Recettes

Pap En Vleis

Pap en vleis is Afrikaans for porridge and meat, and the name describes the whole of it. Maize meal cooked to a smooth, firm mass, and grilled meat beside it. Two components, no sauce required, and a dish that the entire country recognises regardless of which language its household speaks. Its natural setting is outdoors and social. Pap en vleis is what comes off a braai and what is served at a shisanyama, the grill and gathering place where meat is bought, cooked over open fire and eaten on site. The dish exists in the same space as the fire and the people standing around it, and eating it indoors at a table is possible but slightly beside the point. Maize is the foundation of the South African diet, and pap is its most direct expression: nothing added, nothing disguised, judged entirely on texture. The meat is whatever the household or the grill has, and its variability is why the dish has stayed universal rather than becoming the property of any one community. A dish defined by two nouns leaves room for everyone's version.

South Africa55 minLaila

Madeeda Hilba (Sudani Fenugreek Porridge)

Madeeda hilba is a Sudanese fenugreek porridge, thick enough to set like custard, sweetened and enriched with milk. Its name is Arabic: madeeda for the porridge, hilba for the fenugreek that defines it. Its place in the Sudanese year is Ramadan, when it is served as a dessert after the fast is broken. A thick, sweet, milk based dish at the end of a day without food is a specific piece of practical wisdom, and madeeda hilba is one of a small number of dishes that appear on Sudanese tables in that month and rarely outside it. Fenugreek carries a second role. Sudanese households hold that it eases aches and settles the stomach, and the porridge is made for kerijo, the term for a woman who has recently given birth, on the understanding that it supports milk production. That the same dish serves both the Ramadan table and the postpartum household is not a coincidence: fenugreek's association with nursing mothers runs across North and East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and South Asia, wherever the seed is used in cooking. Madeeda hilba is what Sudan does with it.

SudanNympha

Tapalapa

Tapalapa is a West African bread: a dense, chewy loaf with a firm crust, baked long and scored across the top, and sold from roadside ovens and small bakeries rather than from supermarkets. It is bought fresh in the morning, torn rather than sliced, and eaten with whatever the household has. Its role is that of daily bread in the most literal sense. In the countries where it is baked, the tapalapa loaf is a breakfast item, split and filled with beans, egg, fried fish or a spread, and it is also what appears alongside a stew at other times of day. Baked in a wood fired oven, which is how most of it is still produced, it takes on a crust and a faint smokiness that a domestic oven does not reproduce. The bread belongs to a wider West African tradition of European style leavened loaves that were absorbed into local baking and then developed independently, arriving somewhere quite distinct from any European original. Tapalapa is denser and chewier than a baguette, keeps considerably better, and is built to hold a filling without collapsing. The countries of the region that bake it treat it as their own, and the question of exactly where it began is not settled.

2 hrLaila

Rwandan Banana Beignets

Bananas are central to Rwandan agriculture and to Rwandan eating in a way that has no equivalent in most of the world. The country grows dozens of varieties, distinguished by whether they are for cooking, for eating fresh or for brewing, and the plant occupies hillside smallholdings across the country. A snack built on ripe banana is not a novelty in Rwanda; it is the obvious use of what is there. These beignets are small fried cakes of mashed ripe banana in a light batter, crisp at the edge and soft through the middle, sometimes spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg. They are sold from street stalls and market stands, fried in batches through the day, and eaten hot and standing up. At home they appear at gatherings and family celebrations. The variety of banana matters to the result. Rwandan cooks use small, sweet local bananas rather than the large export Cavendish, and the difference is not cosmetic: the smaller fruit is sweeter and denser, which means the batter needs less sugar and the finished beignet is less wet. Where those bananas are not available the recipe still works, but it works differently, and that is worth knowing before judging the result.

Rwanda1 hr 20 minLaila

Nigerian pancakes, thin savoury sweet pancakes made with onion and pepper in the batter

Nigerian Pancake (Diet)

The Nigerian pancake, known colloquially as diet, is thin, dense and slightly crisp at the edges, and it is savoury as often as it is sweet. Onion and ground pepper go into the batter alongside the sugar, which produces something no other pancake tradition attempts: sweet, savoury and faintly hot in the same mouthful. It sits a long way from the thick fluffy pancake of the American breakfast table. There is no raising agent and no attempt at height. The batter is loose, the pan is tilted to spread it thin, and the result has a dense bite and a lacy edge. Nigerians eat it at breakfast with tea, and just as readily as an afternoon snack with a cold drink. What it is served with follows the same double logic as the batter. Honey, sugar, condensed milk, peanut butter and fresh fruit on the sweet side; pap, custard, oats and yogurt drinks such as kunu aya or zobo alongside. It is home food and street food at once, cheap to make from things most Nigerian kitchens already hold, and it belongs to no particular region of the country, which is unusual enough to be worth noting.

Nigeria30 minJennifer

A Nigerian style pasta salad with macaroni, carrots, sweetcorn, peas and boiled egg in a mayonnaise dressing

Simple Pasta Salad Recipe (With Video)

The mayonnaise dressed vegetable salad is a fixture of the Nigerian party table, and it is worth being precise about what that means, because it is not a salad in the European sense at all. There are no leaves at the centre of it. It is built on cooked vegetables, sweetcorn, egg and sometimes macaroni or baked beans, bound in mayonnaise and evaporated milk, and it is served cold in a large bowl alongside jollof rice and fried plantain. It arrived through colonial and post independence British influence on Nigerian catering, and it has been thoroughly domesticated since. The evaporated milk in the dressing is the clearest marker of that: it is not a British addition, and it gives the dressing a sweetness and a thinner consistency than mayonnaise alone. Nigerians of a certain age associate it directly with owambe, the large celebration parties where the food is served in quantity. This particular recipe is a contemporary quick version rather than a documented traditional dish. It uses macaroni, carrot, peas, sweetcorn, lettuce and egg with a mayonnaise and milk dressing, and it is presented by its author as an everyday meal rather than as party food. What can be said with confidence is that it belongs to that broader Nigerian salad practice; what cannot be established from the source is any particular lineage for the recipe itself.

Nigeria35 minAmako Blessing

Yamarita

Yamarita is yam in an egg and flour coating, fried until the crust is crisp and the inside stays soft. It is a Nigerian treatment of the country's most important tuber, and it is straightforwardly a modern dish rather than an inherited one. The name gives away its logic. Yamarita is yam plus the ending of dundun ata or, by the more commonly repeated account, a play on the Yoruba way of naming a fried thing. Whatever the derivation, it belongs to the same family of inventions as yam chips and yam balls: ways of turning a starch that is usually eaten soft into something you can pick up with your fingers at a party. It sits alongside the older Nigerian yam preparations rather than replacing them. Pounded yam is ceremonial, yam porridge is domestic, yam with egg sauce is breakfast, and yamarita is what appears on a small chops platter next to puff puff and spring rolls. That is a real position in Nigerian eating even if it is a recent one, and the dish has spread well beyond the households that first made it.

Nigeria1 hr 5 minLaila

Stir Fry Spaghetti

Stir fried spaghetti is a fixture of contemporary Nigerian home cooking, and it is a genuinely hybrid dish rather than an imported one. Spaghetti is cooked, then returned to a hot pan with vegetables, sausage or shredded chicken and a sauce built on curry powder, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and chicken bouillon, and finished with a cornstarch slurry. The combination is worth reading carefully. Curry powder and chicken bouillon are Nigerian pantry staples, used across the country's cooking in quantities that would surprise anyone outside it. Soy sauce and the stir fry technique come from East Asian cooking, which reached Nigerian kitchens through cookbooks, restaurants and television rather than through migration. Sausage, cabbage and carrot are what is cheap and available. The result belongs to Lagos and Abuja kitchens in the 2010s and 2020s. The source for this recipe provides no cultural context at all and no country, so what can be said about its lineage rests on the ingredients rather than on any documentation. It is presented here as what it is: a quick, flexible, modern dish that Nigerians make regularly, not an inherited preparation with a documented history. Spaghetti is now among the most eaten starches in urban Nigeria, and dishes like this are how it got there.

40 minSobecooks

Moi moi, Nigerian steamed bean pudding wrapped in leaves with a boiled egg inside

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Moi moi is steamed bean pudding, and it is among the small group of Nigerian dishes that turn up everywhere: at breakfast, at parties, at weddings, in lunchboxes, beside jollof rice, and on its own. Black eyed peas or brown beans are soaked, peeled, blended with pepper and onion, seasoned, and steamed until they set. The peeling is what most people underestimate. The bean skins have to come off before blending, because they are what stands between a smooth moi moi and a gritty one, and the quality of the blend decides the texture of the finished dish more than any other single factor. Nigerian markets have heavy duty commercial mills for exactly this reason, and home blenders often cannot manage it. What it is steamed in changes the result and the name. Uma leaves, from Thaumatococcus daniellii, give the best flavour and cook fastest; banana leaves are the common alternative; aluminium foil and heatproof containers are the modern route. Nutmeg is the ingredient people leave out and then wonder why their moi moi does not taste like the one at the party. Egg, corned beef or bone marrow goes into the middle, and moi moi appears as a side to jollof and fried rice, as breakfast with pap or bread, and as a meal in itself.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Fried Yam

Fried yam is called dundun in Yoruba, and it is one of the most eaten street foods in Nigeria. Yam is peeled, cut into thick chips, salted and fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft and floury. It is sold from roadside stands with a pepper sauce, and it is eaten at breakfast, at lunch and late at night. Yam is the crop that Nigeria produces more of than anywhere else in the world, and dundun is the most direct thing to do with it. It costs almost nothing, needs three ingredients, and the frying takes minutes. That combination is what makes it street food: a vendor with a pot of oil and a sack of yam is in business. Its usual partner is akara, the fried bean cake, and the pairing of dundun and akara with a ground pepper sauce is a standard Nigerian breakfast. It is also eaten with egg sauce, with fried fish, with stew, or on its own. The word dundun covers the fried treatment specifically, as distinct from the plain, pounded and porridge treatments of the same tuber, each of which occupies its own place on the Nigerian table.

Nigeria35 minAnthonyJ

Attiéké Steak Alloco

This is a plate rather than a dish: attiéké, steak and alloco together, which is how Ivorians eat all three. Each element is a staple in its own right and the combination is what turns them into a meal. Attiéké is the foundation. It is fermented cassava, grated and steamed into fine pale granules that look like couscous and taste nothing like it, carrying a distinct sourness from a fermentation of a few days. It originated in the coastal districts of Côte d'Ivoire centuries ago and is eaten at every meal of the day by Ivorians of every age. That sour note is the thing people either take to immediately or need a few platefuls to appreciate, in the same way sourdough divides opinion. Alloco is fried ripe plantain, and it is eaten across the region under different names: dodo in Nigeria, makemba in the Congo, amanda in Togo, kelewele in Ghana. Its caramelised sweetness against the sour attiéké is the balance the plate depends on, with the steak providing the third element. In Abidjan the combination is sold from roadside maquis and eaten with the fingers, and any drink at all is considered appropriate alongside it.

Côte d'Ivoire2 hr 50 minCuisine228

Ikokore, an Ijebu Nigerian pottage of grated water yam with palm oil, fish and meat

Ikokore - Nigerian Water Yam Pottage

Ikokore, also called ifokore, is the water yam pottage of the Ijebu people of Ogun State, and the specific yam is what makes it. Water yam, isu ewura in Yoruba, is wetter and more mucilaginous than the white yam used in ordinary yam porridge, and grated rather than cut it produces a texture somewhere between a pudding and a porridge that no other yam reproduces. The grating is the technique. Cut yam gives you yam porridge; grated water yam falls into the hot pot in irregular lumps that set as they cook, which is the texture Ijebu people are looking for and the reason the dish has its own name. Blending is possible but has to be done slowly, since a fine puree loses the lumps entirely. It is community food. Ikokore was made at gatherings, festivals and ceremonies, prepared collectively by women working together, and it carries that association still. Ijebu people are direct about its status, and the pairing they will name without hesitation is ikokore with cold eba. It also improves overnight, which is a claim the source makes and which holds true for most Nigerian pottages.

Nigeria1 hrDebby

Split Pea Soup

Split pea soup is South African winter food, and it belongs to the same domestic tradition as sugar bean soup and other legume stews made to get a household through cold months cheaply. Split peas are ordinary peas dried and split along their natural seam, which lets them break down into a thick purée rather than staying whole. It is usually built on a meat base. Beef bones are the most common choice for the depth they give, though this version uses chicken drumsticks simmered first so their flavour goes into the water the peas then cook in. A meat free version is entirely possible and is made, but most South African households treat the meaty stock as the point of it. What it is served with is not negotiable in the households that make it: bread spread generously with margarine, or hot pap. It is the kind of dish that attaches itself to particular people and particular kitchens, and the contributor who submitted it describes it as their late grandmother's winter standby, made when the grandchildren visited during school holidays. That is how most South Africans encounter it.

South Africa55 minTshego Stone

Ta'ameya, Egyptian fava bean falafel coated in sesame seeds and fried golden

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Ta'ameya is Egyptian falafel, and the difference from every other falafel is the bean. Egypt makes it from dried split fava beans; Lebanon, Israel and most of the Levant use chickpeas, or a mixture. The fava gives a paler, softer, greener interior and a distinctly different flavour, and Egyptians will tell you theirs came first. It is breakfast food above all. Ful wa ta'ameya, fava bean stew with falafel, is the standard Egyptian morning meal, and the phrase names the pair together. The ful is cooked overnight in a large round pot called a qedra, and the ta'ameya is fried fresh in the early hours, so the smell of hot oil on the way to school or work is a shared memory rather than an individual one. Herbs are the other distinction. Parsley, coriander and dill go into the paste in quantity, which is what gives the interior its green colour, and the whole mixture is traditionally pounded in a large stone mortar. Sesame seeds are pressed onto the outside before frying in many versions, giving a crust that chickpea falafel does not have. It is eaten with tahini and baladi bread, and it is one of the cheapest complete meals in the country.

Egypt50 minFoodChef

Fried cassava, golden crisp yuca pieces sprinkled with salt

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Fried cassava is cassava root parboiled, then fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays dense and soft. It is eaten across a great many countries under different names, and the source names none, which is defensible here: versions of it are made in West and Central Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Cassava came from South America and reached Africa through Portuguese Atlantic trade from the sixteenth century, becoming one of the continent's principal staples. Yuca is the Latin American name for the same root, and it is not related to the yucca shrub despite the near-identical spelling. In West Africa it turns up fried as a street snack, and in the Caribbean and Latin America as yuca frita. The texture is what people come back for: crisp outside, dense and slightly buttery inside, quite unlike a potato chip. Two things matter in the making. The fibrous woody core running down the centre of each piece has to come out, since it never softens. And cassava must be peeled and thoroughly cooked before eating, parboiling before frying is not just for texture, and the source's own question about whether frying alone deals with the issue is worth answering properly rather than glossing over.

55 minDebby

Akara

Akara is a fritter of peeled, ground beans, whipped until light and deep fried, and it is one of the most widely eaten breakfasts in West Africa. It is thought to have originated with the Yoruba of Nigeria and is now made across the region and beyond, under names including kosai in Hausa and akara in most of the rest. It crossed the Atlantic. Acarajé in Bahia, Brazil, is the same dish, carried there by enslaved West Africans, and it holds a sacred role in Candomblé as an offering as well as being sold as street food. That direction of travel is worth stating plainly, because the source has it backwards: the dish went from West Africa to Brazil, not the other way round. Two things make good akara. The beans must be peeled, which means soaking and rubbing the skins off, and the paste must be whipped hard enough to hold air, traditionally in a mortar with a pestle. That aeration is what makes akara light rather than dense, and it is why the mixture should be ground with as little water as possible, since a wet paste will not hold air. It is eaten with pap, agidi or bread, and Saturday morning is when Nigerian households most often make it.

Nigeria2 hr 20 minBeatrice

Beans Porridge

Beans porridge is one of the most-eaten dishes in Nigerian homes: beans cooked soft, then finished in a palm oil base with blended pepper, smoked fish, crayfish and ugwu. It is weekday food, made in quantity, and it is as likely to appear at breakfast as at dinner. The palm oil base is what separates it from plain cooked beans. Onion is softened in the oil, blended tomato and pepper go in and are cooked until the oil separates out, and only then do the beans join. That separation is the marker Nigerian cooks watch for: it means the raw tomato has cooked off and the base is ready. Ugwu, the fluted pumpkin leaf, goes in at the end and needs only a few minutes to wilt. It is one of the most widely used greens in southern Nigeria and gives the dish its colour and a mild, slightly nutty flavour. Fried ripe plantain is the standard partner, and the sweetness against the savoury beans is why that pairing has stuck. Yam and rice also work. Despite the beans and vegetables, this is not a vegetarian dish as written: the crayfish and smoked fish are doing much of the seasoning.

Nigeria1 hr 10 minSobecooks

Beef and Potatoes Sauce

This is beef and potatoes cooked down in a seasoned sauce thickened with cornstarch, and the source names no country. Several details place it in a West African kitchen: seasoning powder, scotch bonnet, curry powder and the term Irish potatoes, which is the Nigerian and Ghanaian way of distinguishing the ordinary white potato from sweet potato and yam. Coconut milk is offered as one of three options for the cooking liquid, alongside beef broth and plain water, and that choice changes the dish considerably. With coconut milk it reads closer to a Kenyan or Tanzanian coastal stew; with beef broth it is a straightforward brown stew. The source calls the result a curry sauce in one place, which reflects the curry powder rather than any Indian technique. Sauce here means what it means across West Africa: something spooned over a starch rather than eaten as a soup. It is served with steamed rice or naan, or eaten on its own. The one thing worth adjusting is the timing. Ten minutes of cooking will not tenderise beef cut into bite sized pieces, and a proper braise of forty-five minutes or more is what this needs.

1 hrSobecooks

Plantain Porridge

Plantain porridge is unripe plantain cooked down with vegetables, palm oil and pepper into a thick, savoury one-pot dish, a Nigerian staple that behaves much more like a potato stew than anything the word porridge suggests in English. The ripeness question is the one that decides the dish. Ripe plantain is sweeter and more immediately appealing, and many people default to it. Unripe green plantain is what this dish is properly made with: it is starchy rather than sweet, holds its shape through long cooking rather than collapsing, and takes on the flavour of the pot instead of fighting it with sugar. Cooked ripe, the porridge turns sweet and mushy. Unripe plantain is also lower in sugar and higher in resistant starch, which is why it appears frequently in Nigerian cooking aimed at people managing blood sugar. Ugu or spinach goes in near the end, and crayfish, dried fish or smoked fish are common additions. Palm oil supplies the colour and much of the flavour. It is filling enough to be a meal on its own and is eaten at breakfast as often as at dinner.

NigeriaNympha

Fondant Potatoes golden and crispy outside in a pan, the South African version of the French classic butter-basted potato

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Fondant Potatoes are cylindrical potato portions browned aggressively in butter until deeply golden on both flat ends, then finished in a bath of herb-infused stock in the oven until they are completely tender and have absorbed the fragrant cooking liquid throughout. The result is a potato with a crackling, caramelised exterior and an interior that is so soft and flavourful it seems to dissolve. The preparation is a French restaurant technique that South African home cooks have adopted enthusiastically, particularly for special-occasion meals where the elegance and specific texture of fondant potatoes earns their place alongside quality proteins and sauces.

Pan-AfricanThulisile_

Cheese Omelette

Beaten eggs cooked in butter with grated cheese. No country is claimed, the omelette is French in origin and universal now. The source's explanation of the French and American styles is accurate and worth keeping. A French omelette is cooked fast over higher heat with constant agitation, then rolled into a log while the centre is still soft, and it is pale yellow with no browning at all. An American omelet is cooked more gently, the set edges lifted so uncooked egg runs underneath, and it is folded in half. Both start with the same beaten eggs; the technique is what separates them. The one piece of practical advice worth repeating is about the filling. Cheese for an omelette should be grated finely and used sparingly, because a heavy filling stops the egg sealing around it and the omelette tears when you fold or roll it. This page needs a caveat. The source's own recipe is neither of the styles it describes: it separates the eggs, whips the whites stiff, folds them back in with breadcrumbs, and finishes the top in the oven. That is a soufflé omelette, an old and perfectly good preparation but a different dish from the one the article explains. The method below follows what is written, and the discrepancy is flagged. The source also gives no quantities.

15 minBeatrice

Chips mayai, Tanzanian chips cooked into an omelette, served with kachumbari

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Chips mayai is chips set into an omelette and cooked as a single flat cake. The name is literal, chipsi is chips, mayai is eggs in Swahili, and it is one of the defining Tanzanian street foods, also known as zege. It is sold from stalls across the country and cooked to order: fries already made, eggs beaten with chopped onion, tomato, green pepper and coriander, the two combined in a hot pan and turned once. Minced meat goes in where a heartier version is wanted. It arrives with kachumbari, the East African tomato and onion salad, and tomato sauce. The comparison the source draws with Spanish tortilla is apt and worth thinking about, because the difference is instructive. A tortilla española uses potato sliced thin and cooked gently in oil until soft, folded into egg and set slowly into something dense and custardy. Chips mayai uses chips, already fried, already crisp, and cooks fast, so the potato keeps some of its structure and the egg stays lighter. Same two ingredients, entirely different results, and the potato cut is what does it. It is eaten at any hour: breakfast, a late-night meal after drinking, or a snack in between. Nothing about it is formal.

Tanzania30 minBlessing

French toast made with thick slices of brioche, baked with chocolate

French Toast with Brioche

Thick slices of brioche soaked in a sweetened egg, milk and cream custard, then baked with chocolate and butter. No country is claimed. French toast in one form or another is eaten across Europe and beyond, and it is considerably older than its English name, a version appears in Apicius, the Roman recipe collection, and it is known in France as pain perdu, lost bread, because its purpose was to rescue bread that had gone stale. The bread choice is the substance of the recipe and the source is right about it. Brioche and challah are both enriched doughs, made with eggs and butter, which means they are structurally sturdier and can absorb a great deal of custard without collapsing. Plain sandwich bread turns to mush. Cutting the slices thick, around 2 cm, matters for the same reason. Baking rather than pan-frying is the other decision here, and it solves a real problem. Thick slices fried in a pan brown on the outside long before the custard in the middle has set, which is why so much home-made French toast is soggy inside. The oven cooks it through evenly. The method has a copy error worth noting: it refers to baguette slices twice, having specified brioche in the ingredients. Brioche is correct.

45 minCuisine228

Msemen (Moroccan Layered Flatbread)

Msemen is a Moroccan flatbread made by spreading dough paper-thin, dotting it with butter and semolina, and folding it into a square, twice, before frying. The folding is what creates the layers, and the layers are the entire dish. The name is a description of the method. Msemen means oiled in Arabic, and the recipe uses a great deal of oil: on the work surface, on the hands, in the dough, dotted through the folds. That is not excess, it is technique. Oiled hands slide over the dough rather than tearing it, which is how you get it thin enough to see the surface through. The double fold is the structural step. Spread thin, dot with butter and semolina, fold into thirds, dot again, fold into thirds the other way. Each fold multiplies the layers, and the semolina between them keeps them from fusing, which is exactly the job flour does in a laminated puff pastry, arrived at from a completely different direction. Two things separate msemen from its Moroccan neighbours. Beghrir is the yeasted thousand-hole pancake, a different thing entirely. Rghaif is a broader family name that msemen belongs to. Cooking them in the order they were folded matters. The first ones have rested longest and spread most easily.

Morocco1 hr 30 minBlessing

Oven-Baked French Toast

Thick slices of challah or brioche dipped in a cinnamon custard, arranged in a dish and baked. No country is claimed; French toast is European and very old. The difference between this and pan-fried French toast is worth being clear about, because both exist on this site. Pan-frying gives a browned, slightly crisp surface and cooks in minutes, but thick slices often stay wet in the middle. Baking cooks everything through evenly and lets you make eight or ten portions at once instead of two at a time, which is the actual reason people bake it. The trade-off is that you lose the crust. The overnight option is the one worth taking. Assembled the night before and refrigerated, the custard soaks right through the bread rather than sitting near the surface, and the result is noticeably better. It also means the dish goes straight from fridge to oven in the morning, which is presumably the point of a brunch recipe. Bread choice is not negotiable. Challah and brioche are enriched doughs, made with eggs and butter, which gives them the structure to absorb a lot of custard without collapsing. Plain sliced bread turns to mush. A separate pan-fried French toast page exists on this site and the two compete for some searches.

55 minDebby

Shrimp and Egg Stir-Fry

Shrimp cooked briefly in hot oil and folded through softly scrambled egg. It is Cantonese, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. The Chinese name explains the whole dish. Huá dàn xiā rén, 滑蛋虾仁, contains the word huá, meaning slippery or smooth, and that texture is the point: the egg is meant to be soft, silky and barely set, not dry and crumbly. Everything in the method exists to achieve it. Two details do the work. The eggs must be at room temperature, which the source flags as very important and is right about, cold eggs hitting a hot wok seize and set into firm curds instead of staying soft. And the egg goes in last, over the cooked shrimp, and is folded rather than stirred, coming off the heat while it still looks slightly underdone. The shrimp needs almost no time at all. They are done the moment they turn pink and curl, which is a matter of a minute or so, and shrimp cooked past that point go rubbery. Sesame oil goes into the beaten egg rather than the pan, which is unusual and deliberate, it seasons from within rather than burning off. It is a good example of what the source calls less is more.

20 minCuisine228

Recettes

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Split Pea Soup

Ikokore - Nigerian Water Yam Pottage

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Cheese Omelette

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Plantain Porridge

Fried Yam

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Pap En Vleis

Madeeda Hilba (Sudani Fenugreek Porridge)

Tapalapa

Rwandan Banana Beignets

Nigerian Pancake (Diet)

Simple Pasta Salad Recipe (With Video)

Yamarita

Stir Fry Spaghetti

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Fried Yam

Attiéké Steak Alloco

Ikokore - Nigerian Water Yam Pottage

Split Pea Soup

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Akara

Beans Porridge

Beef and Potatoes Sauce

Plantain Porridge

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Cheese Omelette

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

French Toast with Brioche

Msemen (Moroccan Layered Flatbread)

Oven-Baked French Toast

Shrimp and Egg Stir-Fry

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

Cheese Omelette

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Plantain Porridge

Fried Yam

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Pap En Vleis

Madeeda Hilba (Sudani Fenugreek Porridge)

Tapalapa

Rwandan Banana Beignets

Nigerian Pancake (Diet)

Simple Pasta Salad Recipe (With Video)

Yamarita

Stir Fry Spaghetti

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Fried Yam

Attiéké Steak Alloco

Ikokore - Nigerian Water Yam Pottage

Split Pea Soup

Ta'ameya (Egyptian Falafel)

Fried Cassava (Yuca)

Akara

Beans Porridge

Beef and Potatoes Sauce

Plantain Porridge

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Cheese Omelette

Chips Mayai (Tanzanian Chip Omelette)

French Toast with Brioche

Msemen (Moroccan Layered Flatbread)

Oven-Baked French Toast

Shrimp and Egg Stir-Fry