Crain Crain and Fried Plantains Recipes

A Sierra Leonean recipe!

After the cassava leaves at the restaurant, Crain Crain was my second exposure to local dishes.  And it was a happy accident.  Awutor (pronounced Ah-woo-toe) has been teaching Robin and her kids Krio since she's been here twice a week as well as teaching Robin to cook local dishes. 

Robin and I walked down to the local market called the Congo Cross Market to buy the food needed.  We didn't quite succeed.  Awutor had phoned us to tell us to get plasas because we were going to make "plasas" Plasas come in bunches and they are basically green leafy vegetables.

At the market, we stopped at the first lady we came to that had greens.  We asked her if we could use her greens to make plasas and she assured us that we could.  Unfortunately that was not the case!  We bought crain crain leaves instead.  Apparently, when all of the leafy greens are cooked they are called "plasas" while we were looking for a particular plasa called green. lol! 

Our mistake! So Awutor decided to cook crain crain instead.   Here are the crain crain leaves that we first picked off the stem then washed.

After we washed the stems, Awutor basically chiffonaded the leaves by hand.  She grabbed a handful and then sliced them in her hand!  It was a really neat process!

Although we only used beef for the crain crain this time, it traditionally has fish as well.  This is a variation from "Whats Cooking Today" which is a local recipe book by Muriele Emekunle Davies that Robin bought me when I arrived.

Crain Crain (Draw Soup)

Ingredients
1 lb bony beef
2 maggi cubes (aka beef buillion)
4 peppers (the peppers here are HOT!!! like habaneros in my opinion!)
1 tsp Bicorbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 pt. palm oil
1 sliced or ground onion
4 large tie crain crain leaves
Salt to taste
Water for cooking

Directions
1.  Cut beef and put in sauce pan with 1 maggie cube, onions, pepper, and salt and steam
2.  Add one pint of water and boil the ingredients for another 10 minutes
3.  Add palm oil and coninue boiling
4.  Add crain crain leaves already picked, washed and chiffonaded.  Sprinkle bicarbonate of soda to preserve colour and improve sliminess (we didn't do this step and I thought this recipe was delicious!)
5.  Add second maggi cube
6.  Simmer till all ingredients are well blended
7.  Serve with foo foo/rice/gari/agidi

Serves 6-8 persons

I absolutely ADORED this dish... probably one of my favorite local dishes (by now I've eaten around 8 or 9) I can't decide if I like this better or groundnut stew.

With the crain crain Robin whipped up some fried plantains which are also very tasty!  This recipe is quite easy. 

Fried Plantains

Ingredients
Plantains
Palm oil

Directions
1.  Slice up plantains

2.  Fry plantains on each side till slightly browned.  Make sure the oil sizzles to water before adding plaintains.

3. Remove plantains and let drain on a paper towel. 

Hope you guys enjoy the recipe!  You can probably make it in the states using spinach or kale and it would turn out delicious and spicy!

Tomorrow I will try and post a hodge podge.  I have a lot of extra pictures that don't really fit "anywhere" but are neat, interesting, or comical that I would love to share with you! God Bless!