Cooking Liberian Fish and Potato Green Soup with Dorothy

I have been in Monrovia, my parents' new home, for less than a week, and have already had many little adventures--quite a few of which came from our cooking experience with our local house help, Dorothy, who kindly agreed to teach us how to make a traditional Liberian dish.

We started out by taking a kee kee (pronounced kay kay) to the food section of a local market called Waterside Market. The kee kee drivers both to and from the market were very confident of their ability to squeeze through small places, and multiple times our kee kee brushed against a wheelbarrow and, to the dismay of its owners, started dragging it with us down the street. At one point we stopped, and a car got a little too close to the back of our kee kee. There was a great commotion, and come to find out, the car was caught on our kee kee! We had to evacuate the kee kee amidst much yelling in order to fix it. But what surprised me most about the streets was that there are essentially no traffic lights. I was absolutely astounded, just like when I experienced Vietnam's lack of pedestrian traffic lights. To say the least, intersections here are chaotic affairs!

Dorothy was very concerned for our safety, and made sure that we were holding our purses correctly so that they wouldn't get stolen. She took the lead, haggling for various ingredients, and we accumulated a large bag filled with potato greens, crawfish, three types of fish, and various little packets of seasonings. Besides knowing the necessary ingredients, it was nice having Dorothy doing the buying because she got local prices.

Back in the peace and air conditioning of our kitchen, Dorothy started doing the cooking while we looked on, lending a hand when we could. I tried to take detailed notes of the recipe, which I've included below. Dorothy worked from memory, making the soup as her mother taught her. She cleaned the fish, set a pot of ingredients to simmer into a flavorful broth, fried the fish, and cut up the potato greens. We tasted along the way--everything was quite fishy! Finally all of the components were mixed together. The end product had an extremely strong fish taste and smell. We all had a taste and agreed that the fried fish itself was quite tender and tasty, but the soup was just too fishy. We had such a fun time shopping and cooking with Dorothy, though!

Liberian Fish and Potato Green Soup

Broth:
2 Liberian fish (smoked)
4-6 Crawfish
2 cubes of shrimp bouillon
1-2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 small onion, sliced

Put ingredients into a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Add smoked fish. Remove from heat and let sit. Strain. Remove meat from crawfish and add back into strained liquid. Add 3 fresh peppers (they are really hot) for mild hotness.

Fried Fish:
Clean 2 fresh Liberian fish and season with fish seasoning & pepper. Deep fry in sunflower oil until dark brown and slightly black (5-10 min on each side).

Greens:
1 tsp baking soda (to make greens tender)
6 cups potato greens, chopped finely
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small onion chopped

Sprinkle baking soda over potato greens.
Pour the leftover oil from frying into a large pot. Sauté half of the onions, all of the greens, and 1/2 cup of water together. Mix in 1/2 tsp baking soda and the rest of the onions. Cover and boil, stirring occasionally. After 10 minutes, add half of the strained broth (including the peppers and crawfish). Add another shrimp bouillon cube. Boil 10 min, stirring occasionally. Pick the meat from the bones of the smoked fish and put meat in remaining half of the liquid. After a few minutes, add the liquid and fish to the greens mixture. Dry 1/4 cup little shrimps for a minute in the microwave, then crush into powder with a mortar and pestle. Add to the simmering greens mixture.
Add fried fish to the greens mixture one by one, covering each fish with soup. Remove peppers. Boil 20 min, scraping bottom of pot, being careful not to break up the fish chunks. Add some black pepper to season.

Serve over rice.
Keeps for up to a week in the fridge.