Ekuru with Ebatu sauce

Some Nigerian ladies were arguing during the week about what to them is healthy eating with so much carbohydrate and palm oil in Nigerian dishes. They by the way could not come to any agreement.
At the end of the day it’s all about moderation in our choices. If you are someone in a nine to five job ,you decide to eat large portions and hope to stay trim and healthy without exercising then you must be kidding. Portion control, good choice of vegetables  and fruits and ample amount of weekly exercises are some of the choices that will positively affect your health.
I always preach to limit your ‘swallow portion to a lawn tennis ball size and fill up with vegetable soups and the reaction is always loud laughter .
My guiding principle is that I rather discipline myself than have the doctor force me to be disciplined. So much for the nutrition sermon, lets get into what my offering today is Ekuru with Ebatu.
Ekuru is simply ground beans , wrapped and steamed. Ebatu on the other hand is the sauce I have decided to accompany the Ekuru with.
As is my style I try to stick to ingredients that are commonly found around , today I am using garden eggs and Ewedu vegetable, also called Etiyung in Efik ( Ewedu has  the resilient texture like Okro, as we say it ‘draws’)
The combination of these two vegetables and the use of Iru( fermented locust beans ) makes this simple sauce a nice companion to other boiled carbohydrate foods like yam , plantain or even rice.
You may wish to mash the vegetables in a mortar, I used this masher I picked up the last time I visited Ibadan, quite useful for when you have electricity outage .
My husband could not have enough of the sauce. The little bit I saved to have the next day soon disappeared from the fridge . This is always the best test for your cooking when things start to develop legs and take a walk out of the the fridge:)

Recipe for Ebatu
Ingredients
4 pieces Garden Eggs
1 small bunch Ewedu
1 small Onion
I cooking spoon ground Tomato/Pepper
1 cooking spoon Palm oil
1 table spoon ground Crayfish
3 pieces Shawa Fish
1 teaspoon Iru
Seasoning to taste
Salt to taste

Method
1, Wash and chop the Vegetables, wrap in moin moin or banana leaves and steam with the Ekuru for about 15 minutes. You can also wrap in foil.
2, Take out vegetables and mash roughly in a mortar
3, Heat Palm oil , fry the onion, tomato/ pepper, and crayfish
4, Add the fish , Iru, seasoning and salt and fry until sauce is cooked
5, Pour in the mashed vegetables , stir and cook for about 2 minutes to allow the base sauce mix well with  the vegetables
6, Serve with the Ekuru