Plasas

The cassava leaf stew of the Upper Guinea Coast, young leaves pounded fine and simmered for hours in red palm oil with smoked fish and groundnut until dark and thick

Origin: Freetown and Sierra Leone

From the journey of Cassava.

Plasas, from the Krio for palaver sauce, is the everyday stew of Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the cassava leaf version is the one people mean. Young leaves are pounded to a fine dark paste and simmered for a long time with red palm oil, smoked and dried fish, meat if there is any, and often a paste of ground egusi or groundnut, until the whole thing collapses into something thick, dark green, and deeply savoury. It is served over rice, which Sierra Leoneans call simply the meal. The leaf, not the root, is the point here, and it matters nutritionally. Cassava root is very nearly pure starch; the leaf carries several times the protein along with iron and vitamins, and a rice-and-plasas plate is a considerably better meal than its two components suggest. The long cooking is not for texture. Cassava leaves carry the same cyanogenic compounds as the root, and the pounding and the prolonged boiling do the same work that grating and pressing do on the other side of the plant. Sierra Leone's food culture is built on rice to an unusual degree, and the Krio community of Freetown, descended from liberated Africans resettled from Britain, Nova Scotia, and recaptured slave ships, gave the country a distinct creolised layer on top of Mende and Temne cooking. Plasas belongs to all of them. Potato leaf is prepared identically and is eaten just as widely; the two are argued over with some feeling, and the argument is regional.

Ingredients

Greens

  • 500 g frozen pounded cassava leaves, thawed
  • 1 litre water

Fat

  • 150 ml red palm oil

Aromatics

  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, crushed

Protein

  • 200 g smoked fish, skin and bones removed, flaked
  • 200 g beef or goat, cut into small cubes, optional

Enrichment

  • 3 tbsp smooth peanut butter or ground egusi

Seasoning

  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies, whole and pricked
  • 1 stock cube, crumbled
  • 1.5 tsp fine salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Put the thawed pounded cassava leaves in a large heavy pan with the water and bring to the boil. Reduce to a steady simmer, half cover, and cook for forty-five minutes.
  2. If using meat, brown it separately and add it to the pan after the first twenty minutes.
  3. Add the palm oil, onion, garlic, and flaked smoked fish and continue to simmer for twenty-five minutes.
  4. Loosen the peanut butter or ground egusi with a ladleful of the hot liquid until smooth, then stir it back into the pan with the whole chillies and the stock cube.
  5. Simmer uncovered for a final fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring now and then, until the stew is thick, very dark, and holds its shape on a spoon, and the oil has begun to separate at the edges.
  6. Season with salt, remove the chillies if you wish, and serve over plain boiled rice.

Notes

Use commercially prepared pounded cassava leaves. They are sold frozen or jarred, are already correctly processed, and are what the dish is made from in practice. Fresh cassava leaves must never be eaten raw or lightly cooked; they carry the same cyanogenic compounds as the root and need thorough pounding and prolonged boiling. Potato leaf plasas is made identically with sweet potato leaves and is equally common. Congolese pondu and Mozambican matapa are the same leaf treated differently: groundnut and palm oil here, coconut and cashew on the Indian Ocean side.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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