lørdag, november 10, 2007

Makin' moin-moin

I have done some effort to try to make an Nigerian dish called moin-moin, a sort of bean-cakes, or in my case, an bean pudding :)

The basis of the recipe is as described at lots of places on the Internet, like here, here or here

For this, you need some dried black-eyed beans or cowbeans. But since the process of removing the skin for these are rather tedious, I prefer dried skin-free beans. The local Africa-store has some, but they are quite expensive, about 10-14€ for one kilo:

01_DriedCowBeansNoSkin

But in another store I have found an substitute, something called broad-beans, well, they are cheaper (about 2-3€ for one kilo), and for me, they seems to give the same taste and texture to the result, so for now I settle with this:

02_OtherBean

As you can see, they look a little different, but:

03_OtherBean

These need to be soaked some time, I have found the best result if I soak them for about 10-15 minutes first, rinse them thoroughly and then soak them, and leave them in the fridge some ours, or overnight: (If you leave them overnight, you really need to leave them in the fridge, or you can acquire an fancy stomach after eating the result :)

04_AfterSoaking

You should have an decent food-processor with some sharp knives, I have tried this with an blender, but difficult at best, and not so good result.

05_FoodProcessor

In the food-processor they go:

06_FoodProcessorBeans

After some grinding, I start adding stuff, like canned tomatoes, or fresh peeled tomatoes, and pepper, I use ether one red habanero, or some dried hot chili.

07_FoodProcessorAlmost

Which also gives it some color after when it is grinded well. At last, when the texture is fine and smooth, I add one finely chopped onion, and make sure I don't run it in the food-processor so long at it disappear, the grainines of the onion is fine.

Then I turn in some groundnut oil, some salt, pepper, and chicken stock powder to taste (not to salty, but still so you don't feel the beans to much)

08_FoodProcessorDone

Then I scoop the batter in bread-forms, which is previously prepared with groundnut oil. Make sure you leave some room for the batter to rise, and also some room for eggs, or fish if you like that. I often use hard-boiled eggs, and/or boiled salmon.

I use this type of forms, since I had an accident with using tin-cans earlier, and wrapping it into tinfoil was to messy for me, but these forms are very good to use, but only if you cook it as below.

09_BatterInForm

Put them in a water-bath in an preheated oven, approx 125 degrees celsius:

10_FormInOwen

You remembered to leave room for it to rice? they rice some, so it should be some room. Leave it into the oven until it is finished, for me it takes about 30-60 minutes, depending.

To check for done-ness I use an bamboo stick and poke the pudding gently, if the stick is clean when you take it out, it is ready. Otherwise some of the batter will stick on the stick :)

11_Almost

This one is done, take it out, and leave it for some minutes to make it settle.

12_DoneInForm

And then, turn it upside down, and with any luck you should be able to get it you without to much problems, depends on if you was to greedy with the groundnut oil in the forms :)

13_OutOfForm

Slice it, and taste.. should be yummy:). When I use the recipe with two cups (one cup is about 2.5dl) then I get two puddings, if it is to much, I freeze it, and it seems to be ok when I thaw it again, but others may disagree with that.

14_Sliced

 

Enjoy.