Edinburgh: MaDeb African Shop

Out on a discovery

I stepped out of my hotel this evening to go for a meal and thought I’ll walk to a group of restaurants around London Road and Leith Walk in Edinburgh. However, instead of walking up London Road, I had a sense of adventure to go down Easter Road where I had noted from Google Maps that an Italian Restaurant might be open.

Half a mile down Easter Road, the restaurant was closed and I am beginning to realise that some restaurants and takeaways are closed on Mondays.

Unsure of what else to do, I decided to take a side road that I thought would get me to Leith Walk even if my bearings thought I was on the wrong path, I did end up on Leith Walk, one of the longest stretches of road in Edinburgh that seems to have so many names, you better not look at the road signs.

A homely wonderland

I crossed the road and walked upwards into town as my eyes caught the sign of an African goods shop, my curiosity got the better of me as the two ladies in the shop beckoned to me, and so I yielded and walked into the shop. All indications were they thought I was from Eastern Nigeria, but I introduced myself differently as my eyes darted around the stocked shelves to see familiar goods and wares that excite the West African palate.

I could not decide what I wanted when I was informed they had frozen jollof rice and stew, and if I had access to a microwave oven, that would do just fine.

MaDeb African Shop had only been open two months and whilst for me it was a chance discovery, it might well be the only purveyor of goods and wares the West Africans would only be too familiar with. The African Flavour Restaurant that I wrote about over a month ago had closed, it was a bad business that failed to take advantage of the monopoly it had to serve a particular clientele and that is just a shame.

More and more

The list of things to get from Madeb African Shop is almost inexhaustible, the shop uses three areas, the main shop, the back where perishable goods are kept and refrigerated and the basement with cosmetics and hair products.

In the main shop, there are spices, flours, canned foods, dried and smoked fish, Agege bread, ingredients to various stews as Egusi, Ogbono, bitter leaf, fermented peas (iru), mint leaves (efinrin), palm oil, kola nuts, plantain bananas, tubers like yams, sweet potatoes, suya packs, Nigerian drinks and beverages. Ointments like Robb and Aboniki, this is your perfect nostalgic corner shop.

For those who prefer their West African dishes ready-made, the shop provides a cooking service as well as preparing meals for events. I have the feeling this outfit would be a better replacement for that lackadaisically useless restaurant.

Get there and shop

The ladies were humorous, pleasant and nice, on getting back to my hotel, I defrosted my jollof rice, added some stew and downed it with a can of Afrimalt, I must be tipping the scales on the wrong side of zero.

MaDeb African Shop,
5 Croall Place,
EH7 4LT
Edinburgh

Photos

The Backstory on Egusi

Not for hard-labour peanuts

I seem to have acquired a taste for salted peanuts the excess of which is definitely unhealthy, but the act of pouring the nuts into a cupped hand and raising that to fill my buccal cavity and masticating the nuts as I savour the taste before swallowing has become something of a regular snack.

So, I walked into a shop and after picking up a few drinks, I asked for peanuts, they were not that obvious looking through the shelves.

I was first presented with a bag of peanuts or groundnuts [1] (Arachis hypogaea), hard-labour peanuts, still in their shells that needed cracking and the skinning of their brown skins before I could eat them.

The rate at which the nuts get consumed would be slowed down considerably and I have never really seen anyone shell all the nuts from the bag first before settling down to consumption, it was cracking one peanut shell at a time, with an average of 2 peanuts, skinning them, then eating.

As anyone would know, groundnuts come out of the ground and cashew [2] nuts hang off the end of the fleshy succulent cashew fruit.

In the beginning before Egusi soup

It reminded me of a backstory I ended up telling the shop-keeper as I said I wanted instant gratification not the drudgery of nut cracking.

In Nigeria we have a very delicious stew which is commonly known by its Yoruba name – Egusi [3] soup – it could be plain, with vegetables, garnished with dried fish pieces and contain fresh fish or meat, however, this is not a recipe; we are going to the genesis of it all.

There are many varieties of melon belonging to the cucurbitaceae [4] plant family which brings together cucumbers, loofas, pumpkins and, watermelons which in this context are fleshy, tasty and full of water, the seeds in the middle are spat out, never eaten.

Egusi comes from watermelons [5], only in this case, the fruity flesh is not considered edible but the seeds are what we are after. I sometimes wonder how they discovered the edibility of those seeds and the trouble that goes into getting at the seeds.

Getting at the seeds is foul

When the melons are mature, just before they are harvested, the melons are punctured with a pointed stake of wood and left to rot. This takes about a week, during which the flesh ferments, begins to decompose and turns watery.

This allows for the pulpy melon fruit to be opened up by hand, scraped unto a special sieve to separate the seeds from the pulp. Picking up these rotten, smelly and fermented melons can be fraught with dangers, though I have not heard of snakes hiding amongst the melons, it is a possibility but dangerous insects do with very painful bites.

More menacingly is a very hairy caterpillar, the hairs excite histamine causing very serious itching and a rash, sometimes it can be very painful too – it is not a job for the squeamish, the end result is however worthwhile.

When the seeds are separated from the pulp, they are left out to dry, firming up the seed casing and ready to be sold.

Hands a-dainty for seed shelling

You can also get the shelled seeds but that costs extra and somehow one cannot vouch for their shelf-life, the lazier cook would go for the blended seeds, which looks very much like Moroccan couscous with an aroma quite close to aniseed, it is oily but I doubt if melon seed oils have any cosmetic value.

The shelling process is a bit of an art, the seed casing is slightly twisted, the top end and bottom end held between the thumb and index finger of each hand and then pulled apart to reveal the white teardrop shaped seed, round on one end and pointed on the other, just about a millimetre thick.

I have never counted the number of seeds that needed shelling for stew making, but it is usually a communal job or a few hands that goes on for a few hours.

Science and engineering have been involved with the Canadians sponsoring a project to help in shelling Egusi seeds and this interesting abstract of a study [6] of the force required to crack a melon seed shell without destroying the seed itself.

The seeds are never washed after this, in some cases, they are roasted before being blended and used in stews, and many people never get to experience the backstory.

As for the making of Egusi soup, you probably can get a recipe [7], but that is not my story.

Sources

[1] Peanut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[2] Cashew - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[3] Egusi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[4] Cucurbitaceae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[5] Watermelon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[6] Investigation of Force Required to Crack Melon Seed Shell by Static Loading

[7] Egusi Soup Recipe