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Casabe and Fariña

Casabe / Mañoco

Specialised

⚠ TWO PRODUCTS, NOT ONE, AND NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH CASSAVA FLOUR ELSEWHERE. Both begin with BITTER yuca, which contains cyanogenic glycosides and is poisonous raw. CASABE is a large flat unleavened bread baked on a hot clay or metal griddle from the pressed mass — dry, brittle, keeping for weeks, softened with liquid or eaten with fish. FARIÑA or MAÑOCO is the same mass toasted into a coarse granular meal, eaten sprinkled over everything or stirred into water as a drink. The processing — grating, pressing in a woven tube, sieving, roasting — is an Indigenous technology and is what makes the plant food. ⚠ DESCRIBED, NOT PRESCRIBED: no processing method is given here as an instruction.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

Languages: Ticuna, Murui Huitoto, Cubeo

What is recorded

  • Casabe and fariña/mañoco are recorded as two distinct products of bitter cassava, not as one, and are not treated as equivalent to cassava flour products from other regions. Bitter cassava contains cyanogenic glycosides and is toxic until processed by grating, pressing and roasting. The processing is described as Indigenous technology and is not reproduced as a method. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Amazonian Brazilian Cuisine documented

    Brazilian farinha and Colombian fariña are the same technology under different national names.

  • related to Amazonian Foodways documented

    Bitter-cassava processing into casabe and fariña is a basin-wide Indigenous technology.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.