Potato leaf plasa

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 40 minutes.

Ingredients

• half a large bunch sweet potato leaves
• 1 onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 5 chillies
• 125 ml red palm oil
• 25 ml Maggi sauce
• 80 g groundnut paste
• 180 g each prawns, raw white fish, cooked octopus
• 1 kg rice

Method

1. Clean the leaves thoroughly through repeated rinsing; chop finely, to roughly 0.25 cm pieces, rather than pounding to a paste. This is the opposite instinct to cassava leaf, and deliberately so.
2. Blend the onion, red bell pepper and chilli. Heat the palm oil with the Maggi sauce, add the raw white fish and simmer 7 minutes, adding the blended vegetables, groundnut paste and a cup of water halfway through.
3. Add a second cup of water and bring to a simmer. Add the prawns and octopus for 1 minute.
4. Lay the chopped leaves on top without pushing them under the liquid, cover, and steam 4 to 5 minutes.
5. Uncover, stir the leaves through, and simmer only until cooked but still with some bite. Total dish time about 40 minutes. Serve with rice.

What a modern chef changes

The texture discipline that separates this leaf from cassava leaf made the whole point of the dish

Method

1. Never pound this leaf. Sierra Leonean cooks distinguish the two leaves by exactly this logic: cassava leaf punishes a short cook, potato leaf punishes a long one. Treating potato leaf like cassava leaf is the single most common error a cook unfamiliar with the distinction will make.
2. Steam on top of the liquid, not in it, and stop the moment the leaf wilts. A probe thermometer in the broth beneath is a more reliable cue than a clock, since pot size and lid fit change how fast the steam actually reaches the leaf.