Fumbua (Congolese Wild Spinach Stew)

Fumbua is chopped wild greens cooked with smoked fish, peanut butter and palm oil into a thick, savoury stew. It comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is eaten in Angola too. **It contains peanut butter, which the title gives no indication of.** The greens the dish is named for are fumbwa, the leaves of *Gnetum africanum*, the same wild forest vine known as eru in Cameroon and afang or okazi in Nigeria. That single plant supports a whole cluster of Central and West African dishes, each with its own name and its own treatment, and fumbua is the Congolese one. Its distinguishing feature within that group is the peanut butter, which thickens the stew and gives it a richness that eru and afang do not have. Peanuts and palm oil doing the work together is characteristic of Congo basin cooking generally, and it is the same combination that underpins moambe, the Congolese national dish. The source is realistic about substitution, and rightly so. Genuine fumbwa leaves are hard to find outside the region, and it recommends spinach, kale or collard greens instead. That is a fair compromise, the texture will be softer and the flavour milder, but the dish still works. The source's low-carbohydrate framing has not been carried across.