Matapa

Ingredients

• Cassava leaves or spinach700 g
• Peanuts — ground200 g
• Coconut milk400 ml
• Prawns400 g
• Onion2
• Garlic6 clove
• Tomatoes2
• Piri-piri chilli2
• Rice — to serve350 g
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• 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

   Wash the leaves, strip the tough stems and pound them to a paste in a mortar.

   25 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion and garlic in oil until soft and add the tomatoes.

   10 min

3. 3

   Stir in the leaves, add water to the same level and cook forty minutes on a low heat.

   42 min

4. 4

   Add the ground peanuts and cook twenty minutes more, stirring.

   22 min

5. 5

   Add the prawns, the whole piri-piri and salt and stew ten minutes.

   12 min

6. 6

   Pour in the coconut milk and warm it five minutes without letting it boil.

   7 min

7. 7

   Serve with rice or with xima, the maize porridge.

   20 min

About the dish

Cassava leaves contain cyanogenic compounds and need long cooking — an hour at least. That is safety rather than technique: undercooked matapa is dangerous.

The leaves are pounded in a mortar to a paste before cooking. Chopped with a knife they stay fibrous and the texture never comes.

The peanuts and the coconut milk go in at different times: peanuts in the middle so they break down, coconut at the end so it does not split.

Worth knowing

• — Frozen pounded cassava leaves are sold in African shops and save half an hour at the mortar.
• — Spinach instead of cassava leaves makes a different dish: milder and without the astringency. It does not need an hour — fifteen minutes is enough.
• — The coconut must not boil. Split coconut milk leaves oil slicks and grit, and nothing brings it back.

Nutrition

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

Calories

580 kcal

Protein

32 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

40 g

More from Mozambique

• Piri-piri chicken — Chicken spatchcocked and grilled over coals under a sauce of piri-piri, garlic and lemon.