The Curious Culinarian: Yam Porridge (Asaro)

If there's anything I crave often but eat rarely, its yam porridge.

Moriam Olowo

Ingredients

· Yam

· 1/2 cup Palm oil or canola oil for health conscious people.

· Salt to taste

· 2 Maggi cubes

· I small onion

· 1 small tomato

· 1 bell pepper

· 2 scotch bonnet peppers

· 1 teaspoon curry powder

Optional ingredients

· Stock fish

· I've used mackerel fish also cut into small pieces

Directions

1. Start out by blending the pepper to be very fine. It shouldn’t be too thick or too watery, just somewhere in the middle.

2. Cut yam into small pieces. I realized there are two types of porridge eaters in the world, those who like more solid yam pieces like my sister and those who like more of the mashed yam like me. Well there are also those who don't care so three types of people i guess.

3. If you're more like me, cut the yam smaller to make it easier to mash and if not you can have bigger pieces but still small enough.

4. Pour pepper in non-stick pot, add chopped yam, Maggi and salt and let it cook for about 20 minutes then add the oil and let it cook for another 15 minutes.

5. If you are using any of the optional ingredients, now is the time to add it.

6. When the yam is soft, you can now start mashing it to your preference. I use a whisk to mash my yam because i still want little lumps of yam in it compared to using a potato masher.

7. Mash a little and stir often so you can see the consistency you want instead of just mashing continuously and you end up with mashed yam.

8. Let it cook on low heat for an additional 5 minutes and serve with fried fish stew.