Traditional matapa: Mozambican cassava leaves cooked in coconut milk with peanuts and shrimp

Matapa is the dish every Mozambican abroad tries to recreate and misses. It is made from young cassava leaves, pounded in a mortar into a paste, and cooked for a long time with ground peanuts, coconut milk and garlic, until the bitterness disappears and what remains is a thick, dark green cream, sweet from the coconut and rich from the peanuts. Shrimp, crab or fish go into the coastal version, the best known.

The recipe brings together three legacies: the cassava and peanuts that came from the Americas with the Portuguese, the coconut of the Indian Ocean coast and the technique of pounding leaves that belongs to all of southern Africa. It cooks for hours, on low heat, and the secret is the patience for the leaves to lose their bitterness and the paste to thicken without burning.

Fresh or frozen cassava leaves are found in African grocery stores and in northern Brazilian ones (where they are called maniva and need long cooking). Without them, spinach or finely chopped collard greens make a milder matapa, ready in much less time. With white rice or xima, the corn mash, it is the everyday meal.

Recipe card

• Origin: Mozambique
• Category: Main course, greens cooked in coconut
• Difficulty: Easy
• Preparation time: 30 minutes
• Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes (30 minutes with spinach)
• Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 500 g pounded or ground cassava leaves (fresh or frozen; or 800 g spinach or finely chopped collard greens)
• 1 cup raw skinless peanuts, finely ground
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 300 g cleaned fresh shrimp (or 1/2 cup dried shrimp)
• 1 piri-piri or fresh red chili (optional)
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 cups water
• Salt to taste
• White rice or xima to serve

Method

1. If using cassava leaves, cook them in water with the garlic for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and no longer bitter. With spinach or collards, blanch for 3 minutes and drain.
2. In a pot, heat the oil and sauté the onion for 5 minutes. Add the tomato and cook until it breaks down.
3. Add the cooked leaves, ground peanuts and water and cook on low for 20 minutes, stirring often so the peanuts do not stick.
4. Pour in the coconut milk, add the chili and salt and cook for another 20 minutes, until the cream is thick and the coconut and peanut oil shines on the surface.
5. Add the shrimp and cook for 5 minutes, just until pink (dried shrimp goes in with the coconut).
6. Adjust the salt and serve with white rice or xima.

Tips and variations

• Raw cassava leaves contain toxic compounds: they always need long cooking. Never eat them raw or undercooked.
• Peanuts pulsed in a processor until they become a coarse flour are the point; natural peanut paste also works.
• Crab matapa is the feast version from Mozambique Island.
• Without shrimp, it is an excellent vegetarian dish.
• Xima: white corn flour cooked in salted water into a firm mash, like Angolan funge.
• Freezes well for 2 months.
• A squeeze of lime when serving cuts the richness of the coconut and peanuts.

Matapa is green, creamy, sweet with coconut and full of peanuts, with Indian Ocean shrimp on top. It is the taste of Mozambique, and it is worth seeking out cassava leaves to make the real thing.