Recettes Côte d'Ivoire

Plantain Bread

Plantain bread is a sweet quick bread built on overripe plantains, and it exists for the same practical reason banana bread does: it is what you make when the fruit has gone too far to eat but is too good to throw out. The comparison to banana bread is the useful one, and the difference is real. Plantain is starchier and less sugary than banana even when very ripe, so plantain bread comes out slightly denser and less cloying, with a flavour that is deeper and a little more savoury at the edges. People who find banana bread too sweet tend to prefer it. It uses the plantains at the stage most cooks would consider past it, skins mostly black, flesh soft and heavily speckled. At that point the starches have converted and the fruit mashes easily, which is exactly what the batter needs. It is a quick bread, chemically raised, so there is no proving and no kneading. Walnuts are a common addition for texture, and it is eaten at breakfast, with tea, or as a snack.

1 hr 5 minEasyCôte d'Ivoire · Caribbean

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Fufu

Fufu is starch pounded to a smooth elastic mass, and it is among the most widely eaten things in West and Central Africa. The word comes from Twi, spoken in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, where it means to mash or to combine, and the sound of a mortar and pestle working in rhythm is the sound of fufu being made. What goes into it depends entirely on where you are. West Africa favours white yam, sometimes with plantain. Central Africa favours cassava. Plantain, cocoyam, semolina, rice and combinations of flours all appear, and each gives a different texture and a slightly different name. That variability is why fufu is better understood as a category than a recipe. It crossed the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans and survived. Foo foo and fou fou in the Caribbean are made with plantain or cornmeal, coocoo in Barbados is the same idea, and Cuban, Jamaican and Puerto Rican versions carry sweet plantain and pork fat. Whatever the base, it is eaten the same way: a piece is pulled off with the fingers, an indentation is pressed in with the thumb, and it is used to scoop soup or stew. It is never eaten alone, and its slightly tangy, near neutral flavour is what lets a heavily seasoned soup do the talking.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minMediumCôte d'Ivoire · Nigerian

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Baked Plantain Loaf

Ripe plantains mashed to a paste, combined with rice flour and turmeric-infused oil, then baked in a loaf tin and sliced. The source places it in Ivory Coast, where plantain in every form is close to universal. It is worth being clear about what this is, because the title is misleading in two directions. It is not sliced plantain roasted in an oven, which is what most people mean by baked plantain. And the recipe uses rice flour as a binder and turmeric for colour, which makes it a plantain loaf or cake, closer in construction to a steamed pudding than to a side dish. The slug says load rather than loaf, which appears to be a typo in the original; the URL has been kept exactly as it is. One ingredient does not fit the stated origin. Chilli sambal is Indonesian and Malay, and it is not part of Ivorian cooking. It may be a substitution the contributor made for a local pepper paste, but the source does not say so, and rather than invent an explanation it has been flagged. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. What matters for cooking is that ripe plantain is sweet and starchy, and that is what makes the loaf hold together.

1 hr 30 minMediumIvory Coast

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Mango Fool

A fool is one of the oldest English desserts still made: fruit purée folded through cream and chilled until it sets. Gooseberry is the classic; mango is the tropical version, and this one is loosened with orange liqueur. Nothing is cooked at any point. The form dates to sixteenth-century England, and the name most likely comes from the French fouler, to crush or press, describing what happens to the fruit. Mango fool is now made widely across South Asia, East Africa and the Caribbean wherever mangoes are abundant, usually with cream or yoghurt and often without any alcohol at all. Two corrections to the source are worth stating. It is filed on this site under drinks, and it is not one, a fool is a set dessert eaten with a spoon. And its prose describes taking the dish off the heat and serving it hot, which does not match its own recipe: there is no heat involved anywhere. The source's nutritional claims have not been carried across either. The Cointreau matters for a practical reason: as written this contains alcohol, which rules it out for children and for anyone avoiding it. Leaving it out costs the dish very little, since the mango and cream are doing the work.

20 minEasyCôte d'Ivoire

Recette de FoodChef · Africook