Today’s bean safari takes us into Nigeria for a dish called Ewa Oloyin or Nigerian Bean Porridge. The beans are known as honey beans or oloyin. These alien-toe-looking beans were started soaking last night and took up a lot of water as they rehydrated. This morning, after rinsing them, I couldn’t help but see what looked like silvery metallic toenails on these digit-looking legumes. The recipe for this porridge is incredibly simple except the scotch bonnet peppers it calls for were not found and so I’m substituting habanero for them. Other than that I have the palm oil, Roma tomatoes, red onion, bell pepper, and the god-awful-smelling ground dried shrimp; oh yeah, the shrimp bullion too.

Verdict: I decided to err on the side of caution and only used one of the habaneros. Good thing, as the dish is spicy with only one of them. I also scaled back the amount of dried shrimp to one tablespoon from the two-and-a-half the recipe called for. This worked out well for Caroline and me as we both feel that with the full amount of the above ingredients this would have been a potently spicy and fishy soup. Yes, I called this a soup as it’s not like the consistency of a porridge. If I was supposed to mash the beans prior to serving, the recipe didn’t call for it. The flavor is a kind of spicy bean chowder with a pronounced umami character that probably comes from the dried shrimp and palm oil. I’ll certainly be looking for other recipes that use the oloyin bean but I’d consider making this again. This is not recommended for people who do not like a fishy flavor. I’d like to say that I’m thrilled with our Nigerian lunch and feel fortunate for having this opportunity to try something new. The next stop on our journey will take us to Cuba.