Recettes

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Wasawasa

Wasawasa is made from yam peelings. Not yam, but the skin that most kitchens discard: dried, ground into flour, and steamed into a coarse grain that eats something like couscous. It is a dish that exists because nothing was wasted, and it has outlived the scarcity that produced it to become a food people specifically want. It belongs to Dagbon and the wider north of Ghana, and it is eaten in Burkina Faso and other parts of West Africa under related names. In Tamale and across the northern region it is street food and household food at once, sold with a hot pepper sauce and fried fish and often garnished with cabbage, carrot and sliced potato. The steaming happens twice, with a wash in between, which is the technical heart of the dish and the part that cannot be shortened. The flour is moistened until it forms small lumps, steamed, washed, drained, and steamed again on low heat, and only then is it dressed with groundnut oil and salt. That second steam is what turns it from damp meal into separate grains. It is served with beans, pasta or salad as well as the standard pepper sauce and fish, and it makes a full plate from an ingredient that costs almost nothing.

Les mieux notées

1 hrMediumGhana

Recette de Deborah · Africook

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Usban

Usban is a North African sausage made from the parts of a sheep that a whole animal butchery yields and nothing else does: the stomach, the liver, the lungs and the heart, chopped and mixed with rice, herbs and spices, sewn into pouches and cooked in a sauce. It is eaten in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, and it is written both usban and osban. Its occasion is Eid al-Adha, and the connection is structural rather than customary. The festival involves the sacrifice of an animal and the use of all of it, and usban is what the offal becomes. It cannot be made casually because it requires a quantity of organ meat that only arrives when a whole sheep is broken down at home. Tunisian households make it on the day of Eid despite the considerable labour, and the effort is part of what the dish means. The work is real. The stomach must be scrubbed, blanched, scraped of its lining until it turns white, cut and sewn into pouches by hand with a needle and butcher's twine, then filled and sewn shut. Usban is documented in Tunisian references as far back as the 13th century, and it is held up as a demonstration of skill: proof that a cook can use every part of the sacrifice properly. It is served alongside rice or couscous.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 30 minHardTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Tunisian Couscous

Couscous is the national dish of Tunisia, and it is also the national dish of Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Libya, which tells you something about how the Maghreb understands itself. The same steamed semolina appears across all five countries under names that shift with the language: kousksi in Tunisia, taam or kesksu in Algeria, seksu in Morocco, and cuscusu in Sicily, where it crossed the water. The Tunisian version is distinguished by its heat and its colour. Harissa goes into the broth rather than being offered alongside it, and the finished couscous runs orange to deep red depending on how much broth and harissa it has taken up. Caraway is the other Tunisian signature, appearing in a quantity that Moroccan and Algerian couscous would not use. What goes with it depends on the coast. In Sfax and the other coastal cities, couscous is made with fish. Inland it more often carries lamb, sometimes with dried fruit. Turnip, carrot, courgette, potato, pumpkin and chickpeas are the usual vegetables, cooked in the broth and removed as each becomes ready. The word itself is traced either to the Arabic kaskasa, to pound small, or the Amazigh seksu, meaning rounded or well rolled, and both derivations describe the grain rather than the dish.

Les mieux notées

2 hrMediumTunisia · north african

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Ghana Jollof Rice

Ghanaian jollof rice is defined against its rivals as much as on its own terms, and Ghanaians are entirely comfortable with that. It is a tomato based rice, aromatic rather than fiery, seasoned with curry powder, garlic and ginger, and cooked in basmati. Every one of those choices is a position in an argument. The rice is the clearest one. Ghanaians use basmati, which stays separate and perfumed and carries the aromatics; Nigerians use long grain parboiled, which absorbs the tomato base and takes on the smoke. Neither is a mistake. They produce genuinely different dishes that share a name, and the preference in each country is consistent enough to be a national marker. The jollof rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria is the continent's most famous culinary argument, conducted on social media, at dinner tables and in the press with an intensity that has very little to do with rice and a great deal to do with two confident countries enjoying themselves. The honest position on the origin is that the dish descends from the Senegambian rice tradition rather than from either country. The honest position on which is better is that both are right within their own tradition, and Ghanaians serve theirs at every social gathering and celebration that matters.

Les mieux notées

1 hr 20 minMediumGhana

Recette de Debby · Africook

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