Recettes

Papaya smoothie in a glass, blended with banana, yogurt and chia seeds

Papaya Smoothie for Weight Loss

Papaya, known as pawpaw across most of anglophone West and East Africa, grows in nearly every tropical African country and in a great many household compounds. It is not a market luxury. A pawpaw tree fruits within a year of planting and keeps fruiting, which is why it turns up at the edge of yards from Lagos to Mombasa and why the fruit is understood as something you have rather than something you buy. Ripe pawpaw is eaten fresh and cold, most often at breakfast, cut into halves or wedges with a squeeze of lime. The lime is not decoration; it sharpens a fruit whose sweetness is soft and slightly musky and which can read as flat without acid. That pairing is the reference point this drink is built on. This particular recipe is a contemporary blended drink rather than a dish with a documented lineage. It belongs to the global category of fruit smoothies made for a health purpose, and it uses pawpaw as its base because pawpaw blends to an unusually smooth, thick texture without any thickener at all. The fruit is African by cultivation and by everyday use rather than by origin.

10 minDebby

Igbo Yam Porridge

Yam is not simply a staple crop among the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria. It is the crop, tied to land, status and the agricultural calendar in a way no other food is, and the yam that goes into this porridge carries that weight into an ordinary weekday meal. Yam porridge is the most direct way to eat it. Slices are cooked until they begin to break down and thicken their own liquid, so the dish is both the yam and the sauce it makes. What marks the version out as Igbo rather than as one of the several other Nigerian yam pottages is the seasoning: ogiri, the fermented seasoning made from oil bean or melon seed, and uziza leaves, whose peppery aroma goes in at the very end. Palm oil supplies the colour and the richness, crayfish the savoury base. Ogiri is the ingredient that decides the dish. Its fermented depth is what separates an Igbo yam porridge from a Yoruba or Hausa preparation of the same root, and households that leave it out are making something else. The porridge is eaten at breakfast and as a light lunch, and it belongs to ordinary domestic cooking rather than to any occasion.

Nigeria30 minDebby

Hausa Masa

Masa, also called waina, is a fermented rice cake from the Hausa of Northern Nigeria: small, round, spongy underneath and browned on the surface, cooked in a dedicated pan with shallow round wells. It belongs to the Hausa, one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and it is among the dishes most closely identified with them. The fermentation is what makes it. Rice is soaked, ground with cooked rice, and left to rise overnight, and the mild sourness that develops is what separates masa from any other rice pancake. The holes that open across the surface as it cooks are the visible evidence of that ferment, and a masa without them has not been left long enough. It is breakfast food and snack food, sold from street stands and in markets across the north, and it appears at celebrations and family gatherings. What goes with it varies by household and by time of day: honey, groundnut oil, a peppery stew, or yaji, the same spice blend used on suya. Masa is a dish that has held its association with one people while spreading well beyond them, which is a fair description of how Hausa food generally has travelled through Nigeria.

Nigeria1 hrLaila

Awara, a Northern Nigerian fried soy bean cake, served hot with pepper and sliced vegetables

How to Make Awara (Tofu, Soyabean Cake)

Awara is Northern Nigerian soy bean cake, and it is one of the clearest examples of an introduced crop becoming a genuinely local food. Soy beans are not indigenous to West Africa. Awara, as the Hausa make and eat it, is not found anywhere the crop came from. What separates awara from tofu is the frying. The process to the curd stage is the same: beans are soaked, ground, strained to a milk, heated, and set with an acid or a mineral coagulant, then pressed. Where East Asian tofu is usually finished at the press, awara is cut, seasoned and fried until the outside is golden and firm. That frying step is the dish, and it produces something with a texture and a flavour of its own. It is street food and snack food, sold ready made across the north because the process at home is long. Awara is served hot with ground pepper and oil, and increasingly with sliced fresh pepper, cabbage and cucumber alongside. It is eaten with pap or kunu at breakfast, and at any hour after that. It is also the north's most practical answer for anyone eating no meat, which is a role it has held far longer than the word vegetarian has been in common use in Nigeria.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minJennifer

Agidi, also called eko, a Nigerian set corn starch block wrapped in leaves and served with akara

Agidi or Eko

Agidi, called eko in Yoruba, is corn starch cooked to a firm set and left to cool into a smooth, sliceable block. It is faintly sour, cool to eat, and holds its shape on a plate, which makes it unusual among Nigerian starches, most of which are served hot and soft. It is one of the few Nigerian dishes that genuinely crosses every line in the country. North to south, across tribes, classes and religions, agidi turns up on the same table, which is a rarer thing in Nigerian food than the country's shared reputation for hospitality might suggest. It is eaten at breakfast with akara, the fried bean cake, and it is served alongside pepper soup, stew, banga, ogbono and egusi at other hours. It comes from the same process that produces ogi, the fermented corn pap, taken further. Where ogi is drunk, agidi is set. It is traditionally poured into uma or banana leaves, which give it its characteristic tapered shape and a faint green scent, and the leaves are the reason it appears in markets as a wrapped parcel rather than a slab. It is also commonly the first solid food given to Nigerian babies.

NigeriaBlessing

Ogi, a Nigerian fermented corn porridge served with akara bean cakes

Ogi (Nigerian Pap)

Ogi is fermented cereal porridge, sour, smooth and pale, and it is among the first things most Nigerians ever eat. It is called akamu in Igbo and pap in English, and it is made from maize, sorghum or millet steeped in water for up to three days, wet milled, sieved to remove the husks, and then fermented for several more days until it turns distinctly sour. That sourness is the point and it is what separates ogi from any other cereal porridge. It also does real work: fermentation makes the grain more digestible and gives ogi a probiotic character, which is a large part of why it has been the standard weaning food for Nigerian infants for generations and why it is given to people who are unwell or recovering. The same base goes in two directions. Thinned and cooked, it is the porridge eaten at breakfast with akara, moin moin, fried plantain or bread. Cooked much thicker and left to set, it becomes agidi or eko, sliced and eaten with pepper soup or stew. Across the region the names change without the thing changing much: koko in Ghana, uji in Kenya, where it is more often made from millet and sorghum. Three grains are used in Nigeria, and white corn, yellow corn and guinea corn each give a slightly different result.

Nigeria10 minDebby

Waakye

Waakye is rice and beans cooked together with dried millet or sorghum stalk leaves, which leach a deep reddish brown into the grain and give the dish both its colour and its name. It is Ghana's most loved street breakfast, and in Accra and Kumasi the waakye seller is a neighbourhood institution whose location is known, whose quality is debated and whose loyalty is genuinely held. Sellers begin before dawn and often sell out by mid morning. The dish is bought wrapped in leaves and assembled to the customer's specification from a wide spread of accompaniments: shito, the dark Ghanaian pepper and fish sauce, gari, egg, spaghetti known as talia, fried plantain, avocado, salad, stew and fried fish or meat. A full waakye plate is substantial enough to carry someone through a working day, which is precisely what it is for. The waakye leaf is the ingredient that cannot be substituted. It is the dried leaf sheath of a West African sorghum, called poporo oka in Yoruba and adako in Togo, and it functions as a colourant rather than a flavouring, with the quantity used determining how deep the colour runs. Black eyed beans are traditional and jasmine rice is the Ghanaian preference. The dish is eaten across West Africa under other names, as wanke in Lagos and ayimolou in Togo.

Ghana1 hr 15 minCuisine228

Moi moi, Nigerian steamed bean pudding wrapped in leaves with a boiled egg inside

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Moi moi is steamed bean pudding, and it is among the small group of Nigerian dishes that turn up everywhere: at breakfast, at parties, at weddings, in lunchboxes, beside jollof rice, and on its own. Black eyed peas or brown beans are soaked, peeled, blended with pepper and onion, seasoned, and steamed until they set. The peeling is what most people underestimate. The bean skins have to come off before blending, because they are what stands between a smooth moi moi and a gritty one, and the quality of the blend decides the texture of the finished dish more than any other single factor. Nigerian markets have heavy duty commercial mills for exactly this reason, and home blenders often cannot manage it. What it is steamed in changes the result and the name. Uma leaves, from Thaumatococcus daniellii, give the best flavour and cook fastest; banana leaves are the common alternative; aluminium foil and heatproof containers are the modern route. Nutmeg is the ingredient people leave out and then wonder why their moi moi does not taste like the one at the party. Egg, corned beef or bone marrow goes into the middle, and moi moi appears as a side to jollof and fried rice, as breakfast with pap or bread, and as a meal in itself.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Shiro wat, an Ethiopian stew of ground chickpeas with berbere, served on injera

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Chickpea Stew)

Shiro wat is ground chickpea stew, and it is among the most eaten dishes in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Onion, garlic, tomato and berbere are cooked down in oil, chickpea flour is whisked in, and the result thickens to something between a thick gravy and a puree, smooth enough to spread and eaten with injera. Its position has a great deal to do with the religious calendar. Ethiopian Orthodox practice includes a very large number of fasting days, on which no meat, eggs or dairy are eaten, and shiro contains none of them. It is standard on Wednesdays and Fridays, through the eight weeks of Tsom, the Great Lent, and it is eaten during Ramadan by Ethiopian and Eritrean Muslims too. That is a dish serving two religions in one country without modification. It is also cheap and quick, which explains the rest of its reach. Shiro powder, sold ready mixed with the spices already in it, is available across Ethiopia and increasingly abroad, in two kinds: mitten shiro, which is red and carries berbere, and netch shiro, which is white and mild. The dish takes different forms by consistency and name: shiro fessess is runny and served over injera with chillies, shiro tegamino is thick and cooked in an earthenware pot until it bubbles and caramelises at the base, and shiro fit fit shreds injera through it for breakfast.

Ethiopia35 minBlessing

Fried Yam

Fried yam is called dundun in Yoruba, and it is one of the most eaten street foods in Nigeria. Yam is peeled, cut into thick chips, salted and fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft and floury. It is sold from roadside stands with a pepper sauce, and it is eaten at breakfast, at lunch and late at night. Yam is the crop that Nigeria produces more of than anywhere else in the world, and dundun is the most direct thing to do with it. It costs almost nothing, needs three ingredients, and the frying takes minutes. That combination is what makes it street food: a vendor with a pot of oil and a sack of yam is in business. Its usual partner is akara, the fried bean cake, and the pairing of dundun and akara with a ground pepper sauce is a standard Nigerian breakfast. It is also eaten with egg sauce, with fried fish, with stew, or on its own. The word dundun covers the fried treatment specifically, as distinct from the plain, pounded and porridge treatments of the same tuber, each of which occupies its own place on the Nigerian table.

Nigeria35 minAnthonyJ

Eko or agidi, sliced Nigerian fermented corn pudding, served with efo riro vegetable stew

Eko (Agidi) and Efo Riro

Eko and efo riro is a Yoruba pairing, and each half is a substantial dish in its own right. Eko, also called agidi, is a firm pudding set from fermented corn starch, sliced and eaten cold or at room temperature. Efo riro is the Yoruba vegetable stew, built on palm oil, blended pepper, locust beans and leafy greens with assorted meat and smoked fish through it. The contrast is the point. Eko is cool, firm and slightly sour from the fermentation, with a clean corn flavour and almost nothing else going on. Efo riro is hot, oily, salty and densely flavoured. Putting them together works in the way that plain rice and a heavy curry work, and neither is quite right without the other. Eko is traditionally set in wrapped leaves, which give it its characteristic shape and a faint aroma the greased mould does not reproduce. It is sold that way across southwestern Nigeria, most often alongside akara or moin moin at breakfast, though the pairing with efo riro makes it an evening meal. Riro means stirred, and the name describes the technique: the vegetables are stirred into the finished stew base rather than cooked in it, so they hold their texture.

Nigeria1 hrTaiwo Oladapo

West African Groundnut Milk in a glass, a creamy homemade peanut milk drink from Ghana and the Sahelian belt of West Africa

Groundnut (Peanut) Milk

Groundnut milk is what you get when raw peanuts are soaked, blended with water and strained, a plant milk made from one of West Africa's most important crops, using a method that predates the shelves of alternative milks now sold everywhere. The groundnut itself is not originally African. It came from South America and arrived through Portuguese trade, but it settled into West African farming and cooking so completely that it is now difficult to think of the region's food without it. Groundnut stew, kuli kuli, suya's spice base, roasted nuts sold by the cup at every junction, the crop runs right through the cuisine, and milk is one more thing done with it. It is drunk for straightforward reasons. It contains no dairy, which matters in a region where lactose intolerance is common in adults, and it is made from something cheap and locally grown rather than imported. Flavourings are a matter of household preference: vanilla, a little sugar, sometimes cinnamon or dates. The one thing it demands is that you make what you will drink. Fresh groundnut milk has nothing preserving it and separates within a day or two, so it is made in small quantities rather than stored, which is why it tends to be a morning thing, made and finished. It should be shaken before pouring; separation is normal, not spoilage.

NigeriaAmara

Ta'ameya, Egyptian fava bean falafel coated in sesame seeds and fried golden

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Ta'ameya is Egyptian falafel, and the difference from every other falafel is the bean. Egypt makes it from dried split fava beans; Lebanon, Israel and most of the Levant use chickpeas, or a mixture. The fava gives a paler, softer, greener interior and a distinctly different flavour, and Egyptians will tell you theirs came first. It is breakfast food above all. Ful wa ta'ameya, fava bean stew with falafel, is the standard Egyptian morning meal, and the phrase names the pair together. The ful is cooked overnight in a large round pot called a qedra, and the ta'ameya is fried fresh in the early hours, so the smell of hot oil on the way to school or work is a shared memory rather than an individual one. Herbs are the other distinction. Parsley, coriander and dill go into the paste in quantity, which is what gives the interior its green colour, and the whole mixture is traditionally pounded in a large stone mortar. Sesame seeds are pressed onto the outside before frying in many versions, giving a crust that chickpea falafel does not have. It is eaten with tahini and baladi bread, and it is one of the cheapest complete meals in the country.

Egypt50 minFoodChef

Beans Porridge

Beans porridge is one of the most-eaten dishes in Nigerian homes: beans cooked soft, then finished in a palm oil base with blended pepper, smoked fish, crayfish and ugwu. It is weekday food, made in quantity, and it is as likely to appear at breakfast as at dinner. The palm oil base is what separates it from plain cooked beans. Onion is softened in the oil, blended tomato and pepper go in and are cooked until the oil separates out, and only then do the beans join. That separation is the marker Nigerian cooks watch for: it means the raw tomato has cooked off and the base is ready. Ugwu, the fluted pumpkin leaf, goes in at the end and needs only a few minutes to wilt. It is one of the most widely used greens in southern Nigeria and gives the dish its colour and a mild, slightly nutty flavour. Fried ripe plantain is the standard partner, and the sweetness against the savoury beans is why that pairing has stuck. Yam and rice also work. Despite the beans and vegetables, this is not a vegetarian dish as written: the crayfish and smoked fish are doing much of the seasoning.

Nigeria1 hr 10 minSobecooks

Mealie Pap

Mealie pap is South African maize porridge, made from milled white maize cooked slowly with water into a smooth, thick porridge. It is eaten by everyone and at every age, and it is one of the first solid foods many South African children are given. Sweet or savoury are both standard. With sugar and milk, or golden syrup and butter, it is breakfast. With chopped spring onion and sliced hard egg it becomes something closer to congee. Stiffer versions are eaten with meat and relish as the main starch of a meal, which is where pap en vleis comes from. It has close relatives across the continent, made from the same maize by the same method: ugali in Kenya and Tanzania, sadza in Zimbabwe, nsima in Malawi. Maize itself is not indigenous to Africa. It was brought from South America by the Portuguese and became the dominant staple across much of the continent within a few centuries. Mealie meal comes coarse or fine depending on use, and it is not as fine as cornflour, which is a different product and will not make pap.

South Africa1 hrNympha

Papaya Juice

Papaya juice is ripe pawpaw blended with water and served cold, one of the simplest tropical fruit drinks, and one made wherever the fruit grows, which across Africa is very widely. Pawpaw is the name used across much of anglophone West Africa for what is sold elsewhere as papaya. The tree grows quickly and fruits generously in warm climates, and in many households it is not bought at all but picked, which shapes how the juice is used, it is a way of dealing with fruit that has ripened all at once rather than a recipe planned in advance. The flesh is orange, soft and sweet with a faint musky edge that some people love and others temper with lime. Lime is the standard correction, and it does two things: it lifts the sweetness and it cuts the muskiness that can otherwise dominate. The fruit carries papain, an enzyme that breaks down protein. It is the reason unripe pawpaw is used as a meat tenderiser across West Africa, and it is also why papaya is commonly associated with digestion. It does not keep. Blended pawpaw separates and dulls within hours, so it is made and drunk rather than stored, and it is best served very cold.

Debby

Corn Dough Porridge

Corn dough porridge is a Ghanaian breakfast, particularly in the south, made from fermented corn dough thinned with water and cooked with grains of selim until thick. It is closely related to koko and to ogi across the border in Nigeria, all built on the same fermented maize. Fermentation is what gives it its character. Corn is soaked, ground and left to sour for several days, which produces a distinctly tangy flavour and makes the grain easier to digest. Fermented corn dough is sold ready made at Ghanaian and Nigerian markets and grocers, in blocks or bags, and making it from scratch takes days rather than minutes. Grains of selim, also called negro pepper or hwentia, is the spice that makes this Ghanaian rather than generic. It is a long dark pod with a smoky, slightly bitter, aromatic flavour, crushed into the water before the corn goes in. The other technique that matters is straining: the dough is slaked with water and passed through a strainer before it meets the heat, which is the only reliable way to avoid lumps. It is served hot with sugar, and often with milk, roasted nuts or coconut flakes.

Ghana30 minAmanda Dadson

Ful Medames

Ful medames is stewed fava beans dressed with olive oil, cumin, garlic and lemon, and it is Egypt's national dish. It is eaten at any hour, though breakfast is when it belongs most, and it is sold from carts across Cairo and Giza in the mornings. Traditionally it is cooked and served in a large metal jug, the qedra, over a very long slow heat, often overnight, which is why street ful has a depth that a quick home version does not. What the beans are dressed with varies endlessly: parsley, onion, chilli, tomato, hard eggs, tahini. Its versions across the region are worth knowing. In Somalia, fuul is a breakfast staple served with eggs and laxoox or canjeero flatbread, spiced with xawaash, the blend of cumin, coriander, cardamom, cloves, turmeric and more that makes it noticeably hotter than the Egyptian version. In Morocco it is bissara, made from fava beans and split green peas cooked with garlic, eaten especially in the north during cold weather. This particular recipe includes tahini, which is a Levantine addition rather than a classic Egyptian one, and it uses tinned beans rather than the overnight cook.

Egypt25 minNympha

Quick Egg Stew

Egg stew is tomatoes, onions and eggs cooked down together with pepper, and it is made across West Africa as a fast breakfast or light meal. This version carries two additions that place it more precisely: kobi and sardines. Kobi is salted, dried tilapia, a Ghanaian staple that is fried at the start so its salt and savour go into the oil before anything else joins it. It is one of the preserved fish that West African cooking relies on, alongside stockfish, smoked mackerel and dried prawn, and it gives a depth that fresh fish does not. Tinned sardines going in at the end is a common and thoroughly modern addition. The source names no country, and the kobi points to Ghana without settling it, so none is attributed here. What the dish is depends on how the eggs are treated: added and left mostly alone they set in curds through the tomato base; stirred continuously they disperse and the stew turns uniform. Both are made. It is eaten with bread, yam or plantain, and it is genuinely quick, which is much of the point of it.

25 minDebby

Egg Sauce

Egg sauce is a Nigerian breakfast staple: eggs cooked into a base of tomato, onion and scotch bonnet until scrambled through it. It is what plain yam is most often eaten with, and it is one of the fastest hot meals in the Nigerian repertoire. What separates it from an omelette or from scrambled eggs is that the tomato base comes first. Onion and pepper are softened, tomatoes cooked down until they release their juices and soften, the seasoning goes in, and only then do the beaten eggs. The eggs are stirred through so the whole thing becomes one sauce rather than eggs with sauce on top. Two ingredients in this version are worth noticing. Sesame oil in place of vegetable oil is unusual in a Nigerian kitchen and gives a distinctly nutty background, and curry powder alongside is a Nigerian habit rather than an Indian one. Both are the contributor's choices rather than the standard. Egg sauce is genuinely close to what is elsewhere called egg stew, and the two names are used for much the same dish across Nigeria and Ghana, with the difference usually being consistency rather than method.

Nigeria25 minSobecooks

Plantain Porridge

Plantain porridge is unripe plantain cooked down with vegetables, palm oil and pepper into a thick, savoury one-pot dish, a Nigerian staple that behaves much more like a potato stew than anything the word porridge suggests in English. The ripeness question is the one that decides the dish. Ripe plantain is sweeter and more immediately appealing, and many people default to it. Unripe green plantain is what this dish is properly made with: it is starchy rather than sweet, holds its shape through long cooking rather than collapsing, and takes on the flavour of the pot instead of fighting it with sugar. Cooked ripe, the porridge turns sweet and mushy. Unripe plantain is also lower in sugar and higher in resistant starch, which is why it appears frequently in Nigerian cooking aimed at people managing blood sugar. Ugu or spinach goes in near the end, and crayfish, dried fish or smoked fish are common additions. Palm oil supplies the colour and much of the flavour. It is filling enough to be a meal on its own and is eaten at breakfast as often as at dinner.

NigeriaNympha

Asaro (Nigerian Yam Porridge)

Asaro is yam cooked down in a seasoned pepper base with palm oil until part of it collapses into a thick, orange-red mash while some pieces stay whole. It comes from the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and is now eaten across the country. The texture is the dish. Mashing all of it gives you something closer to a purée; leaving it all in pieces gives you yam in sauce. Asaro is deliberately between the two, enough breaks down to thicken everything, enough survives to give you something to bite. The palm oil is not incidental either: it supplies the colour and a distinct earthy richness that no other oil reproduces. There is a naming point the source raises and gets broadly right. What Nigerians call porridge is closer to what English calls pottage, a thick one-pot dish of a starch cooked with vegetables and sometimes meat, rather than the European breakfast sense of a grain cooked in liquid. The two words are used interchangeably in Nigeria. The source also identifies mpotompoto as the Ghanaian counterpart. The dishes are close relatives rather than the same thing, and that has been noted rather than asserted as fact.

Nigeria1 hr 10 minFoodChef

Bessara (Moroccan Fava Bean Purée)

Bessara is dried split fava beans cooked soft with garlic and olive oil, then puréed and seasoned with cumin and paprika. It is street food across Morocco, most strongly associated with the north, and it is eaten for breakfast as often as for anything else. Its consistency is not fixed, and that is a feature rather than a vagueness. Made thick, it is a dip eaten from a shared plate with Moroccan bread. Made looser, it is a soup served in individual bowls, which is how street vendors serve it on cold mornings. The same pot produces both, depending on how much of the cooking liquid goes back in. Traditionally the beans were cooked for hours until they collapsed entirely and then passed through a food mill. A blender does the same job in seconds and gives a smoother result, which is what most cooks now use, and the source is right that nothing is lost by it. The condiments are not optional garnish. Bessara is served with olive oil, cumin, salt and cayenne or harissa on the side, and each person seasons their own bowl. The purée itself is deliberately mild, which only makes sense once you know that. Note that the same dish appears elsewhere spelt bissara; they are one thing. Some cooks make it with dried split peas in place of some or all of the fava beans, which gives a lighter texture and a greener colour but changes nothing about the method or the seasoning.

Morocco1 hr 30 minDeborah

Chips mayai, Tanzanian chips cooked into an omelette, served with kachumbari

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Chips mayai is chips set into an omelette and cooked as a single flat cake. The name is literal, chipsi is chips, mayai is eggs in Swahili, and it is one of the defining Tanzanian street foods, also known as zege. It is sold from stalls across the country and cooked to order: fries already made, eggs beaten with chopped onion, tomato, green pepper and coriander, the two combined in a hot pan and turned once. Minced meat goes in where a heartier version is wanted. It arrives with kachumbari, the East African tomato and onion salad, and tomato sauce. The comparison the source draws with Spanish tortilla is apt and worth thinking about, because the difference is instructive. A tortilla española uses potato sliced thin and cooked gently in oil until soft, folded into egg and set slowly into something dense and custardy. Chips mayai uses chips, already fried, already crisp, and cooks fast, so the potato keeps some of its structure and the egg stays lighter. Same two ingredients, entirely different results, and the potato cut is what does it. It is eaten at any hour: breakfast, a late-night meal after drinking, or a snack in between. Nothing about it is formal.

Tanzania30 minBlessing

Vary amin'anana, Malagasy rice cooked with greens into a thick porridge

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)

Vary amin'anana is rice cooked together with greens, tomatoes, onion and ginger until it becomes a thick, soupy porridge. It is Malagasy, and the name says exactly what it is: vary is rice, anana is greens. It is everyday food in the most literal sense. Rice is eaten at nearly every meal in Madagascar, and vary amin'anana is one of the most common ways of preparing it, cheap, filling, made from whatever leaves are available, and eaten at any hour including breakfast. Brèdes is the Malagasy term for the family of edible greens it uses, which covers everything from mustard greens to watercress to cassava leaves depending on the season. Ginger is the note that makes it Malagasy rather than generically green. It goes in early with the tomatoes and onions and runs through the whole dish. Two things about this particular version. It uses brown rice, which is unusual, white rice is standard in Madagascar, and it has been converted to a slow cooker, which is not a Malagasy method. The source explains why: it was adapted so it could be transported to a fundraiser. That provenance is worth recording, since it explains both oddities. The proportions are worth reading: twelve cups of water to five cups of rice gives something soupy rather than fluffy, which is correct.

Madagascar4 hr 20 minFoodChef

Recettes

Beans Porridge

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Groundnut (Peanut) Milk

Eko (Agidi) and Efo Riro

Asaro (Nigerian Yam Porridge)

Plantain Porridge

Egg Sauce

Quick Egg Stew

Fried Yam

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Chickpea Stew)

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Papaya Smoothie for Weight Loss

Igbo Yam Porridge

Hausa Masa

How to Make Awara (Tofu, Soyabean Cake)

Agidi or Eko

Ogi (Nigerian Pap)

Waakye

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Chickpea Stew)

Fried Yam

Eko (Agidi) and Efo Riro

Groundnut (Peanut) Milk

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Beans Porridge

Mealie Pap

Papaya Juice

Corn Dough Porridge

Ful Medames

Quick Egg Stew

Egg Sauce

Plantain Porridge

Asaro (Nigerian Yam Porridge)

Bessara (Moroccan Fava Bean Purée)

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Beans Porridge

Asaro (Nigerian Yam Porridge)

Plantain Porridge

Egg Sauce

Quick Egg Stew

Fried Yam

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Chickpea Stew)

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Papaya Smoothie for Weight Loss

Igbo Yam Porridge

Hausa Masa

How to Make Awara (Tofu, Soyabean Cake)

Agidi or Eko

Ogi (Nigerian Pap)

Waakye

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Chickpea Stew)

Fried Yam

Eko (Agidi) and Efo Riro

Groundnut (Peanut) Milk

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Beans Porridge

Mealie Pap

Papaya Juice

Corn Dough Porridge

Ful Medames

Quick Egg Stew

Egg Sauce

Plantain Porridge

Asaro (Nigerian Yam Porridge)

Bessara (Moroccan Fava Bean Purée)

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Vary Amin'anana (Malagasy Greens and Rice)