Cameroon – Pumpkins Wrapped With Plantain Leaves

by Wirba Brice Divine Ransinyuy

Pumpkins food is a local cuisine reminds us of our ancestral descendants that used local methods in order to cook delicious meals with practically no side effect since it is cooked by using local methods in order to bring out something unique. Reason why the cuisine reminds us of its ancestral descendants and its secret of cooking is being held by grand mammies who master so well the act of cooking pumpkins wrapped with plantain leaves. The use of plantain leaves in wrapping the food is so that the food should keep all its substances, that is the natural taste and smell. Pumpkins wrapped with plantain leaves is a food cooked in the locality of Ndu situated in the North West region precisely after Nkambe.

Cooking method

Pumpkins wrapped with plantains leaves is cooked by turning and boiling.

Cooking ingredients

1. Three pumpkins
2. Plantains leaves.
3. 1 liter of red oil
4. 3 pinches of salt
5. Coco leaves

Cooking process

1. Wash the pumpkins for around three minutes.
2. After washing the pumpkins, cut it into small pieces.
3. Grind the pumpkins with the use of a moulinex.
4. After grinding the pumpkins with the use of moulinex, proceed to the next level.
5. Proceed to the cleaning of the leaves, the plantains leaves and the coco leaves.
6. After washing the plantains leaves light fire, then burn it small. Use the lighted fire to warm up the plantains leaves.
7. After warming up the plantains leaves, cut the coco leaves into very small.
8. After cutting the coco leaves into very small, put the coco leaves into the grinded pumpkins.
9. Mix the two together very well.
10. Put in salt to give it more taste
11. After mixing the two together, put them in the plantains leaves, then use a rope in tying them up.
12. Put the tied up grinded pumkpins into a clean pot and close.
13. Open the pot and pour a half cup of water into the pot.
14. Close the pot again. Make sure to close it very well so as not to let air penetrate inside.
15. Allow the pot on fire for a period of thirty minutes. After thirty minutes on fire, if the water is becoming dry and the food is not yet ready, pour in more water like an another half cup of water.
16. Close the pot again and allow it on fire for a period of fifteen minutes.
17. After fifteen minutes, your local cuisine food is ready.
18. Remove your food on fire.
19. Let the food be wrapped in leaves like in the picture below.

Make sure to enjoy your ancestral meal.

Good Appetite.