A pottage made from ona (ji ona), a yellow, slightly bitter minor Igbo yam, boiled and dressed or simmered with red palm oil, pepper, crayfish and greens. A heritage dish built on one of the lesser-known traditional yam varieties, prized for its rich color and distinctive taste.
The sheer number of yam species the Igbo cultivated and ate is a lesson the diaspora half-lost — in the Black South 'yam' collapsed into one thing (the sweet potato). Ona, three-leaf yam, water yam and white yam were distinct foods with distinct uses. Recovering ona pottage restores some of that lost agro-diversity awareness and the understanding that ancestral eating was varied, seasonal and species-rich, not monotonous.
Yellow-fleshed yams like ona carry carotenoids (provitamin A) in addition to the potassium, B6, fiber and complex carbohydrate of yams generally, giving them an edge for eye and immune health. The diversity of yam species in the Igbo diet — white yam, water yam, aerial yam, three-leaf yam, ona — represents a rich agro-biodiversity that buffered traditional diets against the monotony and refined-carb excess of modern eating. Cooked simply with palm oil and greens, ona pottage is a whole-food, mineral-rich meal.
Peel and cube the ona yam (its flesh is yellow and firmer than white yam). Boil until tender, as the bitter minor yams sometimes need a slightly longer cook. Either serve the boiled pieces with a seasoned red-palm-oil dip, or simmer them into a pottage with palm oil, sliced pepper, ground crayfish, dried fish, onion and salt, mashing some to thicken. Finish with ugu or uziza greens. The yam's natural color makes for a striking golden dish.
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