“I love to cook,” says Shirley Amegbey with a big smile. She’s loved it since she was a girl of 7 in her native Ghana, being carried around the family kitchen by her beloved grandmother, carefully watching as pots bubbled and ingredients were chopped.

And she loves it today when, at age 49, she prepares African dishes with names like moi moi and kenkey and waakye and fufu for customers at the Nelshil Café, her restaurant in University Place.

“I just love it,” she says. “I love to see people enjoy what I do.”

It’s a good thing, too. You need loving enthusiasm to carry you through a day that begins at 8:30 a.m. and doesn’t end until around 11 at night. It’s an emotion that sustains you when you’re doing it all yourself.

Amegbey is the Nelshil Café’s only employee. The name is a blend of her husband’s name, Nelson, and hers. But he’s busy running a small courier business, so he doesn’t have time to help out at the restaurant. The couple’s four children, three sons ranging in age from 22 to 13, and a daughter age 26, help out after school, waiting tables and operating the cash register. But do they want to work there full-time? “Oh no,” Amegbey says with a laugh. “They love to eat, but nobody will do this work. They don’t want to cook.”

Her oldest son is studying to be a pharmacist at Tacoma Community College. Her daughter is training to become a nurse. Her 18-year-old son who attends Foss High School and her 13-year-old boy, a student at Gray Middle School, are still figuring out what they want to do with their lives. But their mom had her life’s dream figured out a long time ago.

She was born in Sekondi-Takoradi, a seaport city in the western African nation. She was one of six daughters of a surveyor father and his homemaker wife. She was a middle child, “a special child” in her grandmother’s eyes, eager to learn all there was to know about the mysteries of the kitchen. She was so talented her mom and dad encouraged her to study the culinary arts at Accra Polytechnic in her nation’s capital. After graduation, she went to work in the cafeteria of a large aluminum company, rising to the position of assistant to the chief chef over the course of 18 years.

“I have done this for a very long time,” she says. But then in the late ’90s she stopped doing it, at least for a while.

Seeking a better life, her husband emigrated to America in the early ’90s, worked aboard a commercial fishing boat in Alaska for a few years and eventually moved to Tacoma. Amegbey joined him in 1998 and found work as a nursing assistant at a nursing home. She decided that the uniforms she and the staff were required to wear lacked a certain stylishness, so she bought some patterns, taught herself to sew and started making more attractive outfits.

Staff members liked what she wore, and she began filling orders. Eventually, she and her husband opened a shop, Nelshil Uniforms at the B&I.

She was no longer cooking professionally, but at home she was entertaining frequently. “I would invite people over, and I just feel happy when I see people eating my stuff. Everybody knows when they get to Shirley’s house there is food ready for you to eat,” she says.

Her reputation grew. After awhile, people began to encourage her to take the next step: “Why don’t you open a restaurant?” She talked it over with her family. And she made a decision: “I will give it a try.”

Last year she opened an African eatery in the food court of the B&I. It prospered. After eight months, she decided to take the next step and open a stand-alone restaurant. She and her husband found a space in a strip mall on Orchard Street in University Place. “We put our money together, whatever we had,” she said. “All of our money has gone into it.”

The money went to equip a kitchen and buy tables, chairs and other fixtures. In April of this year, the Nelshil opened its doors.

It’s a little place: eight tables and 20 chairs. It’s sparsely decorated, with pictures of Ghanaian village scenes hanging on its walls.

The kitchen is small and functional. And it’s there that Amegbey is truly in her element.

She makes everything from scratch. First thing in the morning, she gets pots boiling and starts to make soups. Palm nut soup. Peanut butter soup. Goat soup.

Goat is a very popular ingredient in Ghanaian dishes, she says. In her country, “it’s easier to raise and it’s cheaper” than raising a cow. “And it’s more tasty than beef,” she says. But if customers want it, she serves beef and chicken.

The goat meat at the Nelshil is fresh. Very fresh. Amegbey will visit farms in Enumclaw or Auburn, select an animal and have it slaughtered and butchered.

Back in the kitchen, she’ll cut it into chunks, cook it and add it to soup stock made of tomatoes, peppers and onions.

The soup goes well with fufu, a staple of West and Central Africa. It’s made of boiled plantains pounded into a thick paste.

Another specialty is waakye, a mixture of black-eyed peas and rice cooked together.

Moi moi, a Nigerian dish, is a solid pudding made of black-eyed peas with sardines, shrimp and corned beef added to it and boiled together. Spinach stew is also on the menu.

She also makes Asian dishes: ginger beef, sweet and sour chicken and chicken chow mein.

She offers soul food: catfish and fries and corn bread.

Spaghetti and meatballs and macaroni and cheese are available for less adventuresome palates.

She estimates that 70 percent of her business is takeout. The cafe is most crowded on Saturday nights when families often fill the place. On those nights, she depends on her children to help wait the tables. Most of the rest of the time, she is not just the cook but a wait staff of one.

She says her diners are mostly African immigrants: Ghanaians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Ugandans and others. It’s a blue-collar clientele, she says, with factory workers and nurses being heavily represented. As word has gotten around, others have started to show up.

Her menu is ever-evolving, and much of that evolution comes courtesy of her customers. They’ll ask if she knows how to cook specialties from their homelands. Sometimes she does, but when she doesn’t she’ll listen and take notes. Days afterward, she’ll experiment with ingredients and recipes and will customize them. She exercises her creativity. She improvises.

“I add something, I take something out, I use my head,” she says. And when the customers return and ask for the dish again, she’s ready to make it for them. If enough people request it, she’ll add it to the menu.

By 10 p.m. on most days, she closes her door. She cleans up. She starts preliminary preparations for the following day. Sometime around 11, she locks up and goes home.

It’s very long day. And because she works seven days a week, it’s a very long week. She doesn’t mind, though.

“I just love it,” she says again. Bringing a taste of Africa to the Tacoma area is Shirley Amegbey’s way of living the American dream.

Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660

What: Nelshil Café

Where: 5510 Orchard St., W., University Place

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; 2:30-8:30 p.m. Sundays

Phone: 253-584-0491, 253-227-9950 Peanut Butter Soup

Yield: Serves 10

1 pound meat (goat, chicken, beef; your choice)

3-4 fresh tomatoes, chopped

3 onions, chopped and divided

One can tomato paste

1 jalapeño pepper (or 2, for a spicier soup), diced

Bouillon cube

10 to 12 ounces creamy peanut butter

The recipe requires two pots.

Into one pot, add chopped tomatoes, two chopped onions, and jalapeño pepper. Add just enough water to cover the vegetables, and bring to a boil for 10-15 minutes.

While that mixture is boiling, cut meat into chunks and place into a separate pot. Place 1 of the chopped onions on top of the meat. Crush a bouillon cube atop the mixture, and salt to taste. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the meat. Boil over medium heat. Stir occasionally. Boil for 25 minutes.

After 10-15 minutes, put the boiled mixture of tomatoes, onions and pepper into a blender and blend on high until smooth.

If the meat in the meat pot is now tender, add the blenderized veggie mixture and the can of tomato paste. Cover and boil everything on high heat for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, add 10 to 12 ounces creamy peanut butter to the mixture. Boil at medium heat for 15 minutes. Check frequently for taste.