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:

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:

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

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 :)

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.

In the food-processor they go:

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.

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)

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.

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

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 :)

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

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 :)

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.

 

Enjoy.