Recettes

Rooibos Tea (Red Bush Tea)

Rooibos leaves brewed in water and served with or without milk. It is South African, and it is one of very few plants used as a tea that grows nowhere else on earth. Rooibos means red bush in Afrikaans, and the plant, *Aspalathus linearis*, grows only in the Cederberg, a small mountainous area of the Western Cape. Attempts to cultivate it elsewhere have consistently failed, which makes it genuinely unusual: not a plant that happens to be associated with a region but one that is confined to it. The European Union granted it protected designation of origin status in 2021, the first African food to receive it. It is not tea in the botanical sense. Rooibos contains no *Camellia sinensis* and therefore no caffeine at all, and it has very little tannin, which is why it does not turn bitter however long it brews. That is the practical difference: black tea over-steeped becomes astringent, rooibos simply becomes stronger. Red rooibos is oxidised after harvest, which is what produces the colour and the sweeter, fuller flavour. Green rooibos is unoxidised, lighter and more expensive. The source's health claims have not been carried across.

20 minEasySouth Africa

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Boeber (Cape Malay Sweet Milk Drink)

Boeber is a Cape Malay sweet milk drink, thick with vermicelli and sago and scented with cardamom, cinnamon and rose water. It sits somewhere between a drink and a pudding, and Cape Town households do not find the ambiguity a problem. Its place in the calendar is precise. Boeber is served on the fifteenth night of Ramadan, marking the midpoint of the fast for those who have completed the first fifteen days. That single fixed date gives it a weight that a dish eaten year round does not carry: it belongs to a moment, and its appearance signals that the moment has arrived. The drink comes from the Cape Malay community, whose ancestors were brought to the Cape from Indonesia, India and East Africa, and boeber carries the marks of all three. It has close relatives across that map. Malaysians break the fast with bubur lambuk, a porridge; Trinidadian households serve sawine at Eid al-Fitr; kheer and payasam on the Indian subcontinent are its nearest kin, most likely carried to the Cape by enslaved and later indentured Indians. In South Africa itself, the Afrikaans melkkos is the comparable dish. Boeber is what all of those became in one place.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

55 minEasySouth Africa · East Africa

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Umqombothi

Umqombothi is Xhosa beer, brewed from maize meal, maize malt and sorghum malt. It is thick, cloudy, sour smelling and low in alcohol, usually under three per cent, and it is not made to be compared with lager. It is a different category of drink with a different purpose. Its purpose is ceremonial before it is social. In Xhosa practice umqombothi is brewed for the return of the abakwetha, the young men coming back from ulwaluko, the initiation and circumcision rite. It is central when families communicate with the amadlozi, the ancestors, and it appears at traditional weddings, funerals and imbizo, the community meetings where matters are decided. A gathering of consequence has umqombothi at it, and its absence would be noticed as a statement. The drink is not confined to South Africa. Sorghum beer is brewed across the continent under many names: dolo in Burkina Faso, pito in Nigeria, ingwebu among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, which is their word for froth. Brewing is done outdoors over an open fire, cooled at ambient temperature, and the recipes are held within families and passed down rather than written.

3 days 1 hrHardSouth Africa

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Zobo Drink

Zobo is the Nigerian name for a deep red infusion made from dried hibiscus calyces, and it is one of the few drinks that crosses every line in the country, sold from coolers at motor parks, poured at weddings, made at home in large jugs and kept cold for whoever passes through. The same flower travels under different names almost everywhere it is drunk. In Senegal and much of francophone West Africa it is bissap. In Ghana it is sobolo. Across the Caribbean it is sorrel, carried there through the Atlantic trade and now inseparable from Christmas. In Egypt it is karkade. The plant is Hibiscus sabdariffa, and what is steeped is not the petal but the calyx, the fleshy cup left behind after the flower falls. What varies from house to house is what goes in beside it. Ginger and cloves are near universal in the Nigerian version. Beyond that the argument is open, pineapple skin, garden egg leaf, cucumber, lemongrass, a stick of cinnamon. Sweetness is the real dividing line: purists take it plain and tart, while most drinkers add sugar or fruit juice until it turns almost like a cordial. It is caffeine-free, which is part of why it is poured for everyone including children, and it holds its colour for days in the fridge.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

EasyNigeria

Recette de Beatrice · Africook