Kizaca
London, United Kingdom ·
Aperçu
Kizaca, also written kizaka or quizaca, is pounded cassava leaves cooked slowly with groundnuts until the leaves soften and the nuts break down into a thick, savoury sauce around them. It is among the most widely eaten dishes in Angola and one of the few that is vegetarian by default. Its composition tells a compressed version of Angolan history. Cassava is not indigenous to Angola; it arrived from Brazil, another Portuguese colony, and became so completely established that its leaves are now a national green. Palm oil, groundnuts and slow cooking are the local contribution. Angolan food is often described as Portuguese influence over African ingredients, and kizaca shows the arrangement is more complicated than that: the central ingredient is an import that has been African for centuries. It is normally eaten as an accompaniment to meat or fish rather than as the centre of a plate, and kizaka com peixe, made with fish, onions and tomato, is the most common form in Angola. Rice or chikuanga goes alongside. Angolan cooks make it in advance deliberately, because the flavour of cassava leaf and groundnut needs several hours together before it settles.
managed to get frozen cassava leaves from the african market here in baltimore. blitzing the aubergine and green pepper together felt strange at first, but it gave the leaves great body o. just needed a bit more than half a sachet of stock powder to get the flavor right for me sha.
That aubergine trick is spot on, Tobi! Blitzing it gives it such a lekker thick texture. I do the same when making this as a side dish for a braai. Baie good call on extra stock powder too, cassava leaves really soak up the seasoning, just like my ouma se resep for wild greens.