Zom leaves (nzom)
Also called: zom, légume zom, zom vegetable, sauce zom
Zom, also written nzom, is a leafy green eaten widely in Cameroon's Centre region, in Beti country. The dark green leaves have a clean, slightly bitter taste that mellows with long cooking. They are shredded finely and slow-cooked with groundnut paste or palm nuts.
The best known dish is sanga, where zom cooks with fresh corn and palm nut juice. It is also simply sautéed with onion and oil and served with plantain, cassava sticks or rice. Lumo has two recipes that use it: sanga and sautéed nzom greens.
At the market, choose bunches with fresh, firm leaves and no yellow patches. Strip the leaves from the stems, wash them several times in plenty of water to get rid of grit, then shred them. Many cooks blanch the leaves and squeeze them out before the main cooking to take the edge off the bitterness. Fresh zom keeps a day or two in the fridge. Blanched and squeezed, it freezes well. Abroad, look in the freezer at African grocers, where it is often sold already shredded. There is no true substitute. Spinach will give you a similar dish, but you lose the bitterness that makes zom what it is.
Recipes with this ingredient
- Fried vegetables (Nzom) Centre · 35 min
A quick, colourful Cameroonian sautéed-greens dish: zom (nzom) leaves blanched to stay bright, then tossed with onion, tomato, garlic and crayfish.
- Sanga Centre · 1 hr 10 min
A Centre-region dish of fresh maize and nzom leaves cooked in palm-nut juice, lightly sweetened.