Pounded Greens · Everyday Sauce
Saka-Saka (Pounded Cassava Leaves)
Photo: T.K. Naliaka / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Raw cassava leaves contain natural cyanide-producing compounds, so cooks pound them fine and simmer them for hours — a step that isn't optional, it's what makes the dish safe to eat.
Cassava leaves are washed, then pounded to a fine paste in a mortar and pestle before simmering for hours with palm oil, ground peanuts and smoked fish until deep green and soft. Sold everywhere from home-run malewa stalls to market kitchens, it's spooned over rice, fufu or chikwangue.
Why it's made this way: Turning the leafy top of the cassava plant into a sauce meant nothing from the harvest went to waste, and the long pounding-and-cooking process needed to neutralize the leaves' natural toxins made saka-saka a dish built around patience as much as ingredients.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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Photo credits.