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Ewa agoyin
Lagos street-style mashed honey beans under a dark, smoky fried-pepper sauce
In Lagos, ewa agoyin is the breakfast you buy from a woman with a big cooler of soft, mashed beans and a second pot of almost-black pepper sauce glistening with palm oil. The name points to the Agoyin, people from neighbouring Togo and Benin who made the dish famous in Lagos markets, and it is eaten with soft, chewy agege bread or fried plantain. The beans are the small, naturally sweet brown 'honey beans' (ewa oloyin), cooked until they collapse. The sauce is the star: dried chillies and onions fried slowly in palm oil until deep brown, smoky and slightly bitter-sweet. Chef's tip: don't rush the sauce; the onions need to go from soft to very dark brown slowly over a medium-low heat, which is where the smoky depth comes from.
- Total time
- 120 min
- Difficulty
- medium
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
For the beans
For the agoyin sauce
Method
0/8 doneStep 1: Put 14 oz Nigerian brown beans (ewa oloyin) or black-eyed beans in a large pot, cover with 5 cm of water and boil over a high heat for 10 minutes. Drain and rinse; this first boil reduces the gassiness.
10 minStep 2: Return the beans to the pot with ½ onion and fresh water to cover by 5 cm. Simmer over a medium-low heat, topping up with hot water, until they crush to a paste between two fingers.
60 minStep 3: Add 1 ½ tsp salt and keep cooking, stirring often, until most of the water is gone. Mash roughly with a wooden spoon or potato masher until thick and soft, with a few whole beans left. Keep warm.
10 minStep 4: While the beans cook, drain 6 dried red chillies and blend them with 1 red bell pepper and the chopped one of 1 red onions to a coarse paste, adding as little water as possible.
Step 5: Heat ¾ cup red palm oil in a heavy pan over a medium heat until it thins and loses some of its deep red colour, about 3–4 minutes. Open a window: it should smoke only lightly. A common mistake is blasting it until it smokes hard, which makes the sauce acrid.
4 minStep 6: Turn the heat to medium-low and add the sliced onion from 1 red onions. Fry, stirring often, until the onions turn deep brown, almost black at the edges, and smell sweet and smoky.
15 minStep 7: Add the chilli paste, 1 tbsp iru (fermented locust beans) if using, 1 tsp smoked paprika and ½ tsp salt. Fry, stirring and scraping the base, until the paste turns a dark rusty brown and the oil separates and floats on top.
15 minStep 8: Spoon the beans onto plates and ladle a generous spoon of the sauce, with plenty of its oil, over the top. Serve with agege bread or fried plantain.
Nutrition per serving
- Calories
- 560 kcal
- Protein
- 20 g
- Carbs
- 58 g
- Fat
- 28 g
- Fibre
- 16 g
Nutrition values are estimates.
KrazyBadal
Good to know
- How long does ewa agoyin take?
- About 120 minutes in total: 15 minutes to prepare and 105 minutes to cook.
- How many people does it serve?
- 4 as written. Change the servings above the ingredients and every amount scales to match.
- Is it vegan?
- Yes. It has no meat, fish, dairy or eggs.
- Is it gluten free?
- Yes, as written. Check the labels on stock, sauces and spice mixes, which sometimes contain gluten.
- What can I use instead of onion?
- 2 shallots per onion.
- What can I use instead of red onions?
- White onion or shallots, same amount (soak raw onion in cold water for 10 minutes to soften it).
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