Casabe

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg bitter cassava, peeled
• 1 tsp salt — optional

Method

1. Peel and grate the cassava

   Strip the bark-like skin and the pink underlayer from the roots, cut out the woody core, and grate the flesh to a wet pulp. Leave any part of the pink layer on and the finished round tastes bitter and grey; the core never softens and shows up as splinters in the bread.

2. Press out every drop of juice

   Wring the pulp in a cloth, or load it into a sebucán, and squeeze until the liquid stops running and the mash is crumbly. This juice is yare and it carries the cyanogenic compounds of bitter cassava, so the pressing is not a texture step but the safety step — and it must be discarded, never used.

   30 min

3. Sift the meal fine

   Push the pressed mash through a coarse sieve so it falls as loose, snow-like crumbs, salting it lightly if you like. Lumps do not break down on the griddle: they stay as damp beads that keep the round from knitting into one sheet.

4. Heat the griddle dry

   Bring a flat cast-iron griddle or a comal to a steady medium heat with no oil at all. Casabe is unleavened and fatless — the starch fuses on contact with dry metal, and a greased surface simply fries the crumbs loose instead of welding them.

5. Form the round on the heat

   Scatter the meal inside a ring or a drawn circle about 20 cm across and 5 mm deep, pressing lightly with a spatula to level it. Press hard and you compact it into a dense disc that stays chewy in the middle; the meal should look barely settled, not packed.

6. Bake both sides and dry it out

   Cook about five minutes until the edges lift and the round holds together, flip it and give it the same on the other side, then leave the finished rounds in the sun or a low oven until they snap cleanly. Casabe keeps for weeks only because it is bone dry; stack them warm and the trapped steam softens them into cardboard overnight.

   10 min