Kam Mek Wi It: Part 2 - Fats Timbo Cooks Cassava Leaves with Maria Bradford

[Music] hi we're moving to your favorite so when you said Cav I'm like yeah true Sal yes this is the national dish it is of Soo absolutely and I understand why that is because it's amazing it's sweet a fine a nice because honestly I don't know who doesn't like I seriously I've never met aan that doesn't like cassava Lea cuz Cav Leaf is just that food hug isn't it it's like once you finish it it's almost like having a blanket covering you when you're eatting it it's just super super delicious and I'm doing some using some goat meat and we've got the cassava lifa hair so this is Yuka cassava it's this green leaf over there here that turns into this deliciousness that you're not going to understand it's hard to explain I've got some beef stuck in here some beef and Bone and then you just kind of ask your butcher good suppliers so I've got a good Butcher and I get a lot of Bones if I'm not giving it to the dog I'm making stuck with it so the first thing we put in it is the Cava loose it's going in the beef St I'm going I can't believe this is my first time ever making it eat I've eaten it so many times but when my mom's cooking I just try not to get in her way because we'll call cooking is a serious business it so and now I'm putting that goat meat in here I'm missing one very very important ingredient for Cav which is the UGI traditional dish like plas it's not plas without Airi it does the same thing as M does um in Japanese food it's that Umami that richness the reason why you don't when you eating katav if you just want to continue eating it that food hug it's the augui this is what UI looks like like you know you just get the fermented flavor rather than a stinky flavor you know in C we would have used like the wooden yes M and pesel put my back into it going to add a little bit of salt to it when they ferment the UGI they add salt which gives it flavor that is just to help me crush it quite nicely cuz the salt that they add once they fermented and smoke it there's two things it kills all the bacterials like saying that's enough we've had enough of you now fermenting the sesame seed and then the second reason why they use it is also to add flavor but whilst I'm doing this I want to ask you some questions about main character energy bad be it's confidence isn't it right because sometimes you know we have this thing like I have it I doubt myself in situations where you you're thinking oh my God am I good enough am I doing the best thing blah blah blah plus so I'm really looking forward to diving into this so for you to tell me a little bit more about main character so I wrote this book because when I was feeling low and depressed about life and my situation being of someone that has dwarfism and not being around people that does have it it kind of made me feel very alone and insecure and low and I had really really low self-esteem I looked to self-help books to try help me find some guidance and reading the book The Secret by Ronda Burns really helps me manifest that inner bad be that I was looking for and wanted to be in life so I unlocked that through um doing things out of my comfort zone like modeling then when I did modeling posting it on social media and seeing how The Snowball Effect happened after that really boosted my confidence because I realized if I do things out of my comfort zone that I would usually be scared of then there's so many possibilities that I'm unlocking for myself when that happened during social media and realizing that I could build a community I realized I can go on TV as well there's so many things that I realized I could do I just wanted to share that with so many people that feel stuck feel alone feel like they're not good enough and doubt themselves um by sharing my story and sharing the things that I've gone through in my life for somebody like me you know leaving my job and starting something new I definitely need that bad B Energy because um sometimes you just feel like you know have I done the right thing it's what I'm doing good enough and that's so you you you kind of almost need like a a little boost there to tell you that you know you're fine you're doing okay and keep going and that so it's really good it's really really good and you've done like modling as well yes I've done modeling wow I've been on F yeah I know I was shocked that was my first time modeling as well in my underwear I thought to myself well I'm here now I can't escape let's see what happens what's the worst that can happen and I ended up getting how many likes on Instagram I was like okay I'll keep you in in my underwe yeah exactly that's that's amazing it was like a shock to me that people liked what I did and you know they social media is just such a m a fantastic energy whenever I see you dancing like in my head I'm the best dancer cuz when I'm sitting on a sofa doing my thing I'm thinking oh yeah you're so good Maria but then I sat dancing I'm like nah it's not it's not that good yeah we all have our strengths okay mine is obviously cooking your yours is cooking mine isn't cooking I love dancing and we all have to embrace it somehow yeah and I love how you embrace your cooking by doing a cookbook that's how you embrace your main character energy because you're like I want to do something that's out of my comfort zone I don't know if people are going to buy it I don't know if people are going to like it but I'm going to do it anyway the cab is in here and I've added that Airi to it and it's got the meat as well so I'm going to put the how long does it need to take to boil so it's going to boil until that Cava Leaf turns dark green like a combat green I I know what kind of green once he goes to that comeback green and then the meat suff as well you know that okay you're on the right track with the Cav then you start adding other bits to it I can't believe I'm making yes I was going to ask you about your greatest achievements to date and I'm sure it's not doing onions um it might be at this point my one probably has to be winning women creator of the Year award this year and actually actually received it last month and you know it's very fresh in my mind that I can't believe I won this still like shocked about it because I feel like I've got impostor syndrome where I think oh but someone else deserves it more than me they did this they did that what did I do you know cuz what I do I just do it you know I I do it for fun I I you enjoy it I enjoy it so much and you almost feel like getting an award for something that you enjoy it's like oh my god what the exactly check you out getting old cheffrey look at you doing all the patterns before you I know where did you learn that maybe golden R I'm joking before my mother I'm getting a bit emotional it's not because of the onions because of I'm joking I'm joking so uh one of my is to be unexpected okay I have a condition called a contra pla which causes the me to be short okay and every time I walk into a room I'm always looked at because no one ever expects me so um I always advise people standing out it's not a bad thing no it's always a good thing because people see you yeah everyone wants to be seen but they don't want to stand out yeah and I think it's so important to stand out for the right reasons oh absolutely and stand out because you want to shine I also encourage people to love themselves so one one of the chapters is called love you love you okay and this is where I talk about you know how it was hard for me to find love I look so emotional right now because the onions it's the onion do you want me to take over up no no I can prove I can do this I can do this I can do this you know what I'm going to let you do it I've done yeah you've done one actually to be honest you've done your best so let me take over let me just stand let me stand here look pretty let me stand there look pretty okay anyway this just feels like you've been talking about Alan when is he coming back continuing on my from that question so uh loving you so when I met Alan I was in a place of I've had enough of these trash men M I want to be loved when I did meet him I had a criteria and he met all of it for me that's good and you know meeting someone that has a disability as well loves to dance loves to be behind the camera I was just like I am winning this is what happens when you're patient because before that I would allow men to ftiz me mhm I never met someone that actually liked me they it was mainly because oh I was a bucketless oh wow girl you know so that frustrated me at one point I didn't think I'd ever even find love so yeah sounds amazing he is seriously he he's a lovely man I'm but Lely man I'm not going to lie everyone needs an Alan in their life yes that's it everyone needs an Alan in their life he's just so kind and and that name as well Alan Alan sounds solid yeah it is it is very solid when I'm calling it I'm like Alan it's all right babe what you want are you all right got a idea I got a video all right what is it oh I love your chopping skills isn't cute C me thousands to lenda really yeah culinary school go like that how did you and Ben me we met a uni we've been married for 19 years so next year be nearly nearly 20 years we've got an 18-year-old it makes me feel old isn't it I don't feel like seriously feel like how did I have an 18-y old and then we've got Chase um he's nine um so Chase is um autistic we we found out when he was um two what were the signs he had speech delay I think because I've had a child before it it was very noticeable that he was a little bit different from Charlie he wasn't talking and um he was he was in babbling or anything like um you get like toddlers do so that got me a big concern and I got him to a hospital and they were like no you know um boys develop a little bit later right but I'm like I know boys develop a little bit later but he's not doing what he's supposed to do um we were refered nothing happened and then we just thought you know what we need to go out and find out what's happening and we were told he's um he's is autistic I accepted it or we accepted it much quicker than everybody else cuz everybody else when you say especially in the seran community when you say your child is autistic it feels like you just said the worst thing ever yeah and they just instantly they start thinking you know thinking you're saying something horrible about your own child just the way exactly just his the way his brain works um and that's that's just it um he's got an amazing memory I feel like he was like sent to us to teach us lessons cuz he he's very very gentle um he's very very friendly especially once he gets to know know know you he's very protective of Charlie as well so these days we can't tell Charlie of seriously it's annoying cuz the minute you start telling Charlie of CH feels like you're telling him off oh okay yeah he doesn't like it doesn't like it at all when I did a show called Don't Look Down paty mcginness has three autistic children three yeah wow all his children it's a lot for him you know at one point he had to leave filming because he couldn't find a babysitter and he in a way where you can't just find a random one it has to be him yeah or his wife yes absolutely so and quite a lots of time people don't understand that do they and I can't just take Chase everywhere cuz sound he doesn't like loud noise personal space um is very important to him should be important to all of us but it's extremely important to him you can't just go to him like he's not a child that you could just you know becomes quite friendly easily he needs to really know you and trust you and then he can open up being different is something that we need to obviously talk about a lot more in our community because um we have a community where people don't respect differences isn't it and it's still so t once you get to understanding then you realize there's nothing to be scared of like I'm not scared that chase is autistic because I know that the way he's brain works is different from mine but I there's a lot of things that I could learn from him as well and there's you know there's a lot of things as parents out he's teaching us on a daily basis so we're here for the ride basically you know um yeah and it's about teaching telling people that or teaching people that no he's fine I'm not sad that he's autistic um um at all you know um and then celebrating those differences and making people understand that it's okay it's okay to be different it's okay it's absolutely okay we shouldn't all be the same thing anyway we all the same would be so boring life would be boring isn't it imagine seriously peel this off here that smoke fish and that ogiri when it's added together it's just it gives you a flavor that you flavor explosion flavor explosion you can replicate that flavor delish very very delish you can buy this from C fresh where she's done this already so if you're somebody who is not experienced with smoked fish like you or anyone else she would have done this already it's quite an important part of this dish the smoke fish but I have to say there are times when I don't have smoked fish where I will get filleted um fish from my fish Monga and I just steam it and then add it at the very very end of my does the same effect similar effect not necessarily it won't have the Smokey flavor but it'll still give it like a fish flavor what made you fall in love with cooking cooking has always been something that I was always drawn to it I think because um to me it just means this togetherness as well I talk a lot in the book about commensality which is cooking together and eating together um last year when we were doing location shoots especially did strock me how how much have missed it like just the're cooking together and eating together especially weekends what used to happen it's like breakfast used to be all cooked and put on a big platter with my siblings and everyone and we just eat together this has been boiling for about an hour now so that meat should be nice and tender the casava leaf is cooked and we've got that dark green color which is what we looking for so we're going to add some peanut butter this is unsalted so natural no sugar No Nonsense added to it but this way what it does it allows you to add your own salt especially because we've had a beef stock which is as it boils down it reduces it gets more flavor I'm going to add all of this on it yes all of that we want it spicy we want it spicy so I've added all of that just going to make sure that that's mixed in really well I'm just going to leave that to boil for a bit these are all things that don't take that long to cook cuz that's been smoked and cooked onions doesn't take long this is how already cooked that is just coconut oil dried o yeah so that brings it all together this is the moment where the Cava lives kind of start having personality yes like you start having attitude and going everywhere and then you know okay my Cav if is on points you know we're getting there so our Cava leaf and um looks so good peanut butter has been cooking for about 10 10 15 minutes so we're going to add our smoked fish in So at the bottom there we have what's known as Bunga there's a whole song about it that's how much we love it K me around the water side yep then we had our butter beans it's already cooked which is already cooked butter beans has this sweet flavor so L I love biting all this richness yeah it's very nice we have a coconuts oil then we add our onions and then we just mix it all in let this cook for 10 minutes ta this looks delicious saki Tumo that's what they call it mday everything is kind of come together now it looks delicious just mix it it's got all that cerative goodness in there I can't wait to eat it dried Acra bits we're just going to sprinkle a little bit of that on we'll do about three teaspoon of that and then we give it a little bit of stir the dried orry purpose is um it's almost like a thickener um and gives it that a taste that you I don't know how to describe that that togetherness that we we're after tiny bit more and what you you see it's like it's not oily greasy it's not oily oily we want the coconut oil flavor but we don't want it greasy or anything like that that's it I just say the smoke you can use fresh okra as well but if you're using fresh ocra you have to grate it let's taste it do you want to do the salon tasting or yes I want to do the Sal you want to do the salon tasting all right no we put it on our hand and lick it it's just the thing it's just the thing it's it's a thing it's it's a thing right M should we do it I love the fish taste it's very nice can you taste the fish taste and the coconut can you taste coconut flavor and a chili it's not as hot not too hot but there's more chili whole chilies in there so what you can do is like you can smash it if you want more heat that's it this is this is some goodness some good try oh you like chili so I'm going to put a bit of chili on little bit of this on top so it looks a bit ooh this looks juicy oh I can see you went for butter beans look butter beans M that's good I just feel like I'm at home I feel really inspired because you've placed all these seron recipes in your book now I feel like I'm able to make these kind of dishes and make my mom proud make everyone proud like cuz before I'll just let my mom do it but my mom's not going to be around forever so you've placed it all in a book where we can all learn how to make these dishes and the stories behind it as well what page is it page 139 amazing and um get the feels that Fat's getting right now please it's delightful it's delightful yeah so there you go don't have to be cinan you just have to love food if you love food you love comfort food you love food that gives you a hug check out my book and check out Cav Lea on page 139 and cook your deliciousness at home I agree sorry [Music] sorry