Ewa agoyin

Ingredients

Beans

• 500 gdried honey beans, oloyin, or black-eyed beans, soaked overnight
• water
• salt

Sauce

• 10dried red chillies, soaked
• 4fresh scotch bonnets
• 4large onions, sliced
• 300 mlred palm oil
• 2 tbspground crayfish, optional
• 1stock cube
• salt

To serve

• agege bread, the soft sweet Lagos loaf
• or plain white bread

Directions

1. Soak them overnight, which shortens the cooking and gives an even result. Drain them and rinse them well. Boil them in plenty of water until they are completely, unmistakably soft.
2. Cook them well past tender, since the point is a soft mash rather than distinct beans. This takes an hour and a half to two hours, and a pressure cooker does it faster. Add salt only when the beans are nearly soft. Salt added at the start is widely held to toughen bean skins and slow the softening.
3. Mash them roughly with a wooden spoon or a masher in the pot. Leave some texture rather than reducing them to a smooth purée. They should be soft and slightly lumpy, holding together loosely.
4. Add a little of the cooking water if they are too stiff. The sauce is cooked until the pepper and onion genuinely scorch and blacken. Slice a great many onions, far more than seems reasonable. Fry them slowly in the palm oil for forty-five minutes to an hour.
5. Cook them right down past golden, past brown, until they are dark and jammy. Red palm oil is used in a large quantity, and the sauce should be visibly oily. Blend the soaked dried chillies and the scotch bonnets into a coarse paste. Add the blended pepper to the darkened onions. Fry the pepper paste in the oil for another thirty to forty minutes.
6. Keep frying until the mixture darkens dramatically and the oil separates and floats clear on top. Stir it regularly and scrape the base, since it catches readily. Now the total time that it takes.
7. Adjust the scotch bonnets to what you can eat, and know that the street version is fierce. Season with salt, a stock cube and ground crayfish. Serve the mashed beans in a bowl with a generous spoonful of the black sauce over the top. Do not stir it in: the sauce sits on top and is mixed in mouthful by mouthful.

Technique

• It is named for Gun-speaking Agoyin migrants from Benin Republic.
• The sauce is deliberately cooked until the pepper and onion blacken.
• The sauce sits on top of the beans rather than being stirred in.

Substitutions

• Black-eyed beans in place of honey beans.
• Any soft white bread in place of agege bread.

Variations

• Served with fried plantain alongside.
• Made milder, with fewer scotch bonnets.
• Served with boiled yam instead of bread.

History

Mashed brown beans served with a fiery, dried-pepper-and-onion sauce fried in palm oil, developed in Lagos, Nigeria, generally credited to Yoruba communities and specifically associated with a documented later 20th-century wave of northern Nigerian and Beninese immigrant vendors, whose name for the dish, agoyin, is thought to derive from Yoruba interactions with those northern traders. Its beans are deliberately mashed roughly rather than left whole or puréed smooth, giving ewa agoyin a distinctive coarse texture, and the accompanying stew, made from dried rather than fresh peppers and deeply fried in palm oil until dark and intensely flavoured, is considered the dish’s defining element rather than the beans themselves. It remains a popular, inexpensive street food across Lagos specifically, sold from roadside stalls particularly in the evening.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ewa agoyin?

Ewa agoyin is a street food from Nigeria: mashed beans under scorched-pepper palm-oil sauce, scooped with agege bread. Mashed brown beans served with a fiery, dried-pepper-and-onion sauce fried in palm oil, developed in Lagos, Nigeria, generally credited to Yoruba communities and specifically associated with a documented later 20th-century wave of northern Nigerian and Beninese immigrant vendors, whose name for the dish, agoyin, is thought to derive from Yoruba interactions with those northern traders. Its beans are deliberately mashed roughly rather than left whole or puréed smooth, giving ewa agoyin a distinctive coarse texture, and the accompanying stew, made from dried rather than fresh peppers and deeply fried in palm oil until dark and intensely flavoured, is considered the dish’s defining element rather than the beans themselves. It remains a popular, inexpensive street food across Lagos specifically, sold from roadside stalls particularly in the evening.

How long does Ewa agoyin take to make?

Ewa agoyin takes 20 min plus overnight soaking of preparation and 2 hr of cooking. The recipe makes 6 servings. It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Ewa agoyin?

Yes, within limits. Black-eyed beans in place of honey beans. Any soft white bread in place of agege bread.

What is the most important thing to get right in Ewa agoyin?

Cook them well past tender, since the point is a soft mash rather than distinct beans. This takes an hour and a half to two hours, and a pressure cooker does it faster. Add salt only when the beans are nearly soft. Salt added at the start is widely held to toughen bean skins and slow the softening.