Reflections and Recipe #75: Lovely Light Soup With Goat

Hello, my friends:

I've been a woman with a mission these past 3 weeks as I've pretty single mindedly spent it in the kitchen (I've even moved my computer, camera, and printer in here).

I stopped to take stock today to re-evaluate my to-do list. Sigh . . . There are still over 50 recipes I want to include. I have 9 more days blocked out to work on this before "real life" intrudes on me again and my writing retreat ends. Tomorrow my nephew-son Sam returns to State College, bringing me Ghana yam and toasted corn flour, and you can expect to see recipes (and photos) of yam oto, yam chips, and coated yam (aka yam "French toast"), aprapransa (akplijii), versions of kaklo, and some more porridges.

Other recipes I plan to include: baked and roasted things like domedu (roast pork), or roast chicken, gari "biscuits," banana, peanut, and coconut cakes, and a number of combination and other soups and stews, e.g., bean and palmnut, groundnut [peanut] and palmnut, Fante-Fante (fresh fish soup), kontomire soup, okro soup, dried vegeatable soup, agushi soup, and maybe  hibiscus or sour sop soups, garden egg stew, egg curry, and groundnut stews with condiments. Of course, kenam (seasoned fried fish), plus more snacks and appetizers: squid and octopus, cheese straws, sugar cane. Other versions of jollof rice (corn, meat), kpokpoi (the Ga festival dish), and kotokyim (crabmeat stew), maybe an avocado and shrimp salad, acheke (aka attieke, a kind of cassava couscous). . . There are several Northern Ghana dishes I'd like to include, but the lack of ingredients may preclude that: wasawasa (steamed dried yam), ayoyo soup with Guinea fowl (made with Tossa jute leaves) soup, benisi (a cowpea leaves, millet, and shea butter dish). . .You get the idea.

Before I begin to despair, I'm going to stop and make some simple, satisfying light soup with goat (accompanied by fufu) for dinner.  As I've said elsewhere, this is the first soup I learned to make in Ghana when I was in my early 20s. It's still hard to beat. Basically, it's a basic vegetable stock which also includes goat. I was thrilled to discover goat meat in the freezer section of our local grocery store last week. Here's an adaptation of Flair Catering's version.

Recipe #75: Lovely Light Soup With Goat

Assemble ingredients.

To season  
1 pound of goat meat cut into chunks, bone in:

• ~1 teaspoon of peeled, fresh grated ginger (about an inch to 1 1/2 inch)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground aniseed (sekoni) or other seasoning of your choice
• 1 heaping teaspoon of no-salt seasoning of your choice (I'm using Mrs. Dash garlic and herb; many Ghanaians would likely use a couple of seasoning cubes)
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of ground dried red chili pepper
•  1 teaspoon salt (or to taste, or substitute seasoning salt)
• 2 small bay leaves
• 1/2  cup onion, chopped
• 3 whole kpakpo shito, whole, if available and (if not, substitute your choice of pepper(s), top(s) sliced off (about a tablespoon), or omit altogether

Put the goat meat in a soup pot and season it with the above ingredients. Stir the goat meat well, and add 1/2 cup water to the pot. Cover, bring the water to a boil, lower the heat to simmer while you prepare a second pot with:

• ~4 oz of washed tomatoes, whole (1 large or 2 small-to-medium. I used 4 small Campari)
• ~4 oz of peeled onion (about 1 medium)
• Fresh whole red chilli peppers to taste (probably 1 to 3, depending on type and heat), tops cut off, and seeded if you like
• 4 cups of water

Bring that water to a boil and simmer 10 or 15 minutes until the vegetables are soft, then remove grind them together (in a blender or an asanka) and return them to the water in the second pot, along with 4 more cups of water. Stir in 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, let it simmer a few minutes, and add the broth to the meat. Let the soup simmer until the goat meat is tender, then remove the goat meat and, for a nice clear soup, strain the broth through a sieve, into the  using a spoon if necessary to help force some of the ground vegetables through the sieve (scrape the underside of the strainer with a spoon). Return the meat to the pot and adjust the seasonings (salt, onion, tomato, pepper, etc.) to taste. This may need to simmer for a couple of hours: goat meat tends to be tougher than beef. Add a little more water if necessary.

To simplify this recipe, grind the vegetables (tomatoes, onion, pepper) at the beginning and add them to the meat pot, along with 8 cups of water. Barbara insists that the best flavor is obtained if you first allow the goat meat to simmer for 15 minutes before adding the vegetable broth.

There are many variations of this recipe: you can cook some eggplant or zucchini in a saucepan, then blend and add it near the end for a thicker soup; or you can add many other vegetables like okra or mushrooms, or other herbs or seasonings.

This version is hard to beat. No added fats, either, it's the original "lite" soup. I'm going to enjoy mine with some fufu. Ahhhhhh! This should be called "Goat Light Soup for the Soul."

Wele update: Many Ghanaians love to chew wele (smoked cow hide), and it is often included in soups as a delicacy. However, it's one of those acquired tastes I never acquired. I notice that some concerns about using wele, however (like the now-banned  turkey tails) that are emerging.

Recipe #47: Light Soup with Lamb, Eggplant, Mushrooms and Zucchini

I was wondering what to cook for dinner last night that would be fun, healthy, simple, and delicious, when I realized I had lamb shoulder (on sale the week after Easter), portabella mushrooms, zucchini squash, jalapeno peppers and eggplant all on hand. Plus, I always have tomato paste/sauce/canned tomatoes, garlic, onions, salt, dried red pepper and fresh ginger in the house.

Voila! Everything I needed for a wonderful “light soup.” That’s the English name in Ghana for a light stock-based soup, named that long before the West started talking about “light” foods. A light soup can be contrasted with heavier “groundnut” (peanut) or palmnut (palmfruit pulp-based) soups. Light soups have infinite variations, and are easy to adjust according to what you have on hand: but remember to include onion, pepper and tomato!

By the way, I recently realized that I've numbered the Ghanaian recipes I've posted so far incorrectly (I actually repeated numbers a couple of times), so this is really recipe #47.

Anyhow, here are the proportions and ingredients I used:

LIght Soup with Lamb, Eggplant, Mushrooms, and Zucchini

1 3/4  pounds of lamb round shoulder chops (mine had bones), fat trimmed and cut into chunks

6 cups of water

1 1/2  teaspoons salt (or to taste)

1 cup chopped onion (1 large)

1 cup tomato sauce (1 small can)

a few spoonfuls of tomato paste (optional)

6-8 ounces of eggplant, peeled and cut into quarters (a whole small Japanese eggplant, or a third to a half of a larger regular eggplant)

one medium zucchini (about 4 ounces), cut in half

1 small jalapeno or other chili pepper (or use dried red pepper to taste, if desired, beginning with 1/8 teaspoon). If you like things spicy, use the whole pepper; if not, cut it in half and carefully remove the seeds and membranes first

about 6 ounces of fresh mushrooms (I had portabella on hand, but any mushroom will work)

(optional seasonings: a 1-2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger, a couple of tablespoons chopped onions, 3 peeled, crushed cloves of garlic, a sprinkling of ground red pepper)

Trim the fat from the lamb, and cut it into chunks. Put the meant in a soup pot with a cup of water. The next step is optional, but I almost always season and “steam” my meat before making the soup, so if you want to follow tradition: on top of the meat, sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of fresh, peeled, grated ginger, a few cloves of peeled, crushed garlic, a couple tablespoons of chopped or minced onion, and sprinkling of dried ground red pepper and salt or seasoned salt. Cover the pot, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer while you prepare the other ingredients.

Chop the onion. Open the can of tomato sauce (and paste, if you want to use it). Rinse and trim the zucchini and  cut it in half. Peel the eggplant and cut it into quarters. Prepare the mushrooms (rinse, wipe dry with a paper towel, and slice in thick slices, or, if they’re small leave them whole or cut them in half or quarters).

Set the mushrooms aside to add near the end.

Add the other vegetables, except the mushrooms, to the pot, along with another 5 cups of water. Add the salt, stir well, bring it back to a boil, then let it simmer, covered, until the vegetables soften (about 10-15 minutes).

Use a slotted spoon to remove the eggplant, pepper, zucchini (and I also usually spoon out some of the chopped onion floating in the soup) into a blender or food processor container. You may need to add a little broth from the pot, or to do this in 2 batches. Blend the vegetables until they are smooth and return them to the soup.

Add the mushroom slices (at this point I tasted the soup and decided it needed more tomato flavor, so spooned in a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste), stir, cover, and allow the flavors to blend for another 10-15 minutes. Before serving, adjust the seasonings to taste, and skim any fat from the lamb that may have risen to the surface.

While the soup finished simmering I made some fufu to go along with it, but you could serve it with rice, or bread, or whatever you like. If you want to try an American version of microwave fufu using easily available ingredients, you might like to check out BETUMI's YouTube video. However, eating fufu is a slightly acquired taste. Also, pieces of fufu are swallowed whole without chewing them, so you might try the soup first with bread or rice or rice balls (omo tuo). This recipe makes a fairly thick soup: you can adjust or omit the eggplant, zucchini, etc. to suit your tastes, or cube the vegetables instead of blending them. (With American children I generally find it's better to grind the vegetables if they're not used to eggplant and zucchini).   Ghanaian women overseas also tend to be innovative cooks. It was a Ghanaian neighbor in Pennsylvania who first shared with me her discovery that pureed zucchini makes a nice complement to (or substitute for) Ghana’s “garden eggs” in light soup. Similarly, my friend and colleague in Canada, shared that her discovery that pureed carrots are a fabulous addition to chicken light soup, and my sister-in-law blended red bell peppers to get the color she wanted in her soups. This recipe serves 4 to 5 people.

Bon appétit.