Cassava is cooking

Primary Preparations and basic recipes

How to prepare Cassava flour

Method

1. Harvest cassava and prepare immediately, a delay of more than 4 hours will caused discoloration in the flour. If delays cannot be avoided peel and store tubers in water overnight before processing.
2. After harvest, wash and peel fresh cassava tubers. Wash with clean water.
3. For Bitter cassava grate tubers using a grater*
4. Put the cassava mash into a nylon sack and dewater using a press
5. Remove the dewatered cassava cake, re-grate and sun dry
6. (For Sweet cassava chip the roots for fast drying)
7. Dry on a clean plastic sheet, tray or a raised bed, to prevent contamination by dust and stones, etc.
8. When dried, sift to remove the large fibres
9. For high quality flour, mill finely, using a hammer mill, manual rotary mill or grinding stone.
10. Store the flour in an airtight containers such as a polythene bags or sealed bin.

Note: It is important for the grated cassava or chips to dry in one or two days so that the flour will be white, and free from off flavours and odours.

How to prepare Cassava Leaves

Ingredients

Fresh cassava leaves	1 Kg
Palm oil	150 ml
Onions (optional)	2 small
Leek (optional)	2 small
Smoked or salted fish (optional)	to taste
Groundnut paste (optional)	to taste
Water	1 litre
Salt	to taste
Pepper	to taste

Method:

1. Select young and tender cassava leaves from the uppermost leaves of the plant
2. Remove stalks from the leaves
3. Wash the de-stalked leaves in cold water
4. Pound the leaves in a mortar, or blend in a blending machine until all the leaves become a homogenous mash.
5. Bring one (1) litre of water to the boil and place the pounded leaves into the pot. Boil for 15 minutes from the time it starts to boil.
6. Sauté the onions, add to the cassava leaves and add salt and pepper, and fish if used.
7. Add peanut butter if preferred, this can be used as a substitute for palm oil.
8. Cover pot and continue to cook for another 15 minutes.
9. Serve with rice, fufu, eba or pounded yam.

NB: The consistency of the cassava leaves is a matter of choice. It may be dry i.e. with very little water, with oil seeping out of the vegetable or very wet, with vegetable suspended in a water in oil emulsion. The leaves of cassava contain up to 5 % protein and a considerable amount of minerals, hence using the leaves is a real boost to your nutritional use of cassava.

How to prepare Cassava starch

1. Wash and peel cassava tubers.
2. Grate the cassava in a fine mash
3. Mix the grated cassava with a high volume of clean water (about 10 times the mash volume).
4. Remove fibres in the mash by sift the watery mash through a fine muslin cloth or fine mesh sieve.
5. Allow the fine particles of starch to settle in water.
6. Decant water from the settled starch
7. If required wash the starch again with water to get white, odourless and tasteless starch.
8. Place the decanted starch on a tray or drying floor to oven or sundry.
9. Once dry, mill or sieve the starch again to remove any foreign material.
10. Store the dry starch in an airtight container.

How to prepare Fermented Cassava starch

1. Follow instructions above until reaching point 6.
2. Place decanted starch into a tank and add water
3. Allow the starch / water mixture to ferment for 30-40 days.
4. After fermentation has slowed, decant the water.
5. Sun dry the fermented starch. (NB, you must sun dry the starch for this process)
6. Pack into sacks.

How to prepare grated cassava

1. Wash and peel tubers then wash again
2. Grate tubers into a fine mash
3. Remove fibres
4. To de water, (if required), remove water by placing the wet mash into a clean white muslin or a light cotton cloth and squeezing out the water.

How to prepare cassava gari

1. Wash and peel tubers
2. Grate tubers into a fine mash
3. Place the grated cassava into clean nylon sack
4. Place the sack into a press and remove water slowly. This process can take 3-4 days.

   (The long de-watering period allows the mash to ferment, which provides the typical fermented flavour)

5. Dewater the mash until mash is moist but friable.
6. Sieve the mash to remove large fibres
7. Lightly toast the mash on a hot plate, this is generally done in a shallow metal basin (wok) over a fire.
8. Sieve the mash to remove large fibres
9. Store in a sack or air-tight container

Cassava based egg Pasta

Ingredients:

Cassava Flour	400g
Egg	2 med.
Water	As required
Salt	For taste

Method:

1. Cook 100g Cassava flour in boiling water to obtain a sticky dough.
2. Leave the dough to cool.
3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
4. Mix Cassava flour (300g) with beaten eggs, dough and a pinch of salt.
5. If the mixture is too hard, add a little water.
6. The mix will resemble breadcrumbs.
7. Shape the dough into small balls.
8. Feed the balls into a Pasta extruder.
9. Use different screens according to your preference in shape.
10. Dry the extruded pasta and store in an airtight plastic container.

Cassava Flour Short Crust Pastry

Ingredients:

Cassava flour	200g	2 cups
Margarine	50g	¼ cup
Egg	1 large	1 large
Salt	¼ teaspoon	1 teaspoon

Method:

1. Weigh out 150g sieved cassava flour, margarine and salt into a bowl.
2. Cook 50g cassava flour in ¼ cup boiling water for 1 minute.
3. Pour the cooked flour into the weighed ingredients.
4. Mix thoroughly with finger tips, until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
5. Whisk the egg, add to the mixture.
6. Mix to a stiff dough which leaves the sides of the bowl clean.
7. Use for any recipe which calls for short crust pastry such as meat pies, sausage rolls and jam tarts.

Rich Yeast Mixture

Ingredients

In Bowl:

Dried Yeast	2 tsp.
Warm Milk	100 ml
Cassava Flour	50 g
Wheat Flour	50 g

Method 1

1. Add the sieved flour to the milk and yeast mixture.
2. Mix and knead for 5 minutes.
3. Leave to double in size.

Ingredients: 2

Cassava flour	75 g
Wheat flour	75 g
Sugar	50 g
Margarine	25 g
Egg (beaten)	1
Salt	A pinch

Method 2

1. Add the above ingredients to the risen dough and knead for about 5 minutes.
2. The dough should be well mixed at this stage and smooth.

Use in a varies of ways.

>Home >Agro-enterprises > Products