Eating Lablab Leaves

By Sara:

One of the green manure cover crops that we are promoting with farmers is called lablab.  This is a legume and you can eat the seeds just like beans.  The leaves are also edible, but none of the farmers had ever tasted them before.  I learned from our friend Neil, that you can prepare the leaves just like cowpea leaves, which are a common green vegetable in this region.

So, Sam the agriculture field officer of KMDP, Trent, and I met with some of the lead farmers to try it out.  I "taught" them how to cook the lablab leaves.  And when I say taught, I mean encouraged because they already know how to cook cowpea leaves and we did these leaves exactly the same way.  But since I had tried it at home, I was able to attest to the fact that it tasted good and give encouragement that they were doing the right thing as they cooked.  Here are the leaves they picked:

Josephine shelling peanuts for the sauce:

Everyone knows how to cook cowpea leaves.  Sometimes there were a few too many opinions about how to do it!

The final product!

Everyone was impressed that it tasted just like cowpea leaves.  They are especially excited about being able to eat lablab leaves, though, because the plants continue to produce tender leaves throughout most of the year, whereas cowpea leaves can only be harvested for a short time before you have to let the plant go to seed.