong to the cooking paste as well as the remaining sliced onion. I stirred well to have my vegetables well mixed with the egussi paste.
Since I don't like my vegetables cooked, I stirred for about 5mins and my pot was off the fire.

Dear Steemians food is now ready and i must tell you the taste is out of this world.

Hope i stimulated you taste buds and you will want to try out my receipt too. Please let us know when you do.

Thanks for reading and hope to share my next kitchen adventure with you soon.