#9 Boil Your Leaves

One of my favorite things to eat here is boiled leaves. If there is one thing my neighbors have mastered, it is how to correctly boil some leaves and make it pretty darn delicious. This traditional Mozambican dish called “matapa” is made from boiling leafs and then adding peanut flour, onion, salt, tomatoes, and sometimes coconut milk. It sounds simple and not so appetizing at first, but you’d be amazed how far some peanut flour and coconut milk can take a meal. There are different variations of course with the variety of leafs found in Mozambique. The most typical (and my favorite) is with the cassava leaf. Others include leafs of cauliflower, pumpkin, and several types of beans. Even a local, Northern Mozambican specie of the Acacia tree family offers a lovely tasting leaf to use in a matapa. And as much as I like it, I also like to joke about it as well, because really its just a soup with leafs served with rice. The only leafs I have not seen boiled are lettuce and cabbage, but cabbage comes close when you fry it here. Everything else though you will never need to ask how to prepare it, just boil it, drain it, and add the rest of the ingredients. I really can’t wait to make this back home twenty years from now. This has got to be one of the most fascinating foods to me here because why did I never think to eat a leaf? Why did I always assume to compost them?