Ghanaian · Side
Kontomire Abom
- Easy
- 25 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with real fire that builds and stays.
Ingredients
- 500 g kontomire (cocoyam leaves), coarse stalks stripped out
- 1 onion, quartered
- 3 kpakpo shito chillies, or 2 scotch bonnet
- 2 ripe tomatoes
- 60 ml red palm oil
- 2 tsp salt
The skills inside
Salted water & the float testMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Shred the stripped leaves and wash them through several changes of water until no grit settles in the bottom of the bowl.
- Boil hard in salted water, uncovered, for at least 15 minutes, until the leaves are drab army green and completely limp; still bright green means not yet. 15 min
- Drain and press the leaves against the sieve with the back of a ladle to force out every drop of water.
- Grind the onion, chillies and tomato to a rough paste in an asanka, then work the leaves in a handful at a time to a coarse dark mash.
- Salt it, pour the palm oil over off the heat and fold it through; eat warm or at room temperature with boiled yam or plantain.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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