Name: Ewe-style Light Okra Soup with Chicken (Fetri Detsi)
Yield: Makes 4 to 5 servings
Cuisine: Ghanaian
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon dried ground red pepper (or to taste); 1 to 2 teaspoons seasoned salt or no-salt seasoning mixture (or to taste); 1 teaspoon minced or ground fresh garlic (or to taste); 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger; 1 lemon for cleansing the chicken; 1 chicken cut into 8 to 12 pieces, including the giblets (heart and gizzard) and neck, but not the liver (or buy already cut-up chicken pieces); ¼ cup vegetable oil (e.g., peanut, safflower, canola; not palm); 8 ounces fresh okra; ½ cup coarsely chopped onion; A little fresh coarsely sliced chili pepper (kpakpo shito if available, or your choice); A pinch dried ground red pepper; ¼ cup sliced onion; 1 to 2 teaspoons chicken seasoning (e.g., salt, no-salt seasoning of choice—in Ghana they would likely use a large chicken-flavored seasoning cube); 1 heaping teaspoon grated fresh ginger; 1 tablespoon Ground dried shrimp/crayfish; 1½ teaspoons tomato paste (optional)

Preparation info

Makes
4 to 5
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Ghana Cookbook

By Fran Osseo-Asare and Barbara Baëta

Published 2015

About

Okra, aka “Lady Fingers,” that Cinderella of vegetables, is indigenous to West Africa. Among the Ewe people of the Volta Region, there is a short fat type known as Anlo fetri after the region where it originated. (The Ewe word for okra is fetri, and the word for soup or stew is detsi.) This version is one we prepared at Flair Catering. Though it is somewhat time-consuming to prepare the okra this way for this soup, the result rewards your efforts. It is a delicious way