Recettes

Crispy fried chicken feet, deep fried to golden brown and served as a snack

How to Make Crispy Fried Chicken Feet

Chicken feet carry almost no meat. What they carry is skin, tendon and collagen, and that is precisely the reason they are eaten: cooked properly they deliver a texture that no other part of the bird provides, gelatinous underneath and crisp on the surface. They belong to the category of cuts that are eaten wherever nothing is wasted, which covers a large share of the world. Across West and Southern Africa, in the Caribbean, across East and Southeast Asia, chicken feet are street food and bar food, cheap, communal, and eaten with the hands. In much of the global north they are treated as waste and rendered for stock, which is a recent and geographically narrow position rather than a normal one. Eating them has its own protocol. The foot is held in the fingers, and the toes are bitten off one at a time between the joints, with the bones and nails discarded. That is not fussiness; it is the only way to get at what is edible. The result is food that takes time to eat and is therefore sociable, which is most of what a bar snack is for.

35 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

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

Peppered snail, a spicy Nigerian finger food of African giant snails in a scotch bonnet pepper sauce

Peppered Snail: Spicy Nigerian Finger Food

Peppered snail is party food in Nigeria. It arrives on a plate with cocktail sticks, it is eaten standing up with a drink in the other hand, and it belongs to celebrations, family gatherings, weekend events and the kind of occasion where people are moving between conversations rather than sitting down to a meal. The snails are African giant land snails, considerably larger than the garden snails eaten in Europe, and their texture is the whole point: firm, dense and chewy, closer to a scallop or a squid than to anything on a butcher's counter. They carry almost no flavour of their own, which is why they can take the heat they are given. The pepper sauce, built on scotch bonnet, onion, garlic and bell pepper, is what you actually taste, and the snail is what carries it. Snail is expensive in Nigeria relative to most proteins, which contributes to its place at events rather than at weekday meals. It is a dish that signals the occasion is worth something, and that association is as much a part of why it is served as the taste is.

Nigeria55 minDebby

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

Nigerian pancakes, thin savoury sweet pancakes made with onion and pepper in the batter

Nigerian Pancake (Diet)

The Nigerian pancake, known colloquially as diet, is thin, dense and slightly crisp at the edges, and it is savoury as often as it is sweet. Onion and ground pepper go into the batter alongside the sugar, which produces something no other pancake tradition attempts: sweet, savoury and faintly hot in the same mouthful. It sits a long way from the thick fluffy pancake of the American breakfast table. There is no raising agent and no attempt at height. The batter is loose, the pan is tilted to spread it thin, and the result has a dense bite and a lacy edge. Nigerians eat it at breakfast with tea, and just as readily as an afternoon snack with a cold drink. What it is served with follows the same double logic as the batter. Honey, sugar, condensed milk, peanut butter and fresh fruit on the sweet side; pap, custard, oats and yogurt drinks such as kunu aya or zobo alongside. It is home food and street food at once, cheap to make from things most Nigerian kitchens already hold, and it belongs to no particular region of the country, which is unusual enough to be worth noting.

Nigeria30 minJennifer

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

Dambu nama, Northern Nigerian dried and shredded spiced beef served as a snack

Dambu Nama (Shredded Meat)

Dambu nama is dried, shredded and fried beef from Northern Nigeria, fine and fibrous, closer to floss than to jerky. It is popular among the Hausa and Fulani, and its name is straightforward Hausa: dambu for the shredded form, nama for meat. It began as preservation. Fresh meat was scarce in the dry season, and drying beef in the sun and then pounding or shredding it into fine strands made it keep, made it light to carry, and concentrated it. Spices were added over time, which improved the flavour and did further preservative work. That the result is now eaten as a snack rather than as a store against a hard season is the usual arc for a preserved food that turned out to be good. Its texture is what makes it distinctive. Where kilishi, its northern neighbour in the dried meat category, stays as thin sheets, dambu nama is broken down into fine fibres, which changes entirely how it is eaten. It is taken by the pinch or the spoonful, scattered over rice or eaten straight, and it holds for a long time in a sealed container. It is also frequently sold ready made, since the drying and shredding are the slow parts.

Nigeria50 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

Fura Da Nono

Fura da nono is millet and milk, and the name says exactly that: fura is the millet ball, nono is the fermented milk. Spiced millet dough is rolled into balls, then mashed into soured milk and drunk from a bowl or a calabash. It is both a meal and a drink and Nigerians do not find that ambiguous. It belongs to the Sahel and to the peoples who move across it. The Fulani, the Hausa and the Zarma-Songhai all make it, and it is eaten across northern Nigeria, Niger and Ghana. Its logic is the logic of cattle keeping: milk that will not keep in the heat is soured deliberately, and millet that grows where little else does is what goes with it. The way it is sold explains its form. Vendors carry the fura balls and the nono separately and combine them to order, mashing the millet into the milk in front of the customer, which lets them sell two products from one stand and keeps the fura from going soggy before it is bought. In a hot climate, a cold, sour, filling drink that costs very little is a serious thing rather than a refreshment, and fura da nono has held its place in northern Nigerian life without needing to modernise.

Nigeria30 minDebby

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

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

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

Chicken Feet

Chicken feet are eaten across a very large part of the world, and the reason is always the same: an animal is not wasted. What the foot offers is skin, tendon and collagen rather than muscle, and cooked properly that produces a texture no other part of the bird gives. The geography is broad. China is the reference point most people reach for, where chicken feet are a standard dim sum item and a beer snack, and where demand is high enough to sustain a substantial international trade. Beyond that they are eaten across much of Asia, in Mexico, Peru and Jamaica, and across West and Southern Africa, where they are grilled, stewed and sold at roadsides. The recipe that follows is a Chinese style braise, and it should be read as that rather than as an African preparation. Sake, soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin, star anise and scallions are the flavour base of a Cantonese braised dish, and the technique of blanching, peeling, salting, dry searing and then simmering in a dark sauce is a Chinese one. It is a good recipe. It is not an African one, and this platform has a separate African treatment of the same cut, where the feet are precooked and then fried crisp with garlic, ginger and pepper.

Amara

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

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

Mhadjeb

Mhadjeb, also written mhajeb, mahjouba or m'hadjeb depending on the region and the transliteration, is an Algerian stuffed flatbread built from semolina dough stretched until it is almost translucent, folded around a cooked filling of onion, tomato and pepper, then griddled flat. It belongs to street food and to Ramadan. Through the fasting month it appears on stalls across Algerian towns in the hour before sunset, stacked and sold by the piece, and it is one of the dishes most associated with the table at iftar. Outside Ramadan it is everyday food, made in quantity at home and eaten warm. The name carries a story that Algerians tell about its origin. Mahjouba was said to be a woman who did not leave her house, and in Algerian usage the word carries both meanings at once, the secluded woman and the honourable one. She made these breads and sent them out with her children to sell in the market. The dish took her name and kept it. What makes it technically distinctive is the stretching. The dough is worked with oil rather than flour, then pulled out by hand on an oiled surface until it is thin enough to read through, which is what gives the finished bread its layered, papery texture against a soft, well-cooked filling.

AlgeriaNympha

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

Nigerian Peppered Cow Leg Bokoto pieces in a spicy pepper sauce in a pan, a popular Lagos street food and party snack

Homemade Peppered Cow Leg (Bokoto)

Peppered Cow Leg, known as Bokoto in Nigerian street food culture, is a Lagos institution: slow-cooked cow leg (bone and all the connective tissue and skin intact) until the meat is gelatinous and falling-tender, then deep-fried until the exterior is crispy, and finally tossed in a fiery blend of peppers, onions, and seasoning that coats every piece in a bold, spicy glaze. Bokoto is the ultimate expression of Nigerian cooking's commitment to using every part of the animal well. The cow leg, with its gelatin-rich bones, skin, and connective tissue, becomes something extraordinary after hours of patient cooking and the hot-oil finish. It is a staple of Lagos evening street food, Nigerian parties, and the beloved Nigerian tradition of small chops.

Pan-AfricanDebby

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

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

African salad, the Igbo dish of shredded cassava abacha with fermented ugba and palm oil

African Salad (Abacha and Ugba)

African salad is the Igbo dish of abacha and ugba, and it is a salad only in the loosest sense. Abacha is cassava that has been cooked, shredded on a special grater, soaked overnight, rinsed and dried in the sun. Ugba is fermented oil bean seed, cooked for hours, sliced, rinsed and left to ferment. Neither is cooked when the dish is assembled. That is the striking thing about it: almost the entire preparation happens off the stove. Palm oil is turned into a thick yellow paste by working it with potash solution, and everything else is folded into that paste in sequence. The order matters, and Igbo cooks are firm about it, because the components will not distribute evenly if they all go in together. It belongs to ceremony. At an Igbo wedding, abacha is reserved for the important guests, and it is served with chilled palm wine, which is the pairing anyone from the region will name. Despite being filling enough to be a meal, it is treated as a snack rather than a main course. It can be served cold or warmed briefly, and the choice between the two is a matter of household preference rather than correctness.

Nigeria30 minFoodChef

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.

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

Fried cassava, golden crisp yuca pieces sprinkled with salt

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Fried cassava is cassava root parboiled, then fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays dense and soft. It is eaten across a great many countries under different names, and the source names none, which is defensible here: versions of it are made in West and Central Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Cassava came from South America and reached Africa through Portuguese Atlantic trade from the sixteenth century, becoming one of the continent's principal staples. Yuca is the Latin American name for the same root, and it is not related to the yucca shrub despite the near-identical spelling. In West Africa it turns up fried as a street snack, and in the Caribbean and Latin America as yuca frita. The texture is what people come back for: crisp outside, dense and slightly buttery inside, quite unlike a potato chip. Two things matter in the making. The fibrous woody core running down the centre of each piece has to come out, since it never softens. And cassava must be peeled and thoroughly cooked before eating, parboiling before frying is not just for texture, and the source's own question about whether frying alone deals with the issue is worth answering properly rather than glossing over.

55 minDebby

Maakouda, Moroccan fried potato cakes with coriander and turmeric

Maakouda (Moroccan Potato Cakes)

Maakouda is a Moroccan potato cake, mashed potato bound with egg and herbs, floured and deep fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft. It is street food, sold cheap and eaten either on its own or stuffed into a small baguette. Meknes is where it is most associated, and the city is described as the wine capital of North Africa. Maakouda is sold from stalls there and across the country, and it appears in Algeria and Tunisia too under the same set of spellings: maaqouda, maqouda, makouda. The comparison the source draws is with falafel, and it holds up: a cheap fried snack, sold from a stall, eaten in bread. It has simply never travelled the way falafel has. Ras el hanout is what marks it as Moroccan rather than a generic potato cake. The blend is optional in this recipe and the source strongly recommends it, and turmeric gives the colour. It is also a practical way to use up leftover mashed or baked potato, which is much of how it is made at home. Deep frying is traditional; the oven and the air fryer both work and are given as alternatives.

Morocco35 minBlessing

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