Muriwo unedovi

Zimbabwean covo or rape greens finished with peanut butter, cooked briefly so the leaves keep their bite

Origin: Harare & Zimbabwe

From the journey of Peanut.

Muriwo unedovi is Shona for greens with peanut butter, and it is the relish most Zimbabwean households put beside sadza on an ordinary evening. Muriwo covers the leafy greens generally, and the ones used here are usually covo or rape, both members of the brassica family that crop through the Zimbabwean winter and are grown in almost every garden and roadside plot. Zambian ifisashi and Malawian ndiwo ya nzungu are the same idea, and Zimbabweans make theirs distinctly lighter. The greens are cooked briefly and kept green rather than stewed down, the peanut butter is stirred through at the very end rather than simmered into a sauce, and the finished dish is a dressed vegetable rather than a thick relish. A Zimbabwean cook would say the Zambian version is a different dish rather than a better or worse one. Dovi is the Shona word for peanut butter and it appears across the cuisine, in chicken stews and in pumpkin as well as in greens. Zimbabwe grows groundnuts widely on smallholdings, traditionally as a women's crop, and the domestic peanut butter sold in tubs at every market is coarser, darker, and considerably better for this than the smooth commercial kind. The pairing with sadza is the whole architecture of the plate: maize for bulk, groundnut for the protein that maize lacks, and greens for everything else. It is the answer a maize belt reaches independently wherever it is found.

Ingredients

  • 700 g covo, rape, or spring greens, shredded
  • 4 tbsp unsweetened peanut butter, preferably coarse
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp oil
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 150 ml water

Method

  1. Strip the stalks from the greens and shred the leaves into ribbons about a centimetre wide.
  2. Heat the oil in a wide pan and fry the onion until soft and just golden, about six minutes.
  3. Add the tomatoes and cook for five minutes until they collapse.
  4. Add the greens with the water and the salt, cover, and cook for six to eight minutes only. They should be tender but still distinctly green; this is not a dish that is stewed down.
  5. Slake the peanut butter with three tablespoons of the hot liquid from the pan until smooth and pourable.
  6. Take the pan off the heat and fold the slaked peanut butter through the greens. Off the heat is deliberate: boiling it hard after this point makes the sauce grainy and dulls the greens.
  7. Return to a very low heat for two minutes only, just to warm through. Taste for salt and serve at once with sadza.

Notes

Speed is the difference between this and its Zambian and Malawian cousins. Six to eight minutes on the greens keeps them green, and the peanut butter goes in off the heat at the end rather than being simmered into a sauce. Coarse peanut butter is better here than smooth. If the pan looks dry when the dovi goes in, add a spoonful of water rather than oil, since the dish should be dressed rather than rich.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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