How to cook traditional vegetables

Mto, susa, akeyo, dek. Four greens the market mostly forgot, and four of the best things you can put on a plate in this country.

The first rule is not to boil them to death. A short blanch, a little water, and they keep both colour and bite. The second rule is fat: groundnut paste, a spoon of cream, or simple oil — these leaves are bitter by design and fat is what carries the bitterness into flavour.

Grace Anyango cuts hers at dusk, when the leaves have stopped losing water, and packs them still cool. Cook them the day they arrive. They are not built to wait.