Abak Soup — Abia State, Nigeria

Abak Soup is a vegetable-and-meat soup from Abia State, in Nigeria's south-east, built on a base of red palm oil, leafy greens and a mix of meat and fish, and thickened until it takes on the dense, spoonable texture typical of Nigerian soups meant to be eaten with a pounded starch. It belongs to the broad family of Igbo-region vegetable soups, where the leafy vegetable used and the thickening method vary by household and locality. The soup is reported from Abia State, part of the south-eastern Igbo heartland where palm oil production and leafy vegetable farming shape much of the everyday cooking. As in neighbouring areas, the soup is generally paired with a swallow such as pounded yam, fufu or garri rather than eaten with rice. To prepare it, meat and dried or smoked fish are first simmered in water with onion, pepper and stock cubes until tender, then red palm oil is added along with ground crayfish and a thickener, often ground cocoyam or a similar starch, to give the broth body. The chopped leafy vegetable is stirred in only toward the end of cooking, so it wilts without losing all of its colour and texture, and the soup is left to simmer briefly so the flavours settle together. What distinguishes this Abia version within the wider family of south-eastern Nigerian vegetable soups is its particular balance of a cocoyam-based thickener with a generous hand of palm oil, giving a soup that is notably dense and deep orange-red, meant to coat a swallow rather than to be sipped on its own.