My love affair with ‘No Sweats’ Pounded Yam

If I was asked what I would want for my last meal, pounded yam and seafood okra would be in my top five and up for consideration for the top spot along with dumplings. I have had a love affair with pounded yam for as far as I know; both my parents came from pounded yam eating areas of Nigeria. I loved the annual new yam Festivals that launched the yam season with prayers to God for a great harvest and celebration for the gift of life. There was pounded yam everywhere you looked with amazing sauces and the choicest cuts of meat including game and seafood.

The irony was that new yam wasn’t good for pounded yam as it was too soft and not mature enough to be cohesive when pounded, so essentially the new yam festivals were celebrated with old yams. 

My grandfather ate pounded yam twice a day and I reckon he would have eaten it at every possible meal if he could. There was a time he visited us and my mum made him some rice and he took a few spoonfuls before asking when his pounded yam would be ready. He muttered under his breath that he wasn’t a chicken so why would he be expected to eat grains. We chuckled at his unwillingness to see anything else as food but we also knew hosting him was a world of unwelcome pounding of yam twice a day.

Pounded yam is always served with vegetable based sauces so can actually be healthy as long as the portion size is controlled. Yam is reputed to be very good for menopausal symptoms and I have a friend who swears by how yam restored her sanity during extreme menopausal symptoms. Wild yam is sold in capsule form and is recommended by many nutrition experts.

Watching women in the village pounding yams with their wrappers tied over their breasts, many with sagging breasts that are barely held up by worn out bras or wrong sized ones. As they swung their arm up and down to pound the yams, I would watch their whole body respond to their powerful arms wondering how they could do this everyday. Three or four people pounding yam was a lesson in synchronicity and looked like a dance of pestles.

The odd droplets of sweat made it into the mortal making me cringe at the thought of eating but I would forget this as soon as it was portioned on to a bowl with generous portion of delicious soup.

The young men in the family would be coerced to come help with this manual labour with the offer of an extra spoon of soup or piece of meat. At other times, they were threatened that there would be no food for them if they were unwilling to help; sometimes it was the reminder that they would make great husbands if they helped their future wives pound yam.

It was thrilling for me to see husbands help their wives pound yam and I thought it was one of the most romantic and thoughtful things a man could do for his wife. This was one of the hardest and tasking kitchen tasks so love for me looked like a man stepping up to bear the ‘hard burdens’. Pounding yam requires many hands with one or more people pounding as another person adds the yam pieces into the mortar. The mark of ‘well pounded’ yam was that it was smooth with a bit of stretch and just the right amount of water added to create a texture that wasn’t too hard or too soft.

In a culture and a time that saw all house work as belonging to women, one of the most heartwarming and liberating things to see were ‘manly’ men who joked with their friends, rolled with any punches thrown at them as they declared they were off home to go help their wives pound yam for supper.

When I think back to my childhood, the Char Siu Mai remind me of the open morsels of pounded yam that my grandma would form as a ‘one biter’ for us. She  formed the morsel and used her thumb to make a perfect dent in it leaving it looking like a vol au vent before filling the hole with the sauce. 

On the days when I could show some restraint, I would turn my left palm to a plate and place the morsel on it and use my right hand to eat as I would from a plate. This allowed me to turn the one bite to two and sometimes stretch it to three mini bites to elongate the experience. 

On other days, the morsel of perfection went into my mouth as a one-biter and this essentially was your introductory course to the main dish which would come a few minutes later when every one sat down to eat. When I think about canapés, I remember the morsel of perfection of my childhood.

Pounded yam goes particularly well with Egusi and bitter leaf (melon seed sauce), Isapa and Egusi (green sorrel and melon seed sauce), (Efo riro (vegetables sautéed with fried pepper blend, meat and fish) or my favourite which is okro soup cooked with meat, fish and red palm oil. For umami, dried fish and fermented locust beans are added and some bitter leave added the complexity of bitter notes to the soup.

Today I make my pounded yam in my Thermomix in 45 seconds or a bit longer in my food processor with the texture exactly as it should be. For some reason, I still sometimes find myself wanting a ‘Mortar and Pestle’ pounded yam because nothing else would give me the nostalgia and experience I crave other than the real deal. I leave that thought firmly in my dreams as I have no intention of sweating for or into my pounded yam.

I am glad and grateful for my ‘no sweats’ pounded yam and that will do until my next trip back home.