Ofada Rice with Ayamase Stew
A pairing of two real, specific Ogun State origins: Ofada rice is an indigenous, unpolished short-grain landrace grown by smallholder Yoruba farmers around Ofada town, a genuinely vanishing traditional variety that's lost ground to real estate development and low yields, though it carries no formal legal protection. Ayamase, its pepper-stew partner, traces to a documented individual, Felicia 'Aya Mase' Adesina, a rice seller in Ikenne-Remo credited with popularizing the pairing as street food. The stew's defining feature is its green color, from unripe green bell peppers and green scotch bonnets rather than the red peppers used in most Nigerian stews, cooked in palm oil that's traditionally bleached, boiled down to strip its red color and raw smell, before the peppers go in.
⚠ Contains: Fish, Shellfish. Always check your own ingredients — this isn't a guarantee for severe allergies.
Ingredients
- 3 cups Ofada rice (or other unpolished short-grain rice)
- 6 green bell peppers
- 4 green scotch bonnet chiles
- 1 cup palm oil, bleached (boiled down until pale)
- 2 onions
- 2 tbsp iru (fermented locust bean)
- 300g assorted meat and offal (tripe, cow leg), cooked
- 150g smoked fish
- 2 tbsp ground crayfish
Steps
- Rinse the Ofada rice well, picking out any stones, and cook until tender.
- Bleach the palm oil by heating it until it turns pale and loses its raw smell.
- Blend the green peppers and chiles coarsely, keeping some texture.
- Fry the onion in the bleached oil, then add the blended peppers and cook down until thickened.
- Stir in the iru, crayfish, cooked meat, and smoked fish, and simmer 20 minutes.
- Serve the stew over the Ofada rice, traditionally wrapped in leaves.