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Today, we are cooking Mbongo-Chobbi. This is a very easy meal to cook. It is basically a soup which is cooked with two main ingredients which are Mbongo and Chobbi spices. It's usually a thick black-coloured soup (the colour may vary depending on how much the Mbongo and Chobbi are burnt).

I'm not quite sure where this meal originates from in Cameroon but I think it's from the Littoral region of Cameroon (correct me if I'm wrong).

It can be cooked with meat or fish and can be eaten with tubers like cassava and cereals like rice. That said let's get into the recipe!

How To Cook Mbongo-Chobbi with Pork

Ingredients

- Mbongo

- Chobbi

- Tomatoes

- Onion

- Pepper

- Njangsa

- Deux cotés

- Quartre cotés

- Rondelles / Fullow

- Celery

- Leeks

- Garlic

- Queue de Girraffe

- Fresh ginger leaves

- Pork

Mbongo, Chobbi, Njangsa, Deux cotés, Quartre cotés, Rondelles / Fullow, Queue de Girraffe are local names for these ingredients. These are the names by which these ingredients are known in some parts of Cameroon. You can use these local names to purchase these ingredients from our markets in Cameroon. If you have any other names or other ways you call these ingredients please tell me in a comment below. For example, Fullow is the appellation in my mother tongue which is Bafut. But in the French-speaking regions of Cameroon, it is called Rondelle. Please, see pictures below to further identify these ingredients.

Mbongo (long) and Chobbi (short)

Burning the ingredients - Rondelle and Chobbi

Peeled garlic

Fresh ginger leaves

Deux cotés, Njangsa, Quartre cotés

Queue de Girrafe

Garlic and Onion

Pepper, Celery, Leeks and Shallot

Cooking

- Burn the Mbongo and Chobbi ingredients until the outer skin is black. Take note that the more you burn these spices the darker the soup will be. So the degree to which you burn it should depend on how dark you want your soup to be. You can do this on a firewood fireplace or a gas fire.

- Peel the cassava and cook while preparing the ingredients.

Cassava

Peeled Cassava

- Prepare the rest of the ingredients and grind them all together. Burn the Mbongo, Chobbi and Rondelle. Peel the garlic and wash the rest of the ingredients before joining them together to grind them.

- Mix the boiled pork with your ground ingredients.

- Heat some oil in the pot and throw in some of the fresh ginger leaves into the hot oil alongside a small quantity of the ground ingredients to bring out the flavour of the soup.

- When the flavour comes out add the rest of the ingredients with the pork to the oil and stir.

- Add seasoning. Let it cook till it's ready.

- Serve with Cassava or rice.

Heating the oil

Ground ingredients and boiled meat

I hope you enjoy this meal and share it with your loved ones. Remember to be moderate with the ingredients because putting too many ingredients may make the soup taste bitter or too spicy.

Khoki beans is a meal made from beans commonly known as black-eyed peas. It is a meal enjoyed by many Cameroonians. It originates from the North West and Western (Bamileke) regions of Cameroon. The Bamileke cook Khoki without putting any leaves or vegetables inside but in the North West region cocoyam leaves are added to it. The North West version of Khoki is also very fluffy and light like cake.

This is how to cook Khoki beans like the people from the North West Region of Cameroon

Ingredients

To cook Khoki beans, you will need the following:

- Tying leave. It could be plantain or banana leaves or the leaves you can see in the picture below.

Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the plant that produces these leaves. It is mostly used to tie and cook food in the French-speaking regions of Cameroon like the Centre and South Regions while Banana and plantain leaves are used in the North West and South West Regions.

- The next ingredient is cocoyam leaves. As I said earlier, cocoyam leaves are added to the recipe of Khoki in the North West Region of Cameroon.

- Khoki beans which are also known as black-eyed peas. I didn't make a picture of the beans before grinding it but here is the paste of the ground beans. It is reddish because I added some pepper to it before grinding.

- You'll also need some salt and palm oil.

Cooking

- Soak beans overnight or for at least 8 hours.

- Peel the beans and wash it well.

- Grind the beans into a paste. You may add some pepper to the beans before grinding if you want some pepper.

- Without adding any more water to the paste after grinding, use a pistle to stir the paste in a circular motion very fast. This is will create air spaces in the paste, make it rise and also make the Khoki be fluffy.

You can stir it in a mortar. I didn't have a mortar at the time I made this recipe so I simply stirred it in a container.

- When the paste rises it means enough air has entered the paste. You can now start tying the paste in the leaves. But make sure that you keep stirring the paste until you tie up the last bundle so that the air stays in the paste.
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- Wash and warm the leaves over fire or vice versa. With the leaves I used, I had to wash them thoroughly before warming them over a fire. The banana or plantain leaves are warmed first before cleaning them with a damp cloth because they are more fragile and often less dirty. Warming the leaves prevents it from tearing easily.

- Prepare the pot to steam the Khoki beans. Use the stems from the leaves and put under the pot. Add some leaves on top of the sticks and make sure that you don't put much water so that it doesn't enter the Khoki beans.

- After preparing the pot, put it on the fire to start heating up. Putting leaves around the pot helps the pot to retain heat and protects the Khoki beans from water coming from below.

- After warming the leaves, fold them inside a bowl as you create space to put in the paste. It's better to double the leaves to prevent the paste from spilling out easily.

- Cut the leaves into smaller bits before adding to the paste.

- Pour in a proportionate quantity of the paste in the leaves and add some cocoyam leaves and palm oil and mix before tying each bundle.

- Tie the paste in bundles. You can make various sizes.

- Cover the pot with some leaves before placing the lid in order to lock in the heat then leave it to cook. I never time the pot but I leave it to cook for a long time because steaming is a slow method of cooking and beans do take a while to get cooked.

- Check the pot from time to time and add water when it dries up. Add water into the pot by pouring it to the sides and not directly on the food because the water may get into the bundles and spoil the Khoki beans.

- You may add your tubers to the pot and let it cook with the Khoki beans.

- When it's ready, untie it from the leaves and serve it with any tuber or roots of your choice. Khoki beans is usually eaten with cassava, unripe bananas, plantains, cocoyam and sweet potatoes.