Yoruba Nigerian

Yoruba cuisine is the cooking of Lagos and the surrounding southwestern Nigeria — palm-oil heavy, melon-seed-soup driven, pounded-yam centric. Egusi soup uses ground melon seeds as thickener for a rich orange broth with leafy greens, smoked fish, and beef — the soup is eaten with iyan (pounded yam), torn off in chunks with the right hand and dipped. Pounded yam is itself an institution — yams boiled and pounded with massive wooden pestles until smooth and elastic. Jollof rice (Nigerian style) — long-grain rice in tomato-pepper-onion stew, with intentional bottom crust — and Nigerians defend it fiercely against Ghana and Senegal in the West African jollof wars. Moi moi is the steamed black-eyed-bean cake. Suya — beef skewers coated in yaji peanut-spice and grilled over charcoal — is the Hausa street snack from the north that spread nationwide. The cuisine is generous, palm-oil-deep, and the most-globally exported Nigerian.