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

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.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

40 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook

Nkwobi (Spicy Cow Foot)

Nkwobi is cow foot cooked until gelatinous, then dressed in a thick, spiced palm oil paste and served warm in a wooden bowl. It is Igbo, and it is the definitive Nigerian beer-parlour dish. Its reputation is as something ordered out rather than made at home, a dish for exclusive restaurants and drinking spots, eaten in the evening with a cold beer. That reputation is partly deserved and partly an accident of presentation: it arrives looking elaborate, and the technique is genuinely simple. The paste is what defines it. Palm oil is emulsified with akanwu, potash, also called kaun or edible limestone, which thickens it into a smooth yellow cream rather than leaving it as oil. That reaction is the trick of the dish and is what separates nkwobi from cow foot in sauce. It is commonly confused with isi ewu, which is the same treatment applied to goat head. The paste and the presentation are near identical; the meat is entirely different. Utazi leaf, sliced very fine, goes on top, along with sliced onion. **Uses potash.** Culinary quantities are traditional, but it should be used precisely rather than by eye.

55 minMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Gizdodo (Gizzard and Plantain)

Gizdodo is a portmanteau and a fair description: gizzard plus dodo, the Yoruba word for fried ripe plantain. Cooked gizzards and fried plantain cubes are combined in a spicy pepper sauce, and the two textures against each other are the whole point. It is party food and home food in equal measure across Nigeria. At an owambe it appears as a side alongside jollof rice, and it works as a starter or a substantial snack in its own right. The pairing with jollof is close to standard. Gizzards are the reason it works. They are muscular and dense, and they need proper cooking, about twenty-five minutes, before they are fried, at which point they become firm and chewy in a way that holds up against the soft sweetness of the plantain. Chicken gizzards are the usual choice and turkey or duck both substitute. The technique that matters is draining the blended pepper mix through a sieve before it goes in the pan, which removes excess water so the sauce clings rather than pooling. This recipe carries no quantities at all, which is common in Nigerian home recipes and is flagged here.

55 minEasyNigeria

Recette de Jennifer · Africook