Plasas — Ghana

Plasas names a thick stew of leafy greens cooked down in palm oil with fish and meat, part of a family of leaf stews shared across the coast of West Africa. In this Ghanaian rendering, cocoyam leaves are the base, thickened further with ground egusi seeds and enriched with smoked fish. It is reported from Ghana, where leaf stews of this kind are cooked at home and served over rice, boiled yam or plantain, feeding a household from one pot. The same dish is also prepared, under the same name, in Liberia and in Sierra Leone, each place drawing on its own greens and its own smoked or dried fish. To prepare it, dried or salted fish and meat are softened by soaking, while the leaves are blanched and chopped. Palm oil is heated with onions and tomato paste, then the fish, meat and water are added and left to simmer before the ground egusi and the leaves go in, stirred often as the stew thickens to a dense, dark green mass. What distinguishes this Ghanaian preparation is the use of cocoyam leaves and ground egusi to give the stew its body, choices that differ from the versions found in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which draw on other leaves and other proportions of fish. None of the three is treated here as the reference; each is one place's way of cooking the same family of stew.