Cassava Cuisine

I suggest clicking on the picture to view it full screen. The panorama is quite nice.

This field of young cassava was planted only about five weeks ago. Harvesting of the roots will take place in about nine months. The roots have many uses. For food, they are processed for starch and made into tapioca. More recently, demand for cassava roots has risen because of biofuel applications.
But what about the leaves? In Thailand, leaves are discarded during harvesting, although I have heard that there is a market for them as animal feed. And so they are edible. I found on Google that in Mozambique, a dish called "Matapa" uses young cassava leaves as an ingredient.

Here's the recipe.

Cassava leaves 500 grams
Crushed peanuts 500 grams
Grated coconut 1 cup
Coconut milk 1 cup

Use blender to finely chop cassava leaves. Do the same for peanuts. Boil all ingredients over slow fire until they achieve consistency of cream spinach. Add salt to taste.

Wikipedia has a different version of Matapa and says that it is "a typical Mozambican dish prepared with young cassava leaves piled with garlic and flour extracted from the tubers and cooked with crab or shrimp."
To obtain as cassava leaves (and roots, too), please contact me. Better yet, come over at harvest time. Work in the fields like a real Thai farmer and enjoy delicious servings of home cooked Matapa!

Photo location: Baan Nafai, Uthaitani province Colors slightly enhanced.