Ndamukong Suh.
By many measures, he’s one of the country’s best college football players.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln defensive tackle brought home a duffel bag full of college football awards this week, winning the Nagurski and Outland Trophies and the Lombardi and Bednarik Awards. He remains in the running for the Heisman Trophy tonight and the Lott Trophy on Sunday.
And it’s clear that Husker fans aren’t the only ones uttering his distinctive name.
Pronounced en-DOM-uh-ken SOO, it means “house of spears” in the language of his father’s west African tribe. And it sounds a bit like an exotic soup.
That got us wondering: What would a Suh-inspired soup taste like?
Would it smack of Portland, Ore., where he was raised? Would it flash with flavors from Jamaica and Cameroon, where his parents hail from? Would it reflect the Husker nation he’s now so much a part of?
We asked some Omaha chefs for ideas on Tuesday, while everyone was digging out of the snow. What we came up with is beefy, hearty and red — and spiked through with Suh’s heritage.
Hubert Pearson, the Jamaican chef-owner of Caribbean Delights, suggested using Jamaican spices or a combination of conch, okra and fish. “That’s a kind of soup that Caribbean people normally drink,” he said. “It’s very strong, very good, and it makes you into a real athletic person.”
We weren’t sure about a fishy stew here in beef country. (We went with spearable chunks of beef, seared hard and braised until tender, instead.) But we used thyme, onion, whole allspice, cinnamon, garlic and Scotch bonnet peppers — some of the main flavors in Jamaican jerk seasoning.
Darrell Auld, the chef-owner at Twisted Cork Bistro, suggested a Pacific Northwest twist on a Cameroonian peanut-and-tomato-based soup: Use hazelnuts, the pride of Oregon, instead of peanuts; and perhaps stew the meat in a little Oregon pinot noir or craft beer.
We didn’t love the taste of the hazelnuts with the Jamaican spices. But we braised the beef in a Cloudline pinot noir from Oregon, and we put some finely diced tomatoes in the beef broth.
Old Mattress Factory Bar & Grill executive chef Cory Guyer, a perennial winner in local soup competitions, gave us some pointers on pulling it all together without fumbling. Instead of grinding nuts into the soup, he suggested using them as a crunchy garnish. He reminded us of the importance of using carrot, celery, onion and bay leaf to build flavors and suggested adding potatoes and other vegetables to give it heart and heft.
We didn’t want potatoes to cloud the soup, and we wanted a little more sweetness and color. So we went with fried sweet potato matchsticks (or spears, if you like) and added them with the nuts as a garnish. For a little more African influence and richness, we cooked them — as well as the beef, the other vegetables, the nuts and the spices — in peanut oil.
The result, served with bread and hot sauce, drew raves and recipe requests from the World-Herald newsroom on Friday. (The recipe follows.) And Guyer said he liked the idea so much that he’ll serve his own version at the Old Mattress Factory tonight.
Soup’s on.
Contact the writer:
444-1069, nichole.aksamit@owh.com
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