Plantain Porridge

Plantain porridge is unripe plantain cooked down with vegetables, palm oil and pepper into a thick, savoury one-pot dish, a Nigerian staple that behaves much more like a potato stew than anything the word porridge suggests in English. The ripeness question is the one that decides the dish. Ripe plantain is sweeter and more immediately appealing, and many people default to it. Unripe green plantain is what this dish is properly made with: it is starchy rather than sweet, holds its shape through long cooking rather than collapsing, and takes on the flavour of the pot instead of fighting it with sugar. Cooked ripe, the porridge turns sweet and mushy. Unripe plantain is also lower in sugar and higher in resistant starch, which is why it appears frequently in Nigerian cooking aimed at people managing blood sugar. Ugu or spinach goes in near the end, and crayfish, dried fish or smoked fish are common additions. Palm oil supplies the colour and much of the flavour. It is filling enough to be a meal on its own and is eaten at breakfast as often as at dinner.