🇳🇬 Nigeria · beer parlours and pepper-soup joints
Catfish pepper soup (point and kill)
Pepper soup made with fresh catfish chosen live or fresh at the stall (hence 'point and kill'), cooked briefly in the pepper-soup spice blend with crayfish and uziza or basil.
Origin and history
Catfish pepper soup is tied to Nigerian bars and pepper-soup joints, where the 'point and kill' routine gave the dish its name: guests choose a fish and watch it prepared. It is a seafood take on the older pepper soup tradition of southern Nigeria and is popular as a rainy-season and late-evening dish.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 35 min
- Hands-on
- 20 min
Ingredients
- 1 kg2.2 lb fresh catfish, whole, cut across into steaks; conger eel is the Nigerian alternative
- 1 lime or lemon, juice, for cleaning the fish
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 stock cube, optional
- 2 tbsp ground pepper soup spice blend, calabash nutmeg, Negro pepper, uziza, alligator pepper
- 1-2 habanero or scotch bonnet chillies, ground, to taste
- 1 tbsp ground dried crayfish
- 1 litre4 cups water
- 2 tsp dried uziza or basil, or a handful of fresh scent leaf
- salt, to taste
Method
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1. Rub the catfish steaks with lime juice and a pinch of salt to remove the slime, then rinse well under cold water.
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2. Put the fish in a pot with the onion, stock cube if using, a little salt and the water.
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3. Bring to a boil and cook gently for 10 minutes.
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4. Stir in the ground chilli, crayfish and pepper soup spice, being careful not to break the fish.
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5. Simmer a further 5 to 8 minutes, until the flesh turns opaque and comes away from the bone.
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6. Add the uziza or basil, simmer for no more than a minute, and serve at once.
Notes
- The name 'point and kill' comes from the pepper-soup joints and beer parlours where a customer picks a live catfish from a tank, it is killed in front of them, and it is cooked to order. At home, use the freshest fish you can find.
- It differs from the parent chicken pepper soup and from goat meat pepper soup by its speed: the fish cooks in minutes, with no long simmer, and uses no oil.
- Catfish is sold fresh or frozen in many Asian, African and Caribbean markets; frozen and thawed is acceptable. If you cannot find it, use firm white fish such as tilapia, snapper or sea bass; the broth will taste lighter and the flesh will be less meaty and more delicate, so shorten the simmering.
- If you have no pepper soup spice blend, use grated fresh nutmeg, cracked black pepper and a little grains of paradise or extra black pepper; basil replaces scent leaf, and a small amount of parsley is the alternative some Nigerian cooks use for uziza leaf.
- Serve in a bowl with boiled yam, plantain or agidi (eko) alongside, or as a stand-alone soup with a cold drink. It is not eaten with a swallow.
Adapted from The Guardian (Nigeria), Point and Kill: Catfish Peppersoup Recipe, Nigerian Food TV, Nigerian Catfish Pepper Soup (point and kill), and DemandAfrica, Nigerian pepper soup.
At the festivals
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