Making Cassava Bread
How to Make a Staple Food Common in a South American Village
Cassava bread, a staple food in many tribal villages in South America, involves a labor intensive process that usually takes two days.
Cassava bread is a staple food among many indigenious communities on the continent and is starting to slowly widely gaining recognition among urban dwellers, especially in villages where flavors are added to the food. But making cassava bread is a very labor intensive process that takes much time, patience and diligence.
Growing cassava, or manioc as it is sometimes called, a starchy rough, brown crop-plant that grows in the tropics, takes seven months. But it grows year-round, so there rarely is a shortage of cassava to cut down.
When a family harvests cassava, they get a large pile of the plant. Once the cassava is harvested, they must be peeled. Peeling cassava is done best with large, sharp knives, and can be quite time consuming. When cassava is peeled, it reveals its white underskin, similar to that of a potato, but much larger.
Once the cassava is peeled, it must be washed in buckets of water. After that, the cassava must be grated. The best way to grate cassava is with a large grater nailed to a medium-sized board. The board is best positioned upright with one side against the body and the lower end into a wide bucket. Grating is also very tedious work, and the cassava at this point looks like cream cheese.
After the cassava is grated, it is put into long thin drainage structures made out of palm trees called matapi. This is hung from a tree and wringed so it drains out the juices of the grated cassava. Nothing is usually done with the juices.
After peeling, grating and draining, a full day of work is done.
The second day of making cassava bread consists of cooking. The dried, grated cassava - which looks like flour but is an off-white color - is cooked by pouring a large scoop onto a circular platform (tray) over a burning fire. The cassava should cover the platform. After one side is done cooking, the cassava should be flipped over - a skill that looks hard unless you've done it many times - for the other side to be cooked. The cassava at this point should not have any loose pieces, and is quite strong and sturdy.
After it's done cooking, the cassava bread is hung out to dry in the sun. The pieces of bread can be hung on the ground or on large leaves, before being ready to eat.
When eaten, plain cassava bread actually takes quite bland. But it can be made tastier by adding flavoring or spreading some peanut butter or chocolate spread on it.
