Friday Treat Special: Moi-Moi roll-up

For the uninitiated, moi-moi is a Nigerian breakfast staple made from pureed beans. It is perfectly savoury and often served as accompaniment to breakfast porridge. Traditional moi-moi is wrapped in banana leaves or ewe eran (Thaumatococcus daniellii).

The inspiration for this came from Japanese rolled omelet. I first experimented with the idea in late 2012 but it didn’t quiet work out, I tried to prepare it stove top using the wrong pan type. If you want to achieve this roll stovetop, you need a large nonstick pan like the one I used for the breakfast yam casserole. It should be cooked on low heat in order to distribute the heat evenly.

For this recipe, I took traditional moi-moi and elevated it a bit by de-constructing parts of the ingredients and presenting it a little differently. The only thing “special” about this is the way it is rolled. The taste is exactly like the moi-moi. I made use of peeled beans. moi-moi can also be made from unpeeled beans.

ALSO READ: Naira weakens marginally against dollar

This is the perfect recipe for your next brunch or special valentine breakfast. It should take about 20 minutes with already peeled beans. It is amazingly simple to make and present beautifully. Double or triple the recipe to make a bigger batch. Recipe as this will serve two.

Ingredients:

1 cup of peeled beans

1/4 medium Onion (halved)

1 red pepper (tatashe) (halved)

Small ginger (peeled)

1 spring green onion (optional)

2 eggs (1 boiled, 1 raw)

1 tablespoon of oil or butter

1 cube of solid seasoning (e.g Knorr)

1/2 teaspoon of pepper flakes

Salt –to taste

Direction

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. In a blender : combine beans, onion, 1 part red pepper, 1 part onion,  1/2 cup water and ginger. Puree to a fine paste

Chop left over pepper and onion. Slice up the egg and mince the green onion if using. Set aside.

Melt butter. Add in solid seasoning, salt and pepper flakes. Stir to combine. Add in pureed beans and raw egg. Mix well using a mixing pin or hand mixer (3-5 minutes).

Line an oven tray with culinary parchment (or aluminum foil). Pour in the moi-moi batter and spread out evenly. Shake pan gently to distribute. Top with chopped ingredients.

Bake moi-moi for 15 minutes (until lifted at the edges and set). As soon as you remove the moi-moi from the oven, start the roll. Starting at one short end, peel off parchment until rolled to the end.

Serve moi-moi roll by itself or with pap, custard or garri.

This recipe also works extremely well for plantain rollup. Substitute 2 medium ripe plantains for beans and keep everything else the same.

Ronke Edoho’s profile

Ronke Edoho is the founder and creative administrator of the one of the most popular Nigerian food blogs 9jafoodie.com. She is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), a Certified Nutrition and Clinical Weight Loss specialist and the author of Lose It Nigerian (LIN) cookbooks and plans. She says she hopes “to improve wellbeing through better nutrition by providing easy-to-follow wholesome recipes to home cooks like myself.

“My goal is to one day, have a farm and develop African-food-centered agric products. My recipes are rooted in tradition and often presented with a little modern flair. Traditional African recipes have a tendency to appear complicated. My goal with [my] blog is to simplify them as much as possible. With the new recipes I create, the aim is that they serve a purpose beyond appeal.”

Although born and raised in Nigeria, she has lived in Canada for over 11 years.

Credit: 9jafoodie.com