Recettes

Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes cooked until tender, then mashed with warm butter and milk. No country is claimed, it is a European staple that has travelled everywhere, most associated in Britain with bangers and mash. The one thing the recipe does that matters is warming the butter and milk together before they go in. Cold dairy into hot potato drops the temperature and makes the mash claggy; warm dairy is absorbed smoothly. It is a small step that nobody does and everybody should. The other decision is the tool, and it determines the result. A hand masher leaves texture and works quickly. A ricer or food mill gives the smoothest possible mash by pushing the potato through small holes without working it. An electric mixer or food processor is the one to avoid: over-beating ruptures the starch cells and releases enough starch to turn mashed potato genuinely gluey, and there is no recovering from it. The source's explanation of mashed versus smashed potatoes contradicts itself between paragraphs, it defines smashed as roughly mashed, then describes mashed as the chunkier of the two. The distinction generally drawn is that smashed potatoes are left rough and lumpy, often with the skins on, while mashed are worked smooth.

40 minEasy

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Yorkshire Pudding

A batter of eggs, flour, milk and water poured into smoking hot fat and baked until it quadruples in volume. It is British, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. It is one of the few dishes where the physics is the recipe. The batter must go into fat that is genuinely smoking hot, the instant heat turns the water in the batter to steam, which inflates the structure before the egg and flour set around it. Fat that is merely hot gives you a flat, greasy disc. Preheating the tin with the fat in it for a full ten minutes is not padding. The overnight rest is the other thing that separates good Yorkshires from adequate ones. Resting lets the flour hydrate fully and the gluten relax, which produces a more dramatic rise. The source says up to three days in the fridge and it is right, the batter genuinely improves. This recipe is unusually precise, giving weights in grams alongside cup measures, which is rare in the archive and welcome. The water alongside the milk is deliberate: water produces more steam than milk, so it rises higher, while the milk gives flavour and colour. Beef dripping is traditional. Lard, shortening and vegetable oil all work. Africa has no equivalent, though popovers and Dutch baby pancakes are relatives.

35 minMediumSouth Africa

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Baked Potato

A whole potato baked in its skin, oiled and salted for a crisp surface, and served with whatever you like on it. There is no country attached to this and none is implied. Russet potatoes are what to use, and the reason is starch. Russets are high-starch, low-moisture potatoes, sometimes sold as baking or mealy potatoes, and that composition is what produces the light, flaky interior a baked potato is judged on. Waxy potatoes hold their moisture and stay dense. Two pieces of advice in the source are worth repeating because they are both right and both commonly ignored. Pierce the potato deeply several times on each side: skipping it can genuinely make a potato burst in the oven. And do not wrap it in foil. Foil traps the moisture inside, which means the potato steams rather than bakes, and steaming gives an entirely different and softer texture with no crisp skin at all. Africa has its own baked and roasted potato and tuber traditions, roasted yam, sweet potato and plantain sold from street braziers across the continent, but a russet baked potato is not one of them.

1 hr 10 minEasy

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Chekhchoukha

Chekhchoukha, also written chakhchoukha, is torn flatbread under a spiced meat and chickpea sauce, and the name describes the tearing. It comes from tacherchert in the Chaouia language, meaning to crumble or to tear into small pieces, and the bread is broken by hand rather than cut. It is a Chaoui dish, from the Aurès mountains of eastern Algeria, and it spread from there into Constantine, Biskra and the rest of the country. Its origin is in shepherds' food, the substantial thing eaten on returning home on cold winter nights, and it kept that character even as it became a dish for festive occasions and celebrations rather than everyday eating. The bread is rougag, also called trid, a very thin round flatbread made from fine semolina. It is torn, steamed briefly to soften, then heaped on a plate and covered with marqa, the sauce of diced lamb, tomato, onion and chickpeas spiced with dried red chilli, caraway, ras el hanout, black pepper and cumin. Two versions are recognised: chakhchoukha of Biskra, which is this one, and chakhchoukha dfar, which uses a different flatbread and differs in taste and thickness. Which pot it is made in also varies, with some cities using clay and others iron.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 10 minMediumAlgeria

Recette de Blessing · Africook