Recettes

West African Banana Fritters (Klako, Krakro)

Klako, also written krakro, is a West African fritter made from mashed ripe plantain, and it is the plantain rather than the banana that matters. Ripe plantain has the sweetness and the starch to hold a fritter together; ordinary banana turns to liquid. The recipe here is savoury, seasoned with ginger, garlic, paprika and cayenne, which is the version most commonly eaten across Côte d'Ivoire, Togo and Ghana. That savoury treatment is worth stating clearly, because the sweet version is what most people expect from anything called a banana fritter. Both exist. Sweet versions with sugar, egg and milk are made across the region and across the Caribbean, and the two have travelled together, which is no accident: the same cooking crossed the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, and Caribbean banana fritters are a direct relation rather than a coincidence. Plantain is abundant across the humid West African belt and very little of it is wasted. Fritters are one of several answers to fruit that has ripened past the point of frying in slices, alongside kelewele, the spiced fried plantain cubes of Ghana, and the many plantain and flour combinations across the region. They are made at home, sold at roadside stands, and eaten hot with the fingers, which is when they are at their best.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minEasyCôte d'Ivoire

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook

Air Fryer Bananas

Ripe bananas sliced, optionally dusted with cinnamon, and cooked in an air fryer until the outsides colour and the insides go soft. It is a modern appliance recipe with no country attached and none implied, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. It is a good use for bananas that have gone too soft to eat, which is the honest appeal of it. Air frying uses very little oil and the sugars in an overripe banana caramelise readily, so the result colours quickly without any added fat at all. Africa's fried banana and plantain traditions are quite different, and worth naming since the confusion is easy. Plantain is not banana: it is starchier, larger and cooked rather than eaten raw, and fried ripe plantain appears across the continent as dodo in Nigeria, alloco in Côte d'Ivoire and kelewele in Ghana, where it is spiced first. Rwandan banana beignets and Cameroonian banana fritters use actual bananas but in a batter. None of them is this, which is a plain appliance treatment of sliced fruit.

15 minEasy

Recette de Debby · Africook

Fried Plantain

Fried plantain is thick slices of ripe plantain, lightly salted and fried until the edges caramelise, and it is eaten wherever plantain grows. Across West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America and Southeast Asia, the same three ingredients produce essentially the same thing. Its names change with the border. In Nigeria it is dodo. In Côte d'Ivoire it is alloco. In Ghana the spiced version is kelewele, marinated in ginger and chilli before frying, which makes it a different dish rather than a different name. Those distinctions matter and are often blurred. Plantains are not bananas, though they look alike. They are starchier, they are cooked rather than eaten raw, and they can be used at any stage of ripeness for completely different results: green for chips and savoury dishes, ripe for this. What ripe plantain gives is the caramel-brown crust and the soft, sweet interior that the source describes as savoury-sweet, and it comes from the sugars that develop as the fruit blackens. No country is claimed here because the dish belongs to all of them.

20 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Beatrice · Africook

Honey Popcorn

Popcorn popped on the hob, coated in a honey and butter mixture and baked briefly so the coating sets crisp rather than staying sticky. No country is claimed. **This page had no recipe card in the source**, only an article about why honey popcorn is good. The ingredients and method below have been reconstructed from what that article describes, and that is flagged rather than hidden. The technique the article gets right is the baking step, and it is the difference between honey popcorn and sticky popcorn. Honey poured over popcorn stays tacky, because honey is around eighteen per cent water. Spreading the coated popcorn on a tray and baking it at a low temperature drives that water off, and the sugars set into a thin brittle shell. Ten to fifteen minutes at a low heat, turned once or twice, is enough. Its other observation is also true: honey helps salt adhere to the popcorn, which distributes the seasoning far more evenly than salt sprinkled onto dry kernels, most of which falls to the bottom of the bowl. Popcorn itself is indigenous to the Americas, maize was domesticated in Mexico and popping varieties are ancient there. Maize is now grown and eaten across Africa, but popcorn as a snack came the other way.

25 minEasy

Recette de Debby · Africook