Calulu recipe

São Tomé calulu is a palm oil stew simmered for hours, in which smoked fish cooks with a dozen pounded local leaves and a sauce thickened with breadfruit, served with angu.

2 hours and 40 minutesmedium12 ingredients

Ingredients

• 500 g mixed calulu leaves (mussua, micocó, ponto, maquêquê leaves, mosquito leaf)
• 1200 g smoked fish
• 100 ml palm oil
• 1 breadfruit
• 1 bunch watercress
• 5 okra
• 2 eggplant
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 onion
• 1 ossame
• 1 pepper stick (pau-pimenta)
• 1 malagueta chili

How to make Calulu

1. Pound 500 g mixed calulu leaves (mussua, micocó, ponto, maquêquê leaves, mosquito leaf) and 1 bunch watercress in a mortar, a little at a time, or chop them very finely. These leaves grow in São Tomé and are hard to find elsewhere: without them the dish is not calulu.
2. Put the leaves in a large pot with 2 eggplants and 5 okra cut into pieces, 2 chopped tomatoes, 1 chopped onion, 1 peeled breadfruit in large chunks, 100 ml palm oil, 1 ossame, 1 pepper stick and salt. Cover with water and cook for about 1 hour.
3. Lift out the breadfruit, pound it in the mortar into a paste and return it to the pot with a little hot water: this is what thickens the sauce. Some cooks use cassava flour instead.
4. Add 1.2 kg smoked fish (flying fish, tuna) broken into pieces, skin and bones removed, and 1 malagueta chili, then simmer gently.
5. Cook for at least 2 hours in total, stirring now and then; in São Tomé it is often left to cook overnight. Adjust the salt.
6. Serve with angu (cooked bananas pounded in a mortar and shaped into balls) or with white rice. The same stew is also made with chicken.

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