The Diary Game: Cooking My Native Meal Ekpang Nkukwo 5/3/2026

Hello my amazing steemit family, I greet you all and l hope everyone is doing well today.
Today I want to shared with you guys how to cook my traditional meal called Ekpang Nkukwo and I was really excited because it's one of my favorite local dishes.
First of all, I started the preparation by peeling the back of the cocoyam and then I wash it very thoroughly to remove the dirt on the body.

After done peeling the cocoyam and water yam back,I put it inside the basin and I added water grated the cocoyam into a smooth paste. When the cocoyam paste was ready , I brought fresh green cocoyam leaves and washed them properly to remove any dirt .

And the cocoyam leaves wasn't enough to tight the cocoyam,so I decided to go the bush to look for the cocoyam leaves and I was very scared to go inside the bush to cut the cocoyam leaves because everyplace was bushy and scary to enter the bush but I didn't stop , I have to encourage myself to inside the bush and cut it and I successfully cut it out.

Then I cut the leaves into small pieces that l could easily use for my wrapping. Then I started wrapping small portions of the cocoyam paste inside the cocoyam leaves one after the other . This process took sometime , but I enjoyed doing it because it is part of what makes the meal so special .
After finishing the wrapping, I placed the wrapped cocoyam pieces inside my pot and I added palm oil , pepper,salt, maggi, seasoning cube, crayfish, periwinkle and a little water and l also added some protein to make the meal more delicious . As you can see in the picture above, I arranged the wrapped leaves neatly inside the pot while the ingredients were already inside . Cooking Ekpang Nkukwo require patience because it needs time to cook properly so that all the ingredients will blend well together .
Preparing this meal always reminds me of our rich traditional food culture . Even though it takes effort , the taste is always worth it at the end.