Recettes

Vermicelle Poulet

Vermicelle poulet is Senegalese celebration food that happens to be very easy to make, which is an unusual combination. Broken rice vermicelli is toasted in butter and steamed, and braised chicken in a mustard and onion sauce is served over it. That is the whole dish. It appears at weddings, baptisms and the gatherings that mark occasions, and it is found in the most modest Senegalese households and in the country's best restaurants without much changing between them. Its status comes from the vermicelli rather than the technique, since imported wheat and rice noodles carried a cost and a cachet that plain rice did not. The sauce is the Senegalese signature. Yellow mustard and onion cooked down together, sharpened with vinegar, is the same base that carries chicken yassa, and it is one of the most recognisable flavour combinations in the country's cooking. The mustard is not a French borrowing so much as a French ingredient absorbed completely into a Senegalese idiom. Thickened lightly with flour and spooned over toasted vermicelli, it makes a dish that looks like far more work than it is.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minEasySenegal

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Pan-Toasted Jollof Rice

Parboiled rice toasted in butter and oil before it meets the stew, then finished under foil. It is a Nigerian method, and the point of it is that it does not burn. Conventional jollof demands attention. The rice sits on the base of the pot absorbing stew, and without stirring and checking it catches, which is why the bottom layer of a party jollof is either the best part or a disaster depending on the cook. Toasting the rice in fat first coats each grain, which both slows absorption and stops the grains sticking to the pot and to each other. The result is a jollof you can put down and walk away from. That trade-off is worth understanding. You lose the smoky bottom layer that party jollof is prized for, and you gain a dish that cooks unattended and comes out evenly. The other instruction that matters is the source's own: season and fry the stew thoroughly before the rice goes in. Because the rice is coated in fat, it absorbs more slowly and takes on less seasoning from the liquid, so the stew has to be right before they meet. Washing the rice and letting it dry properly beforehand matters for the same reason: wet rice will not toast. This competes with several jollof pages on this site, which is flagged.

1 hr 25 minEasyNigeria · West African

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Ghana Abomu Recipe

Abom, written abomu here, is the simpler of the two main Ghanaian cocoyam leaf preparations. Where the tomato based kontomire stew is thickened with ground melon seed and cooked in a pot, abom is steamed leaves ground in an asanka with onion, pepper and ginger, finished with hot palm oil poured over the top. It is closer to a relish than to a stew. The asanka is the tool that defines it. The ridged earthenware bowl grinds rather than purees, and everything in an abom passes through it: the aromatics first, then the salted fish, then the greens, each stage mashed into the last. That produces a coarse, uneven texture that a blender cannot reproduce and that Ghanaians would notice immediately. It is Asante food particularly, and it is assembled rather than cooked in the ordinary sense. Plantain, egg, avocado and several kinds of fish, koobi, kakro, smoked mackerel and smoked turkey, go onto the plate around the greens, and hot palm oil is ladled over at the end. Kontomire is the proper leaf. Ghanaians abroad substitute spinach, which the source acknowledges directly, and the result is milder and softer than the cocoyam leaf gives.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 20 minMediumGhana

Recette de Fante_Oh3maa_ · Africook

Jollof Couscous

Jollof couscous applies the jollof method to North African couscous, and it sits at the meeting point of two quite separate West and North African traditions. The tomato and pepper base is built as it would be for jollof rice; the grain is steamed couscous rather than long grain rice. Couscous itself is North African, rolled from semolina and traditionally steamed several times in a couscoussier until it is light and separate rather than gummy. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia it is served with a spiced vegetable stew and meat, which is a different proposition entirely from what happens here. Its texture is often compared to attiéké, the fermented cassava of Côte d'Ivoire, though the two share only appearance. Jollof itself is contested territory between Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and beyond, and applying it to couscous is a modern move rather than an inherited one. The source attributes this version to Senegal, which is where the jollof tradition originates in the thieboudienne of the Wolof people, though the framing in the original text is Nigerian. It is quick food, twenty minutes from start to finish, and it is honest about being an adaptation.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minEasySenegal

Recette de Cuisine228 · Africook