Saka-saka

the Congolese cassava-leaf pot: leaves pounded fine and cooked down for hours with palm oil, smoked fish and a little aubergine

Origin: Brazzaville & the Republic of the Congo

From the journey of Cassava.

Saka-saka is what the Republic of the Congo calls the cassava-leaf dish that Kinshasa, across the river, calls pondu. The two cities face each other over the Congo at the narrowest point of the Pool, close enough to see the traffic on the far bank, and they cook the same pot under two names. Brazzaville will tell you that saka-saka is the older word and that theirs is the better version, and Kinshasa will say the reverse. It is built on red palm oil rather than groundnut, which is what separates it from Rwandan and Burundian isombe further east. The oil goes in generously, the leaves cook down until they are almost black, and smoked fish supplies the depth. Aubergine is often added, and in Pointe-Noire and along the coast the pot is sometimes finished with a little coconut milk, which the interior regards as a coastal indulgence. The leaves are pounded rather than chopped, traditionally in a tall wooden mortar, and sold already pounded in every market in the country. They need a long cook, both to soften the fibre and to drive off the cyanogenic compounds the raw leaf carries, and an hour is a minimum rather than a target. The Congo eats more cassava per head than almost anywhere on earth, and it eats the plant twice over: the root as chikwangue or fufu, and the leaf as saka-saka. That the leaf is treated as a vegetable in its own right rather than as a by-product is a Central African idea and not a South American one, and it is what makes a diet built on a nearly protein-free root workable at all.

Ingredients

  • 800 g pounded cassava leaves, frozen or fresh
  • 150 ml red palm oil
  • 200 g smoked fish, boned and flaked
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 5 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 leeks, sliced
  • 2 small aubergines, diced
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 scotch bonnet chillies, whole
  • 2 tbsp ground dried crayfish (optional)
  • 1 stock cube
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1 litre water

Method

  1. Put the pounded leaves in a large heavy pot with the water and bring to the boil. Simmer for a full hour, stirring occasionally and topping up if it dries out.
  2. Add the onions, garlic, leeks, aubergine, and tomatoes, along with the whole chillies and the stock cube.
  3. Add the smoked fish and the ground crayfish, if using, and the salt.
  4. Simmer uncovered for a further twenty minutes so the vegetables soften into the leaves and the liquid reduces.
  5. Pour in the palm oil and stir it through thoroughly. Cook for a final ten to fifteen minutes.
  6. The saka-saka is ready when it has darkened almost to black, thickened so that it mounds on a spoon, and shows red oil separating at the edges.
  7. Taste for salt. Lift out the chillies unless you want real heat. Serve with chikwangue, cassava fufu, or rice.

Notes

An hour of cooking before anything else goes in is the floor, not the target, and undercooked cassava leaf is not safe. Palm oil goes in late so it coats rather than fries, and cutting it back gives a thin sharp pot rather than the glossy dark one this should be. Frozen pounded leaf from an African grocer is what most cooks outside the region use and is entirely correct. Some Brazzaville households add a spoonful of groundnut paste alongside the palm oil, which moves it towards isombe.

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