Recettes

Homemade Chicken Mayo Pies

The chicken mayo pie is a hand pie: a short, buttery pastry case around a filling of shredded chicken bound with mayonnaise and softened onion and pepper, baked until the top browns. It is designed to be eaten standing up, out of a paper bag, without a plate or cutlery. Handheld savoury pies occupy a particular position in Southern African food culture, where they are sold from bakeries, supermarket warmers and roadside outlets and eaten as a fast, complete portable meal. The chicken and mayonnaise filling is one of the most common versions in that category, alongside steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom, and mince. The dish's lineage is European rather than African. The short crust hand pie came with British and Dutch settlement across Southern and East Africa and was absorbed into the local eating economy so thoroughly that its origins are no longer visible in how it is eaten. What is African about it is that absorption: a pie bought at a garage forecourt on the way to work is a normal part of the day across several countries on the continent, and the mayonnaise binding is a local preference rather than a British one.

1 hriam.nkay

Rwandan Banana Beignets

Bananas are central to Rwandan agriculture and to Rwandan eating in a way that has no equivalent in most of the world. The country grows dozens of varieties, distinguished by whether they are for cooking, for eating fresh or for brewing, and the plant occupies hillside smallholdings across the country. A snack built on ripe banana is not a novelty in Rwanda; it is the obvious use of what is there. These beignets are small fried cakes of mashed ripe banana in a light batter, crisp at the edge and soft through the middle, sometimes spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg. They are sold from street stalls and market stands, fried in batches through the day, and eaten hot and standing up. At home they appear at gatherings and family celebrations. The variety of banana matters to the result. Rwandan cooks use small, sweet local bananas rather than the large export Cavendish, and the difference is not cosmetic: the smaller fruit is sweeter and denser, which means the batter needs less sugar and the finished beignet is less wet. Where those bananas are not available the recipe still works, but it works differently, and that is worth knowing before judging the result.

Rwanda1 hr 20 minLaila

Danwake, Northern Nigerian bean and baobab leaf dumplings tossed with oil, pepper and fresh vegetables

Danwake Assorted

Danwake is a Northern Nigerian dish of small dumplings made from bean flour and ground baobab leaf, then cooled and dressed with oil and pepper. The dumplings are pale green from the kuka, soft and slightly springy, and they are eaten in quantity rather than as a delicate portion. Its origin is given as Niger, and it has been adopted so completely across Northern Nigeria that it now reads as a staple of the region rather than an import from it. The flour blend varies from one part of the north to another, which means there is no single correct danwake and households treat the mix as something to have an opinion about. Traditionally it is eaten as danwake da mai da yaji, which is Hausa for danwake with oil and pepper, and that is the whole dish in its plain form. The eating method is part of the memory people carry of it: children pick up a single ball with a broomstick, swirl it in the oil and pepper, and eat it that way, one at a time. A fork is the modern substitute and is more hygienic, which is not the same as saying it is better. The assorted version here carries egg, tomato, onion and bell pepper alongside the base.

Nigeria45 minMaryam

A South African kota, a quarter loaf of bread filled with chips, russian sausage, cheese and atchar

Classic South African Kota

A kota is a quarter loaf of bread, hollowed out and packed with fried food. The word is township English for quarter, and that is the whole description: bread cut in four, the soft centre pulled out, and the cavity filled with chips, polony, russians, viennas, cheese, egg, atchar and sauce, then capped with the bread that was removed. It belongs to the townships of Gauteng, where it is sold from small takeaway windows and eaten in the hand without a plate. Kota shops compete on what they will fit into a quarter loaf, and the size of the fill is a large part of the reputation. It is cheap, it is a complete meal, and it is built for people who need to eat between one thing and the next. Atchar is what makes it South African rather than generically stuffed bread. The pickled green mango relish, oily and sour and hot, came to South Africa through Indian indenture and cuts the fried starch that dominates everything else in the cavity. Kota is often described as a version of bunny chow, and the two are related without being the same: bunny chow is Durban Indian, a hollowed loaf filled with curry, and kota is a Gauteng township form filled with fried items. They share an ancestor and are not interchangeable.

South Africa40 minTshego Stone

Gullisuwa

Gullisuwa is a Hausa fried pastry from Northern Nigeria, made from wheat flour worked with ground roasted peanuts and fried until crisp. The groundnuts are what distinguish it. They give the pastry a toasted, faintly sweet base that a plain flour dough does not have, and groundnuts are one of the defining crops of the northern Nigerian savannah. It belongs to celebration rather than to the everyday. Gullisuwa appears at weddings, at festive occasions and as street food, made in quantity because it keeps well and travels well, and it is offered to guests as part of the spread rather than served as a course. That is the usual position of a fried snack in Hausa hospitality: present, plentiful and not the point of the meal. Its exact origin is not documented. What can be said is that it belongs to the Hausa, that it has been made for generations, and that Northern Nigeria's long trade and cultural connection with the Sahara and the Arab world is visible in a good deal of its sweet and fried food. Beyond that, the specific lineage of gullisuwa is not recorded, and the honest position is to say so rather than to construct one.

Nigeria50 minLaila

Puff-Puff

Puff puff is deep fried yeast dough, golden outside and chewy within, and it is the most widely eaten street snack in West Africa. Flour, sugar, yeast, water and salt are all it requires, which is a large part of why it is everywhere: the ingredients are in every kitchen and the technique needs no equipment. The names change with the border. Puff puff in Nigeria and Cameroon, bofrot or togbei in Ghana, and further variations across the region, but the dough and the method travel intact. It is sold from roadside stands in the evening, made at home for parties and children, and eaten hot from the oil with the fingers. What distinguishes it from a doughnut is the chew. Puff puff dough is a loose batter rather than a kneaded dough, scooped by hand and squeezed into the oil rather than shaped, and the long rise gives it a slightly fermented depth that a quick doughnut does not have. Variations run through the same base: habanero chopped into the batter for a peppered version, milk for a softer and sweeter one, nutmeg or cinnamon for warmth. It is late night food as much as party food, which is how most people who grew up with it remember it.

Nigeria2 hr 20 minBeatrice

Kilishi, Northern Nigerian spiced dried beef coated in a groundnut and pepper paste

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

Kilishi is Northern Nigerian dried meat, and it is a considerably more deliberate thing than the jerky it is usually compared to. Beef is sliced thin enough to be translucent, dried, coated in a paste built on ground groundnuts and spices, dried again, and briefly finished over heat. The groundnut coating is what separates kilishi from every other dried meat in the world. It is a preservation technology first. In the Sahel, where refrigeration was not available and the dry season is long, thin slicing and sun drying kept meat edible for months, and the spice paste added flavour while doing further preservation work. That the result is now sold as a delicacy rather than as survival food does not change what it was built for. Kilishi is Hausa, sold in markets across the north and increasingly across the whole of Nigeria and among the diaspora, where it travels well precisely because it was designed to. It is eaten as a snack rather than as part of a meal, torn into pieces, often with a cold drink. The heat level varies by maker, and the yaji spice logic that runs through northern Nigerian cooking, the same groundnut and pepper base used on suya, is visible in it.

Nigeria5 hr 35 minLaila

Nigerian Buns

Nigerian buns are fried dough balls with a crunchy outer crust and a soft, cake like interior. They sit alongside puff puff and chin chin in the small group of fried snacks that account for most of what Nigerians eat between meals, and the differences between the three are understood precisely by anyone who grew up with them. Buns are the rich one. Where puff puff is yeast raised and made from almost nothing, buns use baking powder for lift and include egg, butter and milk, which produces a denser, sweeter, more substantial thing with a genuinely crunchy shell. They also absorb less oil in the frying, which is a real practical advantage and a point people make in their favour. They are everywhere: sold from roadside trays and by hawkers, made at home for children after school, brought to parties and picnics, and eaten with tea at breakfast. The flavouring is open, with nutmeg the most common and cinnamon and vanilla both standard, and every household has a version that is slightly sweeter or slightly denser than the next. They are best hot and are still good at room temperature, which is most of what a snack needs to be.

Nigeria35 minBeatrice

Ugandan rolex, an omelette with vegetables rolled inside a chapati and sliced

Ugandan Rolex Chapati

The rolex has nothing to do with watches. The name compresses rolled eggs into one word, and that is exactly what it is: an omelette with vegetables rolled inside a chapati, made to order at a roadside stand and handed over in paper. It is the street food of Kampala and now of the whole country. Vendors work from small stalls with a hot plate and a stack of chapatis, and the whole transaction takes a couple of minutes. Its rise is generally placed in Kampala among university students, who wanted something filling and cheap, and it spread from there across Uganda and into the country's international reputation. The chapati underneath it is itself a piece of history. Flatbread of this kind came to East Africa with Indian migration, particularly the labourers and traders who arrived under British colonial administration, and it has been fully absorbed into Ugandan and Kenyan eating. What Uganda did was wrap an omelette in it. That is a small innovation and it produced a national dish, which is roughly how street food has always worked: someone puts two cheap things together and the city decides it is right.

Uganda40 minDebby

Yamarita

Yamarita is yam in an egg and flour coating, fried until the crust is crisp and the inside stays soft. It is a Nigerian treatment of the country's most important tuber, and it is straightforwardly a modern dish rather than an inherited one. The name gives away its logic. Yamarita is yam plus the ending of dundun ata or, by the more commonly repeated account, a play on the Yoruba way of naming a fried thing. Whatever the derivation, it belongs to the same family of inventions as yam chips and yam balls: ways of turning a starch that is usually eaten soft into something you can pick up with your fingers at a party. It sits alongside the older Nigerian yam preparations rather than replacing them. Pounded yam is ceremonial, yam porridge is domestic, yam with egg sauce is breakfast, and yamarita is what appears on a small chops platter next to puff puff and spring rolls. That is a real position in Nigerian eating even if it is a recent one, and the dish has spread well beyond the households that first made it.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minLaila

Nigerian Egg Roll

The Nigerian egg roll is a whole hard cooked egg wrapped in a slightly sweet dough and deep fried, and it has nothing to do with the Chinese egg roll beyond the name. The closest comparison is a Scotch egg, with dough in place of sausage meat, and the resemblance ends at the structure. It is street food and travel food. Egg rolls are sold from glass cases at bus stops, from hawkers' trays in traffic, and from the small kiosks that cluster around Lagos offices, and they exist because they solve a specific problem: something substantial, cheap and self contained that can be eaten with one hand in a stationary car. Anyone who has spent time in Lagos traffic understands the appeal without further explanation. The dough is what makes it Nigerian rather than generic. Flour, baking powder, sugar, margarine and nutmeg produce something between a bread and a cake, faintly sweet against the plain salted egg inside, and that sweet and savoury combination is a Nigerian snack signature that also runs through buns, puff puff and chin chin. It is eaten with tea, fruit juice or chilled zobo, and it is substantial enough that people eat it as breakfast or lunch rather than as a snack.

Nigeria50 minDebby

Boerewors, a coiled South African beef sausage seasoned with coriander, grilling over coals

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Boerewors is South Africa's sausage and one of the few foods in the world whose composition is set in law. Regulation requires at least 90 percent meat and caps the fat, which means anything sold under the name has to be the real thing. That is an unusual amount of legislative attention for a sausage and a reasonable measure of what it means to the country. It is coarsely minced beef, often with pork or lamb, seasoned with coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and allspice, bound with vinegar and filled into a natural casing in one continuous spiral. The coriander is the note people recognise. The spiral is not decorative: boerewors is grilled whole in its coil and cut only after cooking, because the casing holds the juices and cutting it first dries the sausage out. Its setting is the braai, and the braai is not a quick barbecue. It is an afternoon or an evening built around constructing a wood or charcoal fire and waiting for it to reach the right heat, during which a good deal of talking and drinking happens. When the braai master declares the fire ready, the meat takes half an hour and everything else has to be ready. For South Africans abroad, boerewors is the food most often named as the one they cannot get, which is why so many of them learn to make it.

South Africa2 hr 38 minFoodChef

Senegalese Fataya

Fataya are Senegalese fried pastries, filled, folded into half moons and sold from small tables at the roadside across the country. They are cheap, they are everywhere, and they are made and sold overwhelmingly by women working from stands they set up themselves, which is a fair description of a great deal of Senegal's street food economy. The filling is where Senegal shows itself. Yassa is the base, the onion, lemon, mustard and peanut oil preparation that is one of the country's defining flavours, applied to fish or chicken. Fish is the more common street filling, reflecting a coastline that supplies the national diet. To that Senegalese cooks bring french fries and fried egg, which sound like additions from somewhere else and are in fact standard, supplying the fat and richness that the lean fish does not have. They are finished with ketchup and hot sauce poured over the top, which means no two bites are quite the same. Fataya sit in the same family as the fried filled pastries found across West Africa and beyond it, and what makes them Senegalese is entirely the yassa. The marinade is worth knowing on its own: sweet, tangy and slightly hot, and used across the region on chicken and fish well outside this dish.

Senegal1 hr 15 minBlessing

Klako, West African fritters of mashed ripe plantain seasoned with ginger and pepper, fried golden

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.

Côte d'Ivoire30 minCuisine228

Benne Cakes

Benne is the Wolof and Bambara word for sesame, and it is the word that carries this dish's history. Sesame was cultivated across West Africa long before the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved West Africans carried the seed and the word with them to the Americas, where both survived. Benne cakes as they exist today are most strongly associated with the Gullah Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, where the seed was planted, the name was kept, and the thin crisp sesame wafer became a regional speciality that Charleston still sells. That makes them a diaspora food rather than a West African one: African in origin, African in name, and developed into their current form on the other side of the ocean. The association with good luck travelled too, and it is the reason benne cakes appear at Kwanzaa, the African American celebration established in 1966, where they are served as a snack before the meal. The source for this recipe places them in West Africa and gives Ghana, Nigeria and Togo as the cuisine, which is where the seed and the word come from rather than where this particular cookie was developed. Both halves of that story are true and neither is complete on its own.

45 minBeatrice

Garantita

Garantita is a baked chickpea flour flan, sliced and eaten hot in a piece of baguette with cumin and harissa. It is Algerian street food in the most literal sense: sold from carts and small counters, cheap enough to be a default lunch, and eaten standing up. Its names change across the country. Garantita in Algiers, calentica in Oran, and karantita, karen or el hami in the west. In Algiers it also goes by el kebda el beida, the white liver, and it is described without embarrassment as the poor man's sandwich, which is a statement about price rather than quality. The origin story is a good one and should be treated as a story. It is said to come from Spanish soldiers at the fort of Santa Cruz in Oran in the 18th century, who ran out of provisions and had only chickpea flour, water and oil left, and whose cook combined them. The name is then traced to the Spanish caliente, meaning hot. The connection to Spanish chickpea cooking is real, since similar chickpea flour preparations exist across the western Mediterranean, but the specific tale of the soldiers is folklore rather than record. One rule is not negotiable: garantita is eaten hot, never cold.

AlgeriaBlessing

Meat Pie

The Nigerian meat pie is a hand pie with a short, slightly flaky crust around minced beef, potato and carrot in a thick gravy. It is not the same thing as a British meat pie or a Jamaican patty, though it is related to both, and Nigerians will tell you the difference immediately: the pastry is denser and less sweet than a patty, and the filling is chunkier and more heavily seasoned than a British one. It is everywhere. Meat pies are sold from bakeries, from glass warmers in petrol stations, from hawkers at bus stops, and at every party alongside puff puff, chin chin and spring rolls on the small chops platter. They are eaten as breakfast, as brunch, as a snack, and with a soft drink or chilled juice. The pastry is where it is won or lost. The ratio of fat to flour is treated as a rule rather than a guideline in Nigerian kitchens: half the weight of the flour in margarine, and getting that ratio wrong is the single most common reason a home made meat pie comes out hard. The other is oven heat, which has to be watched rather than trusted, since ovens differ and an overbaked pie is dry.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minBeatrice

African Fish Roll

The fish roll is a West African street snack: a simple enriched dough wrapped around seasoned flaked fish and deep fried until crisp. It is eaten across Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana, sold from bakeries, roadside stands and glass warmers, and it sits on the small chops platter alongside meat pie, puff puff and spring rolls. Its name shifts with its shape. Rolled into a cylinder it is a fish roll; made in the manner of a folded half moon pie it is called a fish pie. The two are the same idea and Nigerians and Ghanaians use both terms. The source for this recipe gives Cameroonians the credit for making them best, which is the kind of claim that gets argued about rather than settled. Mackerel is the standard fish, called titus in Nigeria after a brand name that became the general term for the frozen fish sold across the country. It is steamed, boned, flaked and seasoned with onion, spring onion and cayenne, which is a short ingredient list doing a lot of work. The dough is where the technique sits: too much handling gives a hard roll rather than a crisp one, which the source identifies as the usual failure. Baking is possible and gives a lighter, less crisp result.

1 hr 30 minDebby

Mhajab, a North African stuffed flatbread folded into layers and cooked on a griddle

Mhajab - A Traditional North African Dish

Mhajab is a stuffed North African flatbread, and the technique is what makes it. A soft dough is stretched out until it is thin enough to see through, folded in from the sides and then from the top and bottom into a square parcel around a filling, and cooked flat on a griddle. The folding creates the layers, and the layers are the dish. It belongs to Algeria and Morocco and is closely related to the Moroccan msemen and rghaif, which use the same stretch and fold method without a filling. Mhajab is street food and it is household food for special occasions, which is a combination that usually indicates something that takes skill but not money. The filling is conventionally a cooked mixture of onion, tomato and pepper, sometimes with meat, and the version here uses beef with potato and carrot. Vegetable fillings are as common as meat ones. It is eaten on its own, or served alongside couscous, harira and salads with mint tea. Cooked on a griddle it comes out crisp outside and soft within; baked it is softer throughout and takes longer, which is the trade the source lays out honestly.

Algeria50 minDebby

Kuli Kuli

Kuli kuli is a peanut snack eaten across Nigeria, Benin, northern Cameroon and Ghana, and it is one of the most widely recognised street foods in West Africa. It is made from peanuts alone, and the technique is what makes it: the oil is deliberately pressed out of the ground paste before the remaining solids are shaped and fried. That extraction is the point. Removing the oil leaves a dense, dry paste that fries into something genuinely crunchy rather than soft, and it also produces the frying oil as a by-product, so nothing is wasted. It is a piece of processing knowledge that predates industrial oil pressing and is still done by hand in Hausa communities in northern Nigeria, where the snack has its strongest association. It takes different shapes in different places: small sticks, rings, flat discs and irregular pieces are all standard, and the form varies by region and by seller. English names for it, groundnut cake and peanut snack among them, are approximations rather than translations. Kuli kuli is eaten on its own, mixed into garri with sugar and water, crumbled over salad, or served alongside fura and koko. Crushed to a powder it becomes the peanut component of suya spice, which is where most people outside the region encounter it without knowing.

Nigeria35 minBlessing

Chin Chin

Chin chin is fried dough cut into small pieces, and it is the most widely eaten snack in Nigeria. The texture sits between a cracker and a dry cake, and how hard it should be is the thing people have opinions about, with preferences running from soft and cakey to properly tooth breaking. It began as occasion food, made for birthdays and for Christmas, and the making of it was a household event that children were put to work on. That has changed: it is now sold at every street corner, in every grocery store and supermarket, and it is as ordinary as a packet of biscuits. It is also made across West Africa, and Ghanaians call it achomo. Flour, sugar, milk and butter are the base, with eggs, nutmeg and baking powder optional depending on the texture wanted. Nutmeg is the flavouring most associated with the Nigerian version, and the variations run to cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa and ground pepper. The three levers are simple enough to state: more butter and baking powder makes it soft, leaving out the egg and the baking powder makes it hard, and everything else is a matter of where between those you want to land.

Nigeria50 minBeatrice

Peri Peri Sausage Rolls

This is a British sausage roll carrying a Southern African sauce, and it is worth being precise about which part comes from where. The sausage roll itself, seasoned pork in puff pastry, is British. Peri peri is the contribution from Africa, and it is a substantial one. Peri peri, also spelled piri piri, is the Swahili name for the African bird's eye chilli, a small and ferociously hot capsicum that grows wild across Mozambique, Angola and southern Africa. Portuguese traders encountered it in their African territories and built a sauce around it with garlic, lemon, vinegar and paprika, and that sauce travelled back through Portugal and outward again. Its association with grilled chicken in Mozambique and South Africa is where most people meet it. So this is a fusion piece rather than a traditional dish of anywhere, and it makes no claim otherwise. It is also a genuinely demanding recipe: the pastry is laminated from scratch, which means rolling and folding butter into dough across several chilled stages, and that is the bulk of the work. Shop bought puff pastry produces a perfectly good sausage roll and removes about ninety minutes.

South Africa1 hr 45 minChef.donkey

Sambusas

Sambusas are fried triangular pastries with a spiced filling, and they are the Somali entry in a family of stuffed pastries stretching from the Middle East through the Horn of Africa to South and Southeast Asia. In Somalia they are snack and appetizer food, though they are most associated with occasions. Ramadan is the occasion above all. Sambusas are what breaks the fast after sundown, portable and substantial enough to eat standing, and Somali households make them in large quantities through the month. That association is strong enough that many families make them at no other time of year. The filling is where they diverge from the Indian samosa they resemble. Sambusa filling is typically spiced ground beef, seasoned with cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and turmeric and finished with fresh coriander, giving a warm, aromatic profile rather than the hot, tamarind-and-chilli one of many samosas. Lentil, potato and onion versions exist. The pastry is thinner too. Many Somali cooks in the diaspora now use spring roll or egg roll wrappers instead of making dough, which is a practical shortcut that a good many of them will say improves the result.

Somalia1 hr 10 minBlessing

Droëwors

Droëwors is dried sausage, the air-cured relative of boerewors, and the name means dry sausage in Afrikaans. Thin sausages of beef or lamb with sheep tail fat are seasoned with coriander and spices and hung to dry until they are firm and dark, keeping without refrigeration. The technique belongs to the same tradition as biltong, and both come from the practical problem of preserving meat in a hot climate without cold storage. Dutch settlers brought curing and drying methods that met existing southern African practices of drying game, and coriander and vinegar became the signature of the local result. Thinness matters: droëwors is made in narrow casings precisely so it dries quickly and evenly, before spoilage can begin. Sheep tail fat is the traditional fat and it behaves differently from beef fat, staying stable rather than turning rancid through the drying period. The balance is delicate, since too little fat gives something unpleasantly dry and too much will not cure properly. Coriander is the constant seasoning, with cloves, nutmeg and black pepper in proportions that vary by household, and garlic or chilli appearing in some versions.

South Africa3 hrNympha

Ojojo, Nigerian fritters made from grated water yam with onion, pepper and crayfish

Ojojo (Yam Fritters)

Ojojo is a fritter made from grated water yam, and it belongs to the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. It is finger food and street food, sold from roadside stands and made at home on weekend mornings, and it follows more or less the same procedure as akara without the beans. Water yam, isu ewura, is what makes it work. It is wetter and more mucilaginous than the white yam used for pounding or frying, and grated it holds together in the oil without any flour or binder at all. That is the whole trick of the dish: no egg, no batter, nothing but yam, onion, pepper and crayfish, held together by the yam's own starch. The texture people are after is crisp on the outside and soft, almost fluffy, inside, and that balance is what separates a good ojojo from a dense one. Grating by hand is the traditional method and gives the most reliable result; a blender works but has to be used sparingly, since water yam breaks down very quickly and too much added water leaves a mixture that will not hold its shape in the pan. It shares its main ingredient with ikokore, the Ijebu water yam pottage, which is a different dish entirely.

Nigeria40 minCuisine228

Nigerian street doughnuts, fluffy yeasted rounds fried without egg

Easy Fluffy Doughnut Without Egg

This is the Nigerian street doughnut, a yeasted round fried until deep gold and eaten plain or with a filling, and it is made here without egg. Doughnuts of this kind are sold from roadside stands and street trays across Nigerian cities, alongside puff puff and buns, and they belong to the same everyday snack economy. Leaving the egg out is not a compromise. Egg gives a richer, cakier crumb, and its absence produces something lighter and breadier, closer to a soft bread roll than a rich doughnut, which is what many Nigerian street versions are. Milk powder does the work of adding richness instead, and it is a common pantry item in Nigerian kitchens where fresh milk is less convenient. The technique is straightforward yeasted dough: mix, knead until smooth and elastic, shape, prove until doubled, fry. The frying is where it goes wrong most often, and the source is unusually specific about it: the oil must be low enough that it is not bubbling, because a doughnut this size needs several minutes to cook through and a hot pan will colour the outside long before the middle is done.

Nigeria1 hr 40 minChopsity.

Injera, Ethiopian fermented teff flatbread with its characteristic open surface

Injera (Ethiopian Flatbread)

Injera is the fermented flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and it is not a side dish. It is the plate: stews and vegetables are spooned directly onto a large injera, and diners tear pieces from a second one to scoop, so the meal ends with the plate itself eaten. Teff is what it is made from, a tiny round grain that grows in the Ethiopian highlands and is among the smallest cereals in the world. Teff carries almost no gluten, which means it cannot be raised in the way wheat bread is, and injera instead depends on fermentation. Wild yeasts and lactic bacteria in a starter, called ersho, work the batter over several days, producing the carbon dioxide that gives injera its distinctive surface of small holes, its spongy texture and its sour flavour. That sourness is the point and it varies. A short fermentation gives a mild injera; three days or more gives the sharpness Ethiopians expect. The recipe here uses commercial yeast and a shorter rest, which is a practical shortcut rather than the traditional method, and it produces a milder bread. It also allows very fine millet flour in place of teff, which is easier to find but changes the flavour and the colour.

Ethiopia25 hr 15 minFoodChef

Meni-Meniyong

Meni-meniyong is a Malian sesame and honey brittle, cut into rectangles and sold from stalls in every market in the country. It is three ingredients and a piece of temperature judgement, and it is eaten as a sweet with tea or simply as something to buy while the shopping is being done. Mali is a substantial sesame producer and the crop is one of its larger exports, so the seed is local rather than imported, and the brittle is one of the more direct expressions of that. The traditional form is rectangular, which is how it appears on market stalls, though the shape is a convention rather than a rule. Honey is what it should be made with. Sugar is increasingly substituted because it is cheaper, and the difference in flavour is noticeable to anyone who has had both. The temperature of the honey and butter mixture is the thing that decides whether it works: cooked too long and the brittle sets rock hard, not long enough and it stays as toffee rather than setting at all. A batch that will not firm up can be returned to the pan and cooked further, which makes it more forgiving than most sugar work.

Mali35 minFoodChef

Nigerian Sausage Rolls

The sausage roll is British in origin, and in Nigeria it became something with its own identity. Anyone who grew up in Nigeria in the 1990s knows it as gala, the commercial brand sold by vendors weaving between cars in traffic, and the pairing of a gala with a bottle of La Casera soft drink is one of the most recognisable snack combinations in the country. That is what this recipe reproduces at home. The pastry is a short, rubbed-in dough rather than a laminated puff, which is the same base used for Nigerian meat pie and chicken pie and which gives a sturdier, less flaky roll than a British bakery version. That sturdiness is a practical virtue for something meant to be eaten in a car. The filling is plain by design: ground pork with black pepper, nutmeg, salt and garlic or dried coriander. Nutmeg is the seasoning that reads as characteristic here, and it appears in the Nigerian meat pie tradition as well. The source is emphatic about two things, using cold butter and not overworking the dough, both of which matter for a rubbed-in pastry, where warmth and handling turn a crumbly texture into a tough one.

Nigeria1 hr 20 minFoodChef

South African Picnic Bread sliced to reveal cheese, bacon, and spring onion filling, a popular braai bread from South Africa

Picnic Bread (From South Africa)

Picnic bread is a South African savoury quick bread, heavy with cheese, spring onion and bacon, bound with egg, and made to be eaten cold in a slice with nothing on it. The category matters. It is a quick bread, raised chemically rather than with yeast, which means no proving and no kneading. Everything is mixed and baked. That is much of why it exists: it is a bread that can be made in an evening for the next day without planning. Its association is with food carried away from home. It is described as an old recipe favoured by fishermen for their packed lunches and by schoolchildren, and the reasoning is visible in the recipe itself. It needs no butter because there is enough fat in it already. It holds together in a slice rather than crumbling. It does not dry out the way a plain loaf does. And it is dense enough that one slice is a meal rather than an accompaniment, which is exactly what you want on a boat or a long day out. The texture is unusual for a bread. It is moist, almost pudding-like in the middle, without being heavy, and the cheese keeps it soft for days. It is honest about what it is: nobody has ever pretended this is a low-fat recipe.

South Africa55 minFoodChef

Twisted Doughnuts

Twisted doughnuts are yeasted dough rolled into ropes, twisted on themselves and deep fried, and the source names their homes clearly: kkwabaegi in Korea, shakoy and pilipit in the Philippines, mahua in China, sakubei in Japan. That is an East and Southeast Asian family of pastries rather than an African one. The twist is not decoration. Rolling the rope with one hand moving up and the other down puts tension into the dough, and when the two ends are brought together and the rope is allowed to hang, it twists itself. That structure is what gives the finished doughnut its ridged surface and its particular texture: crunchy outside, light and pillowy inside, deflating slightly under the bite and springing back. The version here is the cinnamon sugar one, which is the most common way they are finished. The source claims the form runs "from Africa to Asia", and while there are certainly twisted fried doughs in North Africa, Tunisian and Algerian yoyo, Moroccan sfenj in its own way, and the syrup-soaked mkhabez family, this specific recipe is the Korean and Filipino one. It is filed under Worldwide Recipes for that reason, with its URL unchanged.

2 hr 40 minCuisine228

Balah El Sham

Balah el sham is fried choux pastry soaked in syrup, and it is one of the desserts Egyptians most associate with childhood. It is piped into short lengths through a star nozzle, fried until golden and ridged, then dropped into cool sugar syrup, which seeps into every groove. The name translates from Arabic as Levant dates, and it contains no dates at all. It is called that for its size and shape, and Sham for the Levant region where it originated. It is eaten across much of the Middle East and in parts of Eastern Europe under other names, and the closest familiar comparison is churros, with one important difference: churros are rolled in cinnamon sugar, while balah el sham is submerged in syrup. Choux is the technique, and it is the same pastry used for éclairs and profiteroles. Flour is cooked into hot liquid until it forms a ball and turns glossy, then eggs are beaten in off the heat, one at a time. What is unusual here is that it is fried rather than baked, which gives a crisp ridged shell around a hollow, airy centre. It is often split and filled with cream, custard, mascarpone, chocolate or nuts, and pistachios on top are standard. It can be eaten hot or cold.

Egypt50 minFoodChef

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