Recettes

How to Make Suya Spice at Home (Nigerian Yaji)

Yaji is the spice blend that makes suya suya. Ground roasted groundnuts form its base, and that is what separates it from every other dry rub in the world: a spice mixture built on a nut rather than on seeds and chillies alone. Ginger, garlic, onion and paprika go in around it, with cayenne carrying the heat. It belongs to the Hausa of Northern Nigeria, and the recipes are held closely. Every suya vendor guards a proprietary arrangement of spices, and the specific balance is treated as commercial property rather than shared knowledge, which is why no two suya taste quite the same and why the exact composition is genuinely difficult to pin down. What is consistent is the groundnut, the aromatics and the heat. Its use extends well past the meat it is named for. Yaji is a marinade, a dry rub applied before grilling, and a finishing powder scattered over meat as it comes off the fire, and Nigerians use it on roasted vegetables, on fish, on chips, on plantain and on nuts. It is sold ready made at Nigerian grocers, and having a jar of it in the house is the single fastest route to making Nigerian food taste like itself.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

37 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Debby · Africook

Angwa Moo

Angwa moo is oiled rice, and the Akan name says it plainly. Onions are browned in oil, rice goes in and is fried briefly, then water is added and the whole thing cooks together. The result is golden, faintly sweet from the caramelised onion, and unlike fried rice in one important respect: the rice is raw when it enters the oil rather than cooked and cooled. Ghanaians treat it as the emergency dish, and they are cheerful about saying so. It is what a child cooks when a parent is not home, what a young man living alone makes because it needs almost nothing, and what gets made when there is no time and no plan. That does not make it lesser. The browning of the onion is doing real work, and a well made angwa moo has a depth that its ingredient list does not predict. The traditional accompaniment is ground pepper made in an earthenware asanka, with tinned sardines or fried eggs alongside, and that combination is the version most Ghanaians picture. The salted beef known as tolobeef, cured at home over two days, is the more considered addition. The crisp scorched layer at the bottom of the pot is prized and fought over, which is the case for rice dishes across the continent, and the way to get it is to let the rice finish in its own steam without stirring.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

40 minEasyGhana · West African

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Grilled Tilapia with Lemon, Garlic and Ginger

Whole tilapia scored, marinated in an oil-based spice mixture, oven-grilled, then coated in a fresh green pepper base and returned to the heat. The two-stage seasoning is what makes it, and it is a West African approach rather than a simple marinade. The first stage is a dry-spice oil: vegetable oil with fish seasoning, white and black pepper, ginger, garlic, onion powder and lemon juice, worked into the cuts. The second is a green pepper base built in a food processor from green and red scotch bonnets, bell peppers, spinach, dill, coriander, ginger, garlic and onion, fried briefly in oil and then smeared over the part-cooked fish. That green base is the interesting part. Blending leafy greens and fresh herbs into a pepper sauce is characteristic of Ghanaian and wider West African fish cookery, and it gives colour and a fresh, sharp finish that a marinade applied only at the start cannot. The scoring is not decorative either: two or three cuts on each side let both stages of seasoning reach the flesh rather than sitting on the skin. Tilapia is native to African fresh waters and is the fish most associated with Ghanaian grilling, usually eaten with banku.

50 minMediumGhana · African

Recette de Rashidatu Alhassan · Africook

Vegan Suya (Spiced Grilled Mushrooms)

Oyster mushrooms grilled and tossed in suya spice. It is a plant-based version of the Nigerian street food, and it works better than most meat substitutions do. **The traditional suya spice contains ground peanuts, and this recipe includes them.** The source flags it and offers to leave them out, which is honest, but it is worth stating clearly, because a peanut allergy and a suya spice blend are a genuinely dangerous combination and the name gives no warning. Suya proper is skewered beef, ram or chicken rubbed in yaji, the spice blend of ground roasted peanuts, ginger, cayenne, garlic, onion powder and paprika, and grilled over open coals. It is Hausa in origin, from northern Nigeria, and it is sold across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and parts of Sudan. Kyinkyinga is the Ghanaian name, agashe the Sudanese. Oyster mushrooms are the right substitution and not an arbitrary one. Shredded, they have a fibrous, layered structure that genuinely resembles pulled meat, they take on the dry rub readily, and they char well. Most vegetables do neither. The source's method is very compressed, one step reads "put in a preheated medium", with the word oven missing, and has been filled out below.

30 minEasyNigeria

Recette de duchessnena · Africook