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Cassava: bitter, sweet and utterly amazing
- Admin
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
When you visit, will become closely acquainted with the most important food in the Rupununi: the cassava.
Cassava, manioc, yuca…. This is the staple of the region. These days, rice, bread, potatoes, yams or eddo are often served, but a meal is not complete without cassava in some form.
What is Cassava?
Cassava is a perennial plant which originated in South America. The tuberous root is rich in starch and is a valuable staple around the world. It grows especially well in poor soils and is tolerant to drought. In its native South America, both the bitter and sweet varieties are cultivated for consumption. The sweet types can be treated as you would a potato: boil it, fry it, roast it or mash it and it will come out OK. The bitter type, on the other hand, contains toxic levels of cyanide that must be removed before the cassava is eaten.
Every Rupununi household has a small farm, usually in the forest, usually under rotational cultivation. The primary crop in almost every one of these farms is bitter cassava. This cassava is harvested and immediately processed at home in a fashion that has changed very little since agriculture was first taken up by Indigenous people of the Amazonian region.
Cassava Processing
It is worthwhile spending one day of your life working with cassava, as generations and generations of people have done before. The tools and techniques have changed little, though often a small motor is now used to assist the household with the laborious chore of grating.
After the tuber is scraped to remove the papery skin, washed and grated to a creamy pulp, it must be squeezed to extract the cyanide-rich liquid. For this important job, a most beautiful tool called a matapee is used. The matapee is made from the stripped stem of a forest shoot, intricately and precisely plaited to create a long tube, usually over 6 feet long and about a foot and half wide when stretched.
The matapee is pulled open and the cassava pulp pushed inside. It is lifted up onto a beam and as the weight of the cassava pulls it down, it stretches and becomes thinner, squeezing along the entire length of the long tube. As it squeezes, the watery juice of the cassava flows out and is collected in a large basin resting underneath.
Farine
To make farine, a dry yellow cous-cous like product, it must be mixed with fermented cassava that has been treated in the same way. The mixture is then passed through an attractive plaited sifter to remove lumps and stringy fibers.
At this point someone will have got a wood fire going under a gigantic metal pan. When it reaches the critical temperature a thin sliver of cow fat is spread over to lubricate the pan. The cassava meal is thrown inside and furiously worked at by one, two or three women (usually) with carved wooden paddles. The meal is turned, tossed and thrown around the pan for hours, until it reaches a crispy consistency, perfectly dry and perfectly yellow.
Cassava Bread
If you are making cassava bread, then you will use a white bitter cassava variety. Colour is important, as is texture and taste. After squeezing, the white cassava is spread on the farine pan in a thick circular cake, commonly 3 foot in diameter. Skill is required to face the heated pan and flip the cake in one piece. Once baked, the cakes are thrown onto the house roof to dry out in the sun.
Kari
Yet another product is made from the bitter cassava meal, in an even more involved way: parikari – a fermented cassava ‘beer’. Every village or family has a variation to boast about, but in essence, it is produced by fermenting thick cakes of cassava bread. The cassava bread is usually blackened on the farine pan first, and then many layers are placed on prepared banana (or some other) leaf on the floor. Between the layers is sprinkled the magic ingredient – a fermenting agent made from roasted, ground and otherwise prepared leaves of a special plant. The whole ensemble, now big enough to take up a large corner of the kitchen, is wrapped up in more leaves and left for 3 days. By the end of these three days, a thick growth of sweet silver fungus will have formed over the cassava cakes. This is a good sign. The cassava, fungus and all, is now placed in a barrel, bucket or drum to continue its fermentation.
When the desired level of alcohol is reached (for when fresh, the brew is mild and sweet and is drunk as a sort of energy drink by the whole family, but when strong it can knock out the most hardened party-goer), the cassava is mixed with water until it becomes a lumpy liquid. Wapichan custom is to strain it through a fine cloth to make a smooth liquid. Finally, this is handed out in bowls traditionally made of calabash gourds. The party continues until the kari is finished.
Tapioca and Casereep
But we are not yet finished with the fascinating uses of this versatile root. Remember the cyanide-rich cassava water that was squeezed from the grated cassava? This is not wasted. When left for a few hours, the starch will settle at the bottom of the basin. The liquid can be poured off and the starch is washed to remove any last trace of poison. It then undergoes a parching process similar to that of farine, producing the white bubbly granules known by most of us as tapioca.
What of the liquid? That is boiled and boiled for many hours over a hot fire until it is as black and thick as warm marmite. This now is casereep. This now is casereep. Casereep is a cooking ingredient that should be as ubiquitous as soy sauce. It is a flavour, a colour and a preservative. It is sweet, bitter, rich and dark. It makes everything taste better. It is the foundational ingredient for pepperpot and tumapot, and if you take some of it home you will be adding it to stews, bolognaise and steak-and-kidney pies.
In Katoonarib village you can spend a day working on cassava with the family. Try cassava bread with a traditional meal, and sample some local drinks. Find out more here.
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