Thread:Vois nice/@comment-22439-20151023130911/@comment-27110032-20151025110544

thank you. i hope you find it all useful. i dont know how to edit here, but from time to time i can leave extra notes and links to photos on comments that editors can use if they wish. it was important to point out to everyone that fresh (manioc) cassava tubers and fresh cassava leaves require some special handling before cooking due to the cyanide content. this applies to ALL recipes no matter which country, that instruct to include fresh cassava leaves or fresh tubers. there are a number of recipes already on wikia.apart from the green leaves, so there would be a lot of edits - maybe add short caution note to all these recipes to refer to a longer explanation or specify using commerically processed cassava leaves/tubers. in africa, cassava starch and mashed tubers always have gone through a several day rinsing or sun-drying before being used for the final meal preparation. african households are very organized for this with cassava always being rinsed or dried everyday for this so there is always a batch that is ready while other batches soak or sun dry so it is no big deal. a lot of  women make cash income doing all this initial  work then selling the cassava cooked or ready to cook for recipes  - but this should be noted to clarify that a recipe expects to use pre-processed, NOT fresh cassava ingredients. for cooks who don't know about all this, it makes the recipes actually unsafe if they use fresh cassava leaves thinking they are no different than spinach or other greens. it is poisonous and always requires pre-processing work to be edible. also, standard instructions in the numbers and time needed for soaks and rinses do vary by region. one simply follows the procedures that are common in one's location. do not expect that what one learned in a Senegal or Mali kitchen for cassava rinsing procedures will be appropriate in a Ghana or Gabon or Congo kitchen. the central africa cassava variety is more toxic and requires more soaking and rinsing. also boiling versus frying will also have an effect on how much toxin remains in the finished dish, so that will also account for variations in how cassava is prepped for a particular recipe. this is just a very general resume to allow editors to assess better whether any recipe that states to use either fresh cassava leaves or tubers needs clarifications.

i linked to wikimedia commons for the photos. if wikia does not use those, please advise me here ( I will look here a in few days ) thank you :)