Stirred Fry Cassava Leaves with Anchovies

I love Cassava leaves. It has rough texture and good for your digestion. Alas, it's not that easy to find if you don't live in Indonesia. From my last trip back home, I manage to bring back 400gr (that's quite a lot, but leaves shrink when they're cooked) of Cassava leaves and I still currently have some in my freezer (yes, I froze them so that they can last for a very long time until I have the mood to have them again). 

There are not much variety of dishes that you can whip out of these leaves. Typical dishes that I know are (pics are in order): 

1. Pecel (boiled and mixed with peanut sauce and other boiled veggies)

2. Tumis (stir-fry with coconut milk gravy, the one below has silver fish added in)

3. Urap (boiled and mixed with finely shredded seasoned coconut mix and sometimes also mixed with other veggies). This is my ultimate cassava leaves favorite but the most troublesome to make and sadly I didn't manage to eat this during my last trip so no pics, but if you google urap, you'll get the idea.

So, as you can see, most of the dishes involves either peanut sauce or coconut. I'm OK with shredded coconut (so long it's not sweet) but I'm not super fancy of the coconut milk, so what should I do?

Well, you just need to make it slightly bit more Chinese style LOL. It still has the cassava leaves texture and definitely healthier with 0 coconut milk, and most definitely easier to do as well.

What you need are:

100 gr Cassava leaves

50 gr Anchovies

5 cloves garlic (like pasta, to me, the more garlic, the merrier)

1 red chili - thinly sliced (if you don't like spicy, you can seed them)

Seasoning: salt and pepper

How to:

1. I don't like salty anchovies. So it's to your preference. You can skip this step if you'd like to. Boil anchovies for about 5-7 minutes. Strain them.

2. Using the same pot, boil cassava leaves for 1-2 minutes. Strain and pour cold water in or you can use ice bath (blanche). Once cold, squeeze out the water or pad dry with towel paper and cut to 2cm length or to your liking.

3. On the wok, saute garlic and red chili until fragrant and add on anchovies and the Cassava leaves.

4. Add salt and pepper if you still feel it tastes bland.

Tips:

1. How do you freeze the cassava leaves? It's easy. You just need to make sure it's clean and dry. I portion the leaves into 100gr batches put in the plastic bags (clean ones) and freeze them. It's almost the same technique on how you'd store your herbs.

Enjoy!