We made odi!

Odi is a ground nut and sesame seed paste: somewhere between peanut butter and tahini. It is quite fluid and used in so many dishes here in the north. It is mixed with different kinds of greens (similar to spinach) to make side dishes like boo and malakwan. The next adventure will be learning how to cook these. For now we use odi on bread, in oatmeal, and to make peanut sesame noodles.

A couple weekends ago I spent the afternoon with Lucy, a coworker, to clean, roast, and clean again the ground nuts and sesame seeds in preperation for grinding the nuts and seeds into paste. It was quite the process!

Lucy's home.

We started with 3 kilos of ground nuts and 2 kilos of sesame seeds.

Lucy roasted the ground nuts over a charcoal fire.

Lucy sifts the sesame seeds to get rid of dirt, worms, and little bugs.

The sesame seeds in the sifter. The seseame seeds were also toasted once they were clean of debris.

Lucy breaks the skin off of the roasted ground nuts.

Showing Lucy's daughter, Claire, how to use my camera.

Breaking the skin off to the ground nuts, following Lucy's example.

Seperating the skins from the ground nuts by tossing them into the air (the lighter skins fly away).

Lucy doing a final sorting of the ground nuts.

Our final product- roasted ground nuts and toasted sesame seeds, ready to be ground into paste!

Lucy and I took our bucket of ground nuts and sesame to this home for the grinding.

Weighing our nuts and seeds.

Pourin the nuts and seeds bit by bit into the grinder.

Pouring in more nuts and seeds. We sat under a tree in her garden between pourings, spending about an hour at her home before the paste was smooth enough.

The finished product: odi (groundnut/sesame paste).

Pouring the hot odi into my bucket for transport home. I had to delicately hold the top of the bucket on the boda ride home. Let's see how long the odi lasts in our home!