There was an Australian TV series on here not long ago called Plate of Origin, and the premise appealed to us immediately. Teams of two, each representing a different country, cooked dishes from their native countries in a knock-out competition to try to defend their nations’ culinary honour. In the end (spoiler alert), the team from Greece deservedly won, but another team who caught our eye was the Cameroonian sisters, simply because we hadn’t yet cooked any Cameroonian dishes and we were keen for some inspiration.
In the semi-finals, Kelly and Ashley from Cameroon cooked ndole, a stew with goat and prawns. They did comment at the time that they were nervous about cooking it because it contained flavours unfamiliar to the Australian palate, but our memory was that the judges were generally complimentary, so we thought we’d give the unfamiliar flavours a go. What we probably should have remembered was the fact that this dish got the team eliminated from the competition, but clearly we were looking back on the episode with rose-tinted glasses.
We found the recipe on the Channel 7 website and Miranda and Baby Mash went on an adventure to our local African Supermarket to pick up some ingredients we’d never heard of before, like Maggi crayfish cubes and bitter leaves. The recipe called for 500g dry bitter leaves, but the shop only had the dried version in packets of 25g. Realising that that seemed a bit excessive and that we were going to end up spending about £20 on dried leaves, we took the advice of the man in the shop and bought the frozen version (in 300g packets) instead.
Ndole
Ingredients
800g diced goat meat
3 habanero chillies (we left these out for toddler purposes)
2 Maggi crayfish cubes
3 large brown onions
200g peanuts
1-2 pieces dried smoked fish (we used 2, as we accidentally didn’t buy enough dried crayfish)
110g dried shrimp or crayfish (although we only used 40g by mistake)
4 garlic cloves, minced
40g ginger, minced
500g dry (or frozen) bitter leaves
300g baby spinach
1 tbsp baking soda
18 large green tiger prawns, peeled and deveined
1/2 bunch basil leaves
Water
Salt and pepper
Cooking oil
Fufu (cornmeal porridge) or rice, to serve
Method
1. Season the goat meat and add to a large pot on high heat with 1 onion, cut in half, 1 chilli and 1 Maggi cube and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then turn down to simmer on a medium heat.
2. In a separate pot, boil the peanuts, dried shrimp and dried fish until they are soft (around 10-15 minutes).
3. In a pan, saute 1 onion (finely sliced), garlic and ginger and then add the peanut mixture. Blend all together (use some of the cooking water from the peanuts if it needs to be thinned down to blend properly) and add to the goat meat.
4. Bring a pot of water to the boil and add the baking soda and a teaspoon of salt. Then add the bitter leaf and boil for 10-15 minutes.
5. Add the spinach and cook for a further 3 minutes. Drain and run under cold water, then squeeze out the excess liquid and add to the goat meat.
6. Add another chilli and allow to cook until the goat meat is soft and tender (an hour or so). Adjust the seasoning with Maggi cube, salt and pepper.
7. Finely slice the remaining onion. Once the goat meat is cooked, put some oil in a pan over high heat and add the most of the onion (reserving some for garnish). Cook until soft, then quickly sear the prawns and add both to the goat mixture with the basil leaves.
8. Garnish with a blackened habanero and the reserved onion, and serve with fufu or rice.
Serves 4-6
Well. This was the most effort we’ve put into one of these dishes for a while (did you see how many different pans were mentioned in that recipe?!) and also the most money we’ve spent on one, having sourced a lot of obscure ingredients from the African Supermarket. Was it worth it? Sadly, the answer to that is a resounding no. We’re sorry to say that this may be the worst thing we’ve cooked for this challenge so far. We managed to choke it down on the night we cooked it, but when we tried to eat the leftovers the following night, Miranda couldn’t even finish it – and that never happens. Neither chilli sauce, chilli flakes, lemon juice or salt could save this one.
If you read about ndole online, though, there’s not a bad word said about it. It’s a celebratory dish, one that really shows that you’ve put in a lot of effort for the person you’re cooking it for. We can only assume, therefore, that we did something wrong, and it can’t just have been leaving out the habanero chillies or not using enough dried crayfish. We wonder if the answer lies in the bitter leaves, and the fact that we didn’t use the dried version specified in the recipe. We can’t see how that would have improved it – if anything, surely that would have made the flavour even more pronounced – but we’re clutching at straws. Bitter was certainly the right word to describe this dish, which tasted a bit like what we imagine eating a dry tea bag would taste like.
Interestingly, a lot of the other recipes online use beef instead of goat, and spinach instead of bitter leaves, and we do wonder whether that would have made it a bit more palatable. We feel bad dismissing the dish so vehemently, because we’re never ones to shy away from new and unfamiliar flavours, but we just couldn’t get on board with this one.
Ironically and hilariously, someone who could get on board with it was Baby Mash. He didn’t touch anything green (sensible boy) but did get stuck into the goat meat – and this is a child who won’t touch red meat in any form. It wasn’t even that nice, as we didn’t manage to achieve the ‘soft and tender’ texture that the recipe described. There’s no accounting for taste!
Good Food on Bad Plates 