Recettes

Ghanaian Chale Sauce

This is a blended tomato, onion and chilli sauce in the West African style, cooked down in oil and finished with a spice blend, and it is presented here as it appeared in the source archive. It is used as a dip for fried plantain and grilled meat and as a marinade for chicken or fish. The name needs care. Chale is Ghanaian pidgin, an address between friends roughly equivalent to mate or bro, and it appears in Ghanaian food naming most familiarly in chale wote, the flip flop sandal that gives its name to the Accra street art festival. It is not, on the available record, an established name for a documented Ghanaian sauce, and this may be a contemporary or house name rather than a traditional one. Ghana's documented pepper sauces are shito, the dark fermented sauce of dried fish, prawn and pepper, and the fresh pepper sauces made with tomato, onion and chilli that accompany kelewele and grilled tilapia. This recipe sits closer to the second group, though the nutmeg and curry powder in its spice list are not characteristic of either. It is included as found, and flagged so the naming can be checked before it goes live.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 10 minEasyGhana

Recette de Laila · Africook

Homemade Pilau Masala

Pilau masala is the spice blend behind pilau, the spiced rice of the East African coast, and it is a short list of whole spices rather than a long one. Cumin, black peppercorns, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon are roasted briefly and ground, and that is the whole thing. The blend belongs to the Swahili coast, where centuries of Indian Ocean trade brought spices from South and Southeast Asia into the cooking of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Pilau itself is a relative of the pilaf and pulao found from Persia to India, adapted along the coast into something distinctly East African, and the masala is the point at which that trade history is most visible. Whether to buy it or make it is the practical question. Pre-ground blends are widely sold and perfectly usable, but ground spices lose their volatile oils quickly, and the difference between a jar that has sat on a shelf for a year and spices roasted and ground the same day is not subtle. It requires no grinder: a mortar and pestle does the job, and the roasting step is what makes it worth doing at all, since brief heat opens up the aromatics before they are broken down.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minEasyKenya

Recette de Debby · Africook

Piri Piri Sauce

Bird's eye chillies blended with red pepper, garlic, oregano, bay, lemon and vinegar into a hot sauce. No single country is claimed, and there is a good reason for that. **The source's origin claim is wrong and needs correcting.** It says piri piri originated in the Caribbean. It did not. Chillies as a genus came from the Americas and were carried worldwide by Portuguese and Spanish traders after 1492, but the piri piri chilli itself is what those chillies became after they were planted in Portuguese southern Africa, chiefly Mozambique and Angola, where the small, fiercely hot bird's eye variety developed. The name is Swahili: *pili pili* simply means pepper, doubled for emphasis. That history is why the sauce belongs on this site rather than in a European section. It is a genuinely African product that travelled back to Portugal, not a European one imported into Africa. Its association with Portuguese and South African restaurant chains has obscured that. The source also says the English call it piri piri while the Portuguese call it peri peri. Both spellings are used in both languages; the variation is transliteration, not nationality. The method mentions onion, which appears nowhere in the ingredients.

15 minEasy

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Quick Pizza Sauce

Tinned tomato sauce sweetened with honey and cooked down briefly. No country is claimed; it is a shortcut sauce for homemade pizza. This is the shortest recipe in the entire archive, two ingredients, and it is worth being honest about what that means. The source's own article promises olive oil and garlic; neither appears in the ingredient list or the method. What is actually written is tinned tomato sauce with honey stirred in and simmered for seven minutes. That will make a perfectly serviceable pizza sauce, and it will taste of tinned tomato and honey. The honey is doing a real job, though, and it is worth understanding rather than dismissing. Tinned tomatoes are noticeably acidic, and a small amount of sugar counteracts that acidity rather than making the sauce sweet, the same reason Italian cooks put a pinch of sugar into a long-cooked tomato sauce. Two tablespoons in a tin is more than a pinch, so taste as you go. The seven-minute cook is the other half of it. Tinned tomato sauce is thin, and reducing it slightly gives you something that sits on the dough rather than soaking into it. Olive oil, garlic, oregano and salt would improve it considerably and are all in the source's own description.

15 minEasy

Recette de Sandynanayaa · Africook