Palaver Sauce

palaver sauce also called plassas (Sierra Leone), ban flo (Ghana), and palm oil chop, a dish which is widespread in W. Africa. It is based on large quantities of green leaves (‘spinach’), including bitterleaf, and usually contains small amounts of meat and/or offal together with dried fish and shellfish. Often the thickening is of egusi seeds (see watermelon). It also contains what seems to the uninitiated like a very large amount of palm oil.

The name is thought to derive from the Portuguese palavra (‘word’).