Recettes

Bran Flakes with Yoghurt and Fruit

This is an assembled breakfast bowl rather than a recipe in the usual sense: shop-bought bran flakes stirred through plain yoghurt, topped with halved red grapes and pomegranate seeds, and finished with chia seeds. It carries no country and no cuisine, and it would be dishonest to give it one. Bran flakes are a commercial breakfast cereal, chia seeds are a South American crop that became a global health food product in the last twenty years, and pomegranate arils and grapes are sold in supermarkets everywhere. Nothing in it is specific to a place. That is not a criticism of the dish, which is a perfectly good breakfast and takes five minutes. It is simply what it is, and it sits in the Worldwide Recipes collection rather than being presented as African food. Africa has a great many breakfast cereals and porridges of its own, ogi and koko from fermented maize or millet, uji in East Africa, ful in Egypt, kunun zaki in northern Nigeria, and any of those would be a different entry entirely.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

5 minEasy

Recette de Nozuko M · Africook

Homemade Yogurt

Yoghurt is milk fermented by bacteria, and making it at home requires two things: milk, and a spoonful of existing yoghurt to introduce the culture. The process is worth understanding because it explains every step. Milk is heated, then cooled to around body temperature, and a live culture is stirred in. The bacteria, chiefly Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, consume the lactose and produce lactic acid. That acid is what gives yoghurt its tang and what causes the milk proteins to coagulate into a set. Everything about the method exists to keep those bacteria in the temperature range where they work. Which is why the two common failures are temperature failures. Milk still too hot kills the culture outright; milk too cool, or a room too cold, and the bacteria work too slowly to set. Longer fermentation gives a tangier, firmer result. Straining it afterwards produces a thicker yoghurt, and taken far enough, something close to labneh or Greek-style yoghurt. **Filed as Worldwide**, fermented milk is genuinely global, with strong traditions across Africa, but the recipe makes no specific national claim.

Easy

Recette de AnthonyJ · Africook

Zlabia

Zlabia, also written zalabia, and a close relative of the jalebi of South Asia, is a spiral of fermented batter piped into hot oil, fried until crisp, then dropped straight into cold syrup. In Algeria it belongs to Ramadan almost exclusively. Through the fasting month it is made and sold in quantity, and it is one of the sweets that appears on the table at iftar alongside the dates and the soup. Its bright orange coils are one of the visual markers of the month. The dish travels across an enormous stretch of the world under variations of the same name, jalebi in India and Pakistan, zoolbia in Iran, zalabia across the Arab world, which reflects centuries of movement along trade and pilgrimage routes. Algerians make it their own way, built on flour, starch and yeast, and scented with rose water and lemon in the syrup. The technique has one governing rule, the same one that decides kanafeh: temperature contrast. Hot fried batter into cold syrup gives a shell that stays crisp while the inside takes on sweetness. Both hot, and it goes limp within minutes. The batter also needs a genuine rest. It is yeasted, and that fermentation is what gives the finished spiral its faint tang against the sugar.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

MediumAlgeria

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Swabaa Zainab

Swabaa Zainab means Zainab's fingers, and the name is the dish. Ridged fingers of semolina and flour dough are fried until crisp and dropped into cold sugar syrup, coming out crunchy outside and soft within. Two stories attach to the name and Egyptians tell both. In one, a clever girl invented the sweet and guests praised it by saying teslam sawabe' Zainab, may God bless Zainab's fingers. In the other, it is named for Sayyida Zainab, granddaughter of the Prophet, who is deeply venerated in Egypt and after whom one of Cairo's central districts is named. Neither account can be verified and both are held affectionately. Its occasions are Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr above all, and it appears at popular celebrations through the year. It belongs to the family of Arab syrup sweets that also produces meshabek and basbousa, and it is described as among the oldest of them, mastered by Arab cooks and carried outward from there. Egyptian households share the recipe between families rather than from books, which is why the proportions shift from one kitchen to the next. It is eaten in the morning as readily as in the evening, with tea, coffee or juice.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

45 minMediumEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook