Recettes Togo

Liver Fried Rice

Liver fried rice is fried rice built around beef liver, and it belongs to the West African fried rice tradition rather than the Chinese one. Liver is a common and inexpensive protein across the region, and using it here gives a mineral depth that chicken or shrimp do not. The rice is where the technique sits. It is cooked in seasoned chicken stock rather than water, so it carries flavour before it is ever fried, then cooled completely, spread on a tray and refrigerated, or briefly frozen, before it goes into the pan. Cold rice is the single most important thing in any fried rice: fresh, warm rice releases steam and starch and turns to a sticky mass, while cold grains separate and fry. Liver is unforgiving in the other direction. Cooked correctly it is tender and almost creamy; cooked a minute too long it goes tough and dry, and there is no recovering it. It is cooked briefly in liquid and then fried, and it goes into the wok before the vegetables so it is not sitting over heat while everything else cooks. The dish is served with fried chicken, which is how the source presents it and which makes it a substantial meal rather than a side.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 40 minMediumTogo · Nigerian

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook

Merveilles

Merveilles are thin strips of fried sweet dough dusted with icing sugar, and they are sold as street food in Togo and Senegal. They are crunchy rather than soft, closer to a biscuit than a doughnut, and comparable to the fried pankere sold in Nigeria. The pastry is European in origin and travelled with colonisation. Its original name is Fasnachtschuechli in German-speaking Switzerland, and it appears in Italy as frittelle di carnevale, both carnival pastries eaten in the weeks before Lent. French speakers took the name merveilles, meaning wonders, and it is under that name that the pastry reached francophone West Africa. That it arrived from Europe does not make it any less genuinely a Togolese and Senegalese street food now. It is fried and sold locally, eaten locally, and made at home. What it is not is a dish with African origins, and the About says so rather than implying otherwise. Nutmeg in the dough is a small local touch. The source's method calls for yeast, which does not appear in its ingredient list, and no rise time is given, so the dough as written is unleavened.

30 minEasyTogo · Senegalese

Recette de AnthonyJ · Africook

Pig Feet Stew

Pig feet, also called trotters and pettitoes, are cooked slowly in a tomato and pepper sauce until the connective tissue breaks down. It is eaten across West Africa and well beyond, and the technique is the same everywhere: low heat, long time. Trotters have thick skin and a great deal of robust connective tissue, which is exactly why they need it. Cooked quickly they are unpleasant; cooked slowly they turn soft and the collagen dissolves into the sauce, giving it a body that no thickener reproduces. That gelatinous quality is the point of the cut rather than a side effect. Cuts like this are eaten across the continent and are treated as good rather than as second best, which is worth stating plainly given how they are often regarded elsewhere. Cow foot, ponmo, shaki and chicken feet occupy the same place in West African cooking. The one ingredient worth flagging is the pinch of potash or baking soda in the marinade, which is used to help tenderise, and should be kept to the small quantity given. The source's health claims about collagen and skin have not been carried across.

1 hr 30 minEasyTogo

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook