Egun Bobo – starch and plantain

Here’s continuing my DK Old School Series. In the last post about Okro Peppersoup (recipe HERE), I reminded you guys that at the beginning of the year, I asked for anyone with old classic recipes to send them my way. I am using this post to remind you guys again. Dishes your mum taught you, your grandma, your Aunties, share with me and I will try it. Hopefully not 3 months after. This was provided to me by Tega Ojabo, all the way from New Zealand. Can you Imagine? New Zealand!!! This is an excerpt from her email, again this was sent in January. Thanks Tega

Just asking though…have you heard of “egun bobo”? Well, I don’t know the literal English translation of this but I know it’s an itsekiri (a tribe in Delta State) food. It’s made by preparing starch (with palm oil as usual), then boiling over ripe plantain a bit, take out the black seeds from the middle of the plantain then combining the starch and slightly boiled plantain in a mortar…using a pestle..lol..Well, I guess a food processor can be used as well..dunno.

This delicacy is a bit sugary, very yummy and goes too well with banga or owho soup..that’s if one doesn’t eat up the egun bobo by itself anyway..lol

It’s a delicacy dad made us love..simply delicious!!!

I knew I wasn’t going to be pounding nada in a mortar, and with the thought of something going wrong, I wondered if the plantains could be cooked with the starch from scratch rather than added later. I am aware of the Boiled plantain and Eba version. It is a dish shared by Deltans and Igbos alike. At least our Igbo neighbour used to cook it. Eba is made separately, and then pounded with boiled plantain. Anyways, this is Starch. Google doesn’t disappoint sometimes and thanks to Sarah of Sapele Honey, I was relieved to see that my thoughts on how to cook both from scratch was a possibility. So here goes

Egun Bobo - starch and plantain

 

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Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

15 mins

Total time

20 mins

 

Author: Dunni Obata

Recipe Category: Nigerian Soup Staples

Culture: Urhobo, Itsekiri

Serves: 1

You will Need

• ½ cup Starch - you can use Tapioca starch or Farina
• 1 teaspoon Palm Oil
• 1 Slightly overripe plantain
• ½ - ¾ cup of water

How To

1. Boil the plantains till soft, peel the skin off and blend or puree in a food processor until smooth.
2. Dissolve starch in water, transfer to a pan and add a little palm oil
3. Add the pureed boiled plantain to the starch in the pan
4. Stir continuously on medium heat, until the starch starts to thicken. The day before, as the first video in this post shows, I did this very well manually, even though I have successfully done this using a hand mixer. When things were beginning to go awry, and my starch is too precious to waste by developing lumps, I poured straight into a bot, whipped out the hand mixer, and it was fine. Smooth, no lumps, just perfect
5. This picture was taken while it was still cooking. It firmed up in the end, to the consistency of starch, but slightly softer, because of the plantains. See the Instagram video below

3.2.2925

Yes, I just had to sneak in some New Nigerian Cookery. Lol. Have a blissful week, Tribe. Stay tuned for more good ol’ Nigerian cooking.

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