Ndolé

Cameroon's national dish: bitterleaf washed of its bitterness and stewed into a thick groundnut sauce with prawns and beef

Origin: Douala & the Cameroon Coast

From the journey of Peanut.

Ndolé is the national dish of Cameroon and it is named for the leaf, Vernonia amygdalina, the bitterleaf that grows across the forest zone. The name is doing something specific: the dish is defined by a bitterness that the cook then spends an hour removing. The leaves are washed repeatedly in changes of water, often with coarse salt or a pinch of potash worked through them, and boiled and drained more than once. What survives is not bitterness but the memory of it, a green edge running under the richness that keeps the groundnut from cloying. The sauce is ground peanut, and the combination of a bitter forest green with an American oilseed is a fair summary of how the Cameroonian coast eats. The Sawa peoples of Douala are usually credited with the dish in its present form, and it is the fixture of weddings, funerals, and any occasion at which a household is judged. Prawns and beef go in together, which is normal along a coast where the sea and the cattle country are a few hours apart. It is eaten well beyond Cameroon's borders. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea both cook it, the Gulf of Guinea forest zone having a shared larder and, in the Fang-speaking areas, a shared language, and the version served in Libreville or Bata differs from the Douala one mainly in what is to hand.

Ingredients

  • 300 g dried bitterleaf, or 600g fresh (spinach is not a substitute for the flavour, only for the bulk)
  • 300 g unsalted roasted peanuts
  • 500 g stewing beef, cut into 3cm pieces
  • 300 g raw prawns, peeled
  • 100 g dried prawns or crayfish, ground
  • 4 tbsp groundnut oil
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 5 garlic cloves
  • 1 thumb of ginger
  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies
  • 2 stock cubes, or 500ml strong beef stock
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. If using dried bitterleaf, soak it in hot water for thirty minutes, then wash it in at least four changes of water, squeezing hard each time. Boil it for ten minutes and drain. Taste a leaf: it should be pleasantly green with only a trace of bitterness left. If it still grips the back of the throat, wash and boil again.
  2. Boil the peanuts in water for fifteen minutes until softened, drain, and blend to a thick smooth paste with a little of the cooking water.
  3. Simmer the beef with one chopped onion, the stock, and a little salt until tender, about forty-five minutes. Keep the cooking liquid.
  4. Blend the second onion, the garlic, ginger, and chillies to a rough paste.
  5. Heat the groundnut oil in a wide pot and fry the blended aromatics for five minutes until the raw smell goes.
  6. Add the peanut paste and the ground dried prawns and cook, stirring constantly, for ten minutes. It will thicken and darken and the oil will begin to show at the edges.
  7. Loosen with the reserved beef cooking liquid to a thick sauce, then fold in the drained bitterleaf. Simmer for twenty minutes, stirring often.
  8. Add the beef and the raw prawns and cook a final five minutes, until the prawns are just done. Taste for salt. Serve with boiled plantain, miondo, or white rice.

Notes

The washing is the dish. Under-washed bitterleaf makes ndolé that nobody finishes; over-washed leaves make a groundnut stew with greens in it. Aim to stop while a green bitterness is still detectable. Frozen bitterleaf from an African grocer is already blanched and needs one wash rather than four. Do not salt heavily until the end, as both the stock cubes and the dried prawns carry a great deal.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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