March is for Moin Moin!...

Otherwise known as
National Nutrition Month!

Good nutrition that is. 

Here at the Yodaai Blog, I thought we could 

highlight some of our
 traditional Yoruba nutritious menu items -
 Moin Moin, and the key ingredient 
used to make it, Beans.

Our humble ingredient - Black eyed beans.

Black eyed beans, white or red.
 I prefer the red kind, "ewa pupa",
 but either is fine.

A staple in the Southern diet for over 300 years, black-eyed beans have long been associated with good luck. A dish of beans is a New Year's tradition in most areas of the South, thought to bring luck and prosperity for the new year. 

Beans are high in fibre, moderate in carboydrates, fairly high in protein and low in fat content. If you are on a diet, you can do no better than to figure out how to add beans in a variety of ways to our meals.

 Our first menu item (below) shows these beans in a completely transformed way. 

The Mighty Moin Moin!

Moin Moin elemi meta - "the three - souled" variety. I made these the other day using those ramekins you use to make creme brulee.
 The "souls" are boiled eggs, ede pupa, (large red shrimps) and eja yiyan (roasted fish) - you can only see the boiled eggs here.

Other "emi's" you can include in the moin moin are boiled or fried liver, chicken gizzard,  fresh shrimps, corned beef, craw fish etc.

This post assumes you have a working knowledge of how to make moin moin, we are merely highlighting it here.

It is traditionally prepared in these 
leaves above for steaming.
Moin Moin can be served for
 breakfast with ogi  ("pap") or akamu.
 It can be served as an appetizer, 
as part of a main meal with Jollof or fried rice or as part of dinner with "Eko."

It can be made with palm oil so it has an orangey-reddish final appearance as shown above or it can be made with groundnut or vegetable oil in which case, its final appearance is lighter brown.

The outcome either way is yummy
-take my word for it.

Leave your comments below if you need a recipe.

F. A