Ndolé

Ingredients

• Bitterleaf or spinach700 g
• Peanuts — raw, shelled300 g
• Beef — diced600 g
• Prawns300 g
• Dried shrimp50 g
• Onions2
• Garlic6 clove
• Ginger40 g
• Chilli2
• Vegetable oil120 ml
• Plantain — to serve3
• Salt and pepperto 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

   Boil the leaves in salted water for ten minutes, wring them out and repeat twice more with fresh water.

   40 min

2. 2

   Boil the peanuts twenty minutes until soft and blend them with water into a thick paste.

   27 min

3. 3

   Brown the beef, then add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli.

   15 min

4. 4

   Add water and the dried shrimp and stew forty minutes, until the meat is tender.

   42 min

5. 5

   Stir in the peanut paste and cook fifteen minutes, stirring; it catches easily.

   17 min

6. 6

   Add the drained leaves and the fresh prawns and stew ten minutes more.

   12 min

7. 7

   Serve with fried plantain or boiled cassava.

   12 min

About the dish

Ndolé leaves are genuinely bitter, and the bitterness is removed by boiling in two or three changes of salted water, wringing them out each time. Skipping that makes the dish inedible.

The peanuts are pounded into a paste and added at the end. It thickens the sauce and balances the remaining bitterness; without it ndolé stays harsh.

Meat and prawns meet in one pot — the way it is done on the Douala coast. That is not excess: dried prawns give a depth meat does not.

Worth knowing

• — Taste the leaves after each boiling. If bitterness remains, do a fourth — the number of waters depends on the batch.
• — Jarred peanut butter works, but it must be unsweetened and unadulterated. A sweet one ruins the dish entirely.
• — The sauce should be thick enough that a spoon nearly stands. A loose ndolé will not stay on the plantain.

Nutrition

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

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

42 g

Carbs

34 g

More from Cameroon

• Poulet DG — Fried chicken with fried plantain and vegetables. The dish called "the director general's chicken".