Recettes

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Pepper Soup with Cocoyam or Plantain

Pepper soup is the thin, fiercely spiced West African broth built on meat or fish, chilli and a set of aromatic seeds that give it a flavour nothing else reproduces. This version comes with cocoyam or plantain cooked in the pot, which turns a light soup into a full meal. The ingredients place it in Cameroon rather than Nigeria, whatever the general framing suggests. Njansang, the crushed seed used as a thickener and flavouring, and bush pepper are Cameroonian pantry staples, and Cameroon pepper, the dark powder ground from dried scotch bonnets, appears throughout. Nigerian pepper soup leans instead on ehuru, the African nutmeg, and on utazi and uziza leaves. They are cousins rather than the same soup. Pepper soup is served in restaurants and bars across the region, and it is genuinely a category rather than a single recipe: catfish, goat meat, chicken, cow foot and assorted offal all have their own versions, several of which are on this site. The source makes extensive medicinal claims for it, that it cures fevers, clears congestion and aids weight loss. None of that has been carried across. It is a hot, restorative bowl of soup, which is a reasonable thing to say about it, and it is not medicine.

2 hrEasyCameroon

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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Fumbua (Congolese Wild Spinach Stew)

Fumbua is chopped wild greens cooked with smoked fish, peanut butter and palm oil into a thick, savoury stew. It comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is eaten in Angola too. **It contains peanut butter, which the title gives no indication of.** The greens the dish is named for are fumbwa, the leaves of *Gnetum africanum*, the same wild forest vine known as eru in Cameroon and afang or okazi in Nigeria. That single plant supports a whole cluster of Central and West African dishes, each with its own name and its own treatment, and fumbua is the Congolese one. Its distinguishing feature within that group is the peanut butter, which thickens the stew and gives it a richness that eru and afang do not have. Peanuts and palm oil doing the work together is characteristic of Congo basin cooking generally, and it is the same combination that underpins moambe, the Congolese national dish. The source is realistic about substitution, and rightly so. Genuine fumbwa leaves are hard to find outside the region, and it recommends spinach, kale or collard greens instead. That is a fair compromise, the texture will be softer and the flavour milder, but the dish still works. The source's low-carbohydrate framing has not been carried across.

55 minEasyDemocratic Republic of the Congo

Recette de Nympha · Africook

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Eru Soup (Cameroonian Wild Vegetable Soup)

Eru soup is finely shredded eru leaves cooked down with waterleaf or spinach, palm oil, crayfish, smoked fish, beef and cow skin. It is Cameroonian, most closely associated with the Bayangi of the southwest, and it is one of the country's best-known dishes. Eru is the common name for two closely related climbing vines, *Gnetum africanum* and *Gnetum buchholzianum*, gathered wild from the forest rather than farmed. The leaves are tough and leathery, which is why the method insists on soaking them for hours, or on cooking them with kanwa. That toughness is also why eru is always shredded very finely, much more finely than any cultivated green would be. The pairing with a soft green is not optional. Waterleaf traditionally, or spinach where waterleaf cannot be found, provides the moisture and bulk that eru alone would not, and the ratio is roughly one to one. Palm oil goes in generously and late. The Nigerian relative is afang soup, made by the Efik and Ibibio of Cross River with the same leaf under the name afang or okazi. The two are close cousins: afang tends to be soupier and eru is more finely ground. They are kept as separate pages here because they are genuinely separate national dishes, and that is flagged. The source's health claims about eru's protein and mineral content have not been carried across.

2 hrMediumCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Ndole

Ndolé is Cameroon's national dish, bitter leaves cooked down with a thick paste of ground peanuts, with meat, fish or prawns, and it is what appears when an occasion needs marking. It comes from the Sawa people of the Littoral province, around Douala, and it has travelled from there to become the dish most associated with Cameroon anywhere in the world. The source's description of its standing is not overstated: it is treated with the seriousness of a flag. The two components are what make it. Ndolé itself is bitter leaf, the same Vernonia amygdalina used in Igbo ofe onugbu, washed repeatedly to draw out the bitterness. The ground peanut paste is the counterweight, giving richness and body that turns what would be a sharp green into something deep and heavy. Getting the balance right between the two is the whole skill of the dish. Too little washing and it is harsh; too much peanut and it is cloying. Prawns, beef, fish or a combination go in, and it is served with plantain, miondo or rice. **Contains peanut**, unavoidably, it is half the dish.

MediumCameroon · African

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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Recettes

Pepper Soup with Cocoyam or Plantain

Fumbua (Congolese Wild Spinach Stew)

Eru Soup (Cameroonian Wild Vegetable Soup)

Ndole

Achu Soup (Yellow Soup)

Mbongo Tchobi (Cameroonian Black Spice Stew)

Njama Njama (Cameroonian Greens)

Recettes les plus populaires

Pepper Soup with Cocoyam or Plantain

Achu Soup (Yellow Soup)

Eru Soup (Cameroonian Wild Vegetable Soup)

Fumbua (Congolese Wild Spinach Stew)

Mbongo Tchobi (Cameroonian Black Spice Stew)

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Recettes à la une

Recettes les plus populaires