Trinidad Saheena Recipe (Chip Up Saheena Dasheen Bush Leaves) - We Trini Food (2024)

Saheena is a popular Indian street food in Trinidad and Tobago that is made with spinach leaves, split peas powder, and fresh seasonings. It is often served with seasoned chickpeas (channa) or chutney like tamarind, pommecythere, or mango.

Its origins is likely from India’s palak pakora (where palak means spinach and pakora means fritter). But, unlike the Indian version, the spinach used in saheena is usually young taro or dasheen leaves.

What is in this saheena recipe

For this recipe, I used:

• young dasheen (taro) leaves
• lime juice
• split peas (dhal) powder
• chickpea (channa) flour
• all purpose flour
• baking powder
• yeast
• turmeric powder
• onion
• garlic
• chadon beni leaves
• chive
• salt
• pepper
• water
• oil

If you are not in the Caribbean, you can find dasheen (taro) and chadon beni leaves in Caribbean and Asian supermarkets or in areas with a large Caribbean population.

As a substitute to dasheen leaves, you can use regular spinach, baby spinach and even kale. Cilantro can also be used in place of chadon beni, but cilantro has a much milder flavor.

The chickpea (channa) flour here is optional but it certainly adds a nice, nutty flavor to the saheena. If you don’t have chickpea flour on hand then use the equivalent amount of split peas powder.

A look at dasheen (taro) leaves

Here’s a young dasheen leaf:

Dasheen plants contain calcium oxalate, a compound that can cause sores, numbness, and kidney stones. In high doses, the compound can be fatal.

However, if the compound is heated sufficiently, it will break down and be safe to eat. That being said, if you do have kidney problems or you are sensitive to foods containing oxalates, it will be best to limit your exposure to dasheen.

The scratchiness that you may feel when preparing the dasheen leaves or eating dasheen bhagi is due to the calcium oxalate.

Besides cooking, citrus juice is often used locally to reduce the itching or scratchiness of the dasheen leaves.

Oh and cooked dasheen leaves contain adequate levels of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, folate, potassium, calcium and iron.

Dasheen leaves are the main ingredient in Trini callaloo. Find my vegetarian Trini callaloo recipe here.

How to make saheena

To make saheena, the dasheen leaves are prepared and finely chopped. Citrus juice is thoroughly mixed with the leaves. Then, the other ingredients are added and kneaded to form a slightly sticky dough. The dough is left to rest after which it is divided and shaped into small patties. These patties or fritters are deep fried and served hot with your choice of chutneys, channa (chickpeas) or other condiments.

Let’s get into the details.

Prepare the dasheen leaves

The leaves used in this recipe are from my mother-in-law’s kitchen garden.

Step 1: Typically, the tip of the leaf, the stem, and the small area where the stem attaches to the leaf are removed. Older folks say removing these areas stop the ‘scratchiness’ of the leaves. Maybe the calcium oxalate accumulates there? I haven’t been able to find any research on why these areas are removed… But, I still remove them.

Here’s a photo of the cut areas. This should be done for all the leaves.

Step 2: Next, wash the leaves thoroughly. Then, place the leaves one on top of the other and roll tightly. Cut the leaves into a fine chiffonade (thin strips), the thinner the better.

I cut into thin strips even further to create tiny pieces of the taro leaves. The small pieces will cook faster when deep frying and I won’t have to worry about the calcium oxalate. Cutting the leaves this way makes this saheena recipe the chip up or chopped up version.

Step 3: Place the cut leaves in a bowl and squeeze the lime juice all over. Be sure to catch all the seeds – you wouldn’t want to bite into a lime seed when eating your saheena.

Step 4: Mix the lime juice and dasheen pieces thoroughly.You can add water and squeeze the leaves before straining and using. Or you can blanch the leaves with hot water.

I don’t do either – I leave the juice in and I don’t precook the leaves because of how finely chopped they are. But, feel free to do the method you prefer. The point of these steps are to prevent the ‘scratchiness’ of the leaves.

Once the lime juice and leaves are mixed, it’s time to add the other ingredients.

Add the other ingredients

Step 5: Take a look at what I used in this recipe. You’ll see the chopped chadon beni, chives, pepper, onions and minced garlic on the saucer. And, in the bowl, there is the split peas (dhal) powder, turmeric, all purpose flour, baking powder, salt, yeast, and chickpea (channa) flour.

You can mix the dry ingredients separately before adding to the leaves, but it really isn’t necessary.

Also, I recommend that you grate or chop the onions finer than I did. My saheena had small chunks of onion which I enjoy, but it isn’t for everyone.

Step 6: Mix everything in the bowl together thoroughly.

Knead and leave to raise

Step 7: Add half of the water and squeeze into the ingredients. The split peas and chickpea flour are very absorbent so you will want to incorporate some of the water before adding the rest slowly.

Knead with a little added water at a time until you create a fairly soft, sticky dough. The dough cannot be too soft as it must be able to hold its own shape to make the saheena.I used exactly 300 mL of water but it may be a bit different for you. If your dough is overly sticky or too soft, add a little all purpose flour at a time and knead.

Here’s a look at my dough. You can see the onion chunks in there.

Step 8: Leave the dough for an hour or so to raise. That’s a perfect time to make the other fried delicacies or your favorite chutney. After an hour, the dough should be almost double in size and have lots of air pockets in it.

Form the saheena and fry

Step 9: Place a large pot on low to medium heat. Allow it to heat up before adding enough oil for deep frying the spinach fritters. This can take about five to ten minutes.

To form the saheena, you can either use water or oil to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands.

Step 10: Here, my mom used water to demonstrate. She dipped her fingertips in water and remove about a two inch ball of dough. She flattened the dough between her fingers (not palms) to form a two- to three-inch patty.

Step 11: Then, holding the patty with her fingertips (which were relatively dry at this point), she gently placed the saheena in the hot oil.

As long as there are no drops of water on your fingers or the saheena, the oil will not sputter and burn you. But, you should still be very careful.

Step 12: Repeat the dipping of the fingers before removing more dough, flattening and adding more saheena to the oil.

If you are worried about getting burned, then apply oil to your hands and remove, flatten and add to the oil in the same way.

Step 13: The saheena will sink to the bottom of the pot in the beginning. But, as it cooks, it will float to the surface. When it starts to float, you can flip over to ensure even cooking. Continue flipping until it develops a nice golden brown to brown color. A fairly thin saheena will have a cook time of about five minutes.

Thicker saheenas will take longer to cook.

If your oil is too hot, the saheena will brown too quickly on the outside and will not be fully cooked on the inside. And, remember, you want the dasheen leaves to be properly cooked so regulating the temperature and checking your first one or two saheenas will help you gauge how long your cook time should be.

I went a little overboard on the frying time here to make sure it was fully cooked. I am one of those sensitive to oxalate containing foods, so I wanted to ensure it was very well done. My saheenas were a little extra brown (see the top of the photo), but they were certainly delicious. You can taste the difference the channa (chickpea) flour makes in the saheena. It’s so good!

Here’s a look at the insides with some tamarind sauce on the side.

Serve the saheena hot with your choice of condiments – either doubles channa, mango chutney, pommecythere chutney or even tamarind chutney.

More Indian delicacies

Tasty saheena recipe with chopped leaves

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