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Luxurious African breadfruit pottage

African breadfruit pottage, ukwa etelu ete

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Breadfruit pottage (Ukwa etelu ete) is the paramount breadfruit dish. It is rich and very filling.
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 50 minutes
Course Dinner, lunch, Main Course
Cuisine Igbo, Nigerian
Servings 3

Ingredients
  

  • 5 cups ukwa breadfruit
  • 1 tablespoon akanwu Potash
  • salt
  • scotch bonnet fresh pepper
  • 1 tablespoon palmoil
  • 40 g washed and processed onugbu
  • 1 teaspoon ogili isi
  • dry fish goat meat, smoked fish
  • 2 seasoning cubes

Instructions
 

  • In a small bowl, place akanwu and add 1/4 cup water, stir well and set aside to allow any sand in it to settle at the bottom of the bowl.
  • Wash dry fish and pick out the bones, set aside.
  • If using goat meat or stock fish cook, adding salt only, until softened, set aside.
  • Pick out sand from ukwa, place in a bowl of water and wash.
  • Wash by gently rubbing handfuls of ukwa between your palms in the bowl of water and ensuring not to break up the seeds. Scoop ukwa out of the water, and discard dirty water. Do this several times to ensure there is no sand in the ukwa.
  • Put ukwa in a pot add enough water to reach about 3 inches above, place over medium-high heat. Boil until the water turns milky.
  • Swirl akanwu gently and add 3-4 tablespoons of the akanwu liquid, the cooking liquid will immediately turn pale yellow.
  • Cover and continue cooking until the ukwa is soft.
  • Place a sieve over a bowl and pour ukwa and cooking liquid into the sieve.
  • Pour 1 cup ukwa cooking liquid back into the pot (if you don't have up to 1 cup ukwa cooking liquid, complete with water) and place over medium heat.
  • Add salt, fresh pepper, palm oil, onugbu, ogili isi, seasoning cube and dry fish or cooked goat meat.
  • Cook for about 5 minutes till dry fish has softened.
  • Add ukwa stir well and cover. Cook until your breadfruit pottage is almost dry.
  • Take off the heat. It will absorb the little water remaining, that way it won't end up dry.
  • Your breadfruit pottage, ukwa etelu ete is ready to be served.
  • Serve with the cooking liquid in another bowl or use the cooking liquid to prepare Ukwa soup.

Notes

Notes
  • If using goat meat add part of the stock to the breadfruit pottage, ukwa.
  • Be economical when adding stockfish stock to ukwa, the flavour is very strong and will overwhelm your breadfruit pottage.
  • Frozen fish (eg croaker, mackerel) and chicken should be cooked and served on the side and not inside the ukwa.
  • Add smoked fish to your breadfruit porridge at the very end.
  • When washing ukwa, the water will be cloudy, don't worry that the nutrients are leaching out, there is plenty where that came from.
  • If after about 45 minutes your ukwa is not soft, add more akanwu/ngu liquid.
  • If ukwa is soft but the grains are standing alone like well-cooked rice, add a little more akanwu/ngu water.
  • Don't mash your ukwa to make it look like a porridge if you need to do that, it means you didn't add enough akanwu/ngu or you bought the bad type of ukwa. You will end up with a mash of ukwa mixed with hard seeds, very unpalatable.
Keyword breadfruit, Party food, porridge