Checked Rice with Palm Oil Stew and Fish Balls

Checked Rice with Palm Oil Stew and Fish Balls

 Hello NCC Readers, hope you all had a lovely weekend and made most of your bank holiday. Sorry I missed you guys last week I was away. I am back now and will continue with my weekly blog. This weekend, I cooked Checked Rice with Palm Oil Stew and Fish Balls. This is a very common dish in Sierra Leone. The stew can be cooked in two different ways with or without peanut butter. The most popular one is without peanut butter. I like peanut butter in mine so I added it this time. The checked rice is made with crain crain. This is a leafy vegetable from the okra family. It gives the rice a slight slimy consistency and beautiful colour effect. When eaten with the stew it’s a match made in heaven. The Palm Oil Stew can also be eaten with plain rice if you do not fancy the slimy consistency. I hope you enjoy reading and hopefully try out the recipe. Aprons on!!!

Ingredients

  

Ingredients 

1. A cup of rice
2. 1 bunch of crain crain leaves
3. 1 kg herring
4. Peanut Butter
5. 500 ml Palm Oil for frying and cooking stew
6. 6 medium sized onions
7. 4 Scotch pepper
8. 4 Fresh or chopped tomato
9. 2 bell peppers
10. 1 medium size garden egg
11. Maggie Seasoning 

 Cooking Instructions

Fish Balls
1.      Clean, debone and season fish overnight if you can.

Cleaned herring

2.      Blend 2 small onions and 1 scotch pepper. If you have a medium size mortar and pestle pound fish to mash and mix with blended pepper and onions and a table spoon of peanut butter.

deboned and seasoned fish

3.     Use blender to mash fish if you do not have mortar and pestle at your disposal.

mashed fish mixture

4.      Then roll the fish mash into small balls, deep-fry them with palm oil and put them aside. 

Fish ball deep frying

Checked Rice

Checked Rice

    1.            Pluck the leaves of the crain crain from the petiole (leaf stalk).

      2.            Wash and chop the crain crain finely. Not too fine but medium and put aside.

         3.            Bring 500 ml of water to boil.

           4.            Wash Rice and add to boiling water.

              5.            After the rice has boiled and almost all the water evaporated, turn the heat down to finish the cooking by steam.

               6.            Add crain crain onto the steaming rice, cover the pot, and allow the crain crain to cook by steam.

7.            You do not want the leaves to be over cooked therefore, leave the pot to steam for about 5 min or until the leaves look slightly brown. 

Stew

Palm Oil Stew with Fish Balls

1.      Slice onions and chop bell peppers, tomatoes and garden eggs into cubes.

     2.      Blend one onion with scotch peppers

     3.   Pour the palm oil you used to fry the fish ball about 150 ml of it into saucepan and reheat until Smoky.

    4.      Once oil is heated, fry chopped onions, bell peppers tomatoes and garden eggs.

    5.      Add bits of the blended pepper and onions into the stew whilst the above is cooking.

    6.      Mix 2 tablespoons of peanut butter with 100 ml water and add to stew with salt and seasoning.

    7.      Leave stew to cook on low heat until all the water from the stew has evaporated then. Finally the dish is now ready for serving.

 Voilà! Aprons off dish done! 

Checked Rice with Palm Oil Stew and Fish Balls