Eru

Ingredients

• Eru leaf — or spinach400 g
• Waterleaf — or chard800 g
• Red palm oil150 ml
• Beef500 g
• Tripe300 g
• Dried fish150 g
• Ground dried crayfish50 g
• Onion1
• Hot chilli2
• Stock cube2
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Simmer the beef and tripe with the onion and a stock cube for an hour, until tender.

   65 min

2. 2

   Soak the dried fish in hot water twenty minutes and flake it, taking out the bones.

   25 min

3. 3

   Shred the eru leaf as fine as you can, rolling it tight before cutting.

   30 min

4. 4

   Rinse the waterleaf and cut it coarsely; it wilts right down as it cooks anyway.

   12 min

5. 5

   Put the waterleaf into the pot with the meat and let it wilt, giving up its juice.

   12 min

6. 6

   Add the eru, fish, crayfish and chilli and stew twenty minutes with the lid on.

   22 min

7. 7

   Pour in the palm oil, stir it through and cook ten minutes more uncovered.

   14 min

About the dish

Eru is shredded thread-fine, almost to dust. Coarsely cut leaf stays tough however long it stews — everything depends on the shred.

The waterleaf supplies the moisture, and almost no water is added to the pot. It wilts down, giving up its juice, and the eru softens in that.

Red palm oil cannot be replaced here. Plain vegetable oil gives fat without the colour or the flavour, and the dish stops being eru.

Worth knowing

• — Outside West Africa eru is replaced by spinach or young kale, but the texture comes out softer. That is a substitution, not an equivalent.
• — The palm oil goes in at the end. Overheated it loses its colour and picks up a burnt note.
• — Add no water at all. If the stew comes out dry, add broth from the meat rather than water, which dilutes the flavour.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

42 g

Carbs

14 g

More from Cameroon

• Ndolé — Bitter leaves with peanut paste, meat and prawns. The national dish of Cameroon.
• Poulet DG — Fried chicken with fried plantain and vegetables. The dish called "the director general's chicken".
• Koki — A pudding of ground black-eyed beans with palm oil, steamed in banana leaves.