(watch the cyanide!)
Just make sure you PEEL IT (most of the cyanoglycosides hide right under the skin), and cook it properly.
I know you are interested in African heritage, so if ever you make cassava-based fufu, don't sit next to the oven sucking the fumes! That's how West African women end up with chronic low-level cyanide poisoning. The kind they like just happens to be the more potent variety; "sweet" cassavas have less. Not sure but I think they might be preparing it for a living, and inhaling the vapors too much too long.
We were making Cassava-cakes one day, and my daughter thought it looked good, so she popped a raw piece in her mouth without thinking about it. Then someone woke up and said, "hey, isn't raw Cassava poisonous?"
Well, I think we over-reacted; it takes about 2 tubers of the more potent kind to kill an adult (the Amerinds in northeastern South America used to commit suicide by eating the stuff raw), but she was near panic and I was worried because I wasn't quite clear on just what the poison was at the time, so she got the ipcac syrup and that took care of that. Never did that again.
Every once in a while you will hear rumors about Cassava poisoning, but they usually turn out to be something else. For example, there was a hysteria in the Philipines when numerous kids got sick and some died eating food from the street vendors. One poor vendor was harassed and threatened, and she insisted that her Cassava was safe. Well, it was. What happened was that an old man got confused and was using bug powder instead of flour in something that he was preparing.
In some countries they eat the leaves. Now, the leaves are more potent than the tubers!! I think they would probably be a highly nutritious green, other than the cyanoglycocide (which turns to cyanide in your stomach acid...). So, those need to be cooked thoroughly, and the cooking fumes need to be avoided.
The tubers are lousy nutrition other than supplying starch--and almost nothing else! Some tribes get Kwashiorkor (protein deficiency) eating too much Cassava. However, there is a reason it is so popular: in countries without refrigeration, it is a staple that keeps in the field even in the tropics. You can harvest it as needed; it doesn't turn woody. And it also happens to be fairly drought-resistant, and tolerant of poor soil.
I had one of its cousins from Argentina in my yard; looks almost identical (apparently they are all closely-related). Beautiful plants with interestingly lobed leaves.
Oh, just for clarification for other readers: it's "Cassava" in some countries, "Tapioca" in some countries (especially when refined down into "pearls"--which doesn't take much processing as it is already close to pure starch), "Manioc" in some countries, and "Yuca" in some countries--but "Yuca" could be something completely different. The swollen bases of Manihot esculenta, which is sort of a bushy tropical shrub/small tree found over much of South America cultivated, feral, and wild.
Just to confuse matters, it is often confused in some countries with Sago aka "Sagu", which is a vaguely similar starch, also often processed down into "pearls", eaten in tropical Asia. Sago comes from the trunk of a type of Palm tree, Metroxylon sagu. However, the plants commonly sold as "Sago Palms" are not actually Palms (they are Cyads, not even vaguely related), and they are not the source of Sago. Sago is softer and mealier than Tapioca. Some of you have probably had a dessert consisting of Sago in coconut milk; it is a fairly common dessert in tropical Asia.
Chaya is a member of the same family and has the same problem with cyanoglycocides, but apparently the concentration is much lower; some people eat the leaves of some types (not all guaranteed to be of the same level of toxicity!) raw. Not recommended. But even so, it appears that fairly quick cooking--about 5 minutes--will do the trick.
