Recettes Nigeria

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.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

African Native Sauce

Native sauce is a palm oil sauce with smoked fish, crayfish and pumpkin leaves, made in southern Nigeria and served alongside roasted or plain starches. Native in this context means locally sourced and traditionally seasoned rather than anything about the technique, and it distinguishes the sauce from tomato-based stews. What defines it is the absence of tomato. Palm oil, blended pepper, onion, crayfish and smoked fish carry the whole thing, and the result is darker, oilier and considerably more savoury than a stew built on tomato. The same principle produces native jollof rice and the family of dishes described as native across southeastern Nigeria. Ugwu goes in at the end and needs only a few minutes to wilt while keeping its colour. The sauce is quick, around twenty-five minutes from start to finish, which is unusual for a Nigerian sauce with this depth of flavour, and it comes from the fact that the smoked fish and crayfish are already concentrated. It is served with roasted yam or plantain, or with any starch, and it functions as a sauce to be spooned over rather than as a soup to be eaten with a swallow.

25 minEasyNigeria · African

Recette de Sobecooks · 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