Recettes

Ayamase Sauce

Ayamase is the green pepper stew of southwestern Nigeria, known widely as designer stew, and it is the sibling of ofada stew rather than a version of it. The difference is the pepper: ofada uses red bell peppers and tomatoes and comes out red; ayamase uses green bell peppers and unripe scotch bonnets and comes out dark green. Bleached palm oil is what defines the technique. The oil is heated until it stops being red and turns clear, which changes its flavour entirely, removing the sweetness and leaving something deeper and more savoury. It is a step that fills a kitchen with smoke and it cannot be skipped without producing a different sauce. The rest is southwestern Nigerian cooking at full strength: locust beans for fermented depth, ground crayfish, assorted meat including tripe and cow skin, and whole hard eggs that sit in the sauce and take on its flavour. The sign that it is finished is the oil floating to the surface. It is served with ofada rice, the local short-grain rice, or with white rice or rice and beans, and it appears at parties and in restaurants as much as at home.

50 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Cook with Sandy · Africook

African Salad (Abacha and Ugba)

African salad is the Igbo dish of abacha and ugba, and it is a salad only in the loosest sense. Abacha is cassava that has been cooked, shredded on a special grater, soaked overnight, rinsed and dried in the sun. Ugba is fermented oil bean seed, cooked for hours, sliced, rinsed and left to ferment. Neither is cooked when the dish is assembled. That is the striking thing about it: almost the entire preparation happens off the stove. Palm oil is turned into a thick yellow paste by working it with potash solution, and everything else is folded into that paste in sequence. The order matters, and Igbo cooks are firm about it, because the components will not distribute evenly if they all go in together. It belongs to ceremony. At an Igbo wedding, abacha is reserved for the important guests, and it is served with chilled palm wine, which is the pairing anyone from the region will name. Despite being filling enough to be a meal, it is treated as a snack rather than a main course. It can be served cold or warmed briefly, and the choice between the two is a matter of household preference rather than correctness.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minMediumNigeria

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Fura Da Nono

Fura da nono is millet and milk, and the name says exactly that: fura is the millet ball, nono is the fermented milk. Spiced millet dough is rolled into balls, then mashed into soured milk and drunk from a bowl or a calabash. It is both a meal and a drink and Nigerians do not find that ambiguous. It belongs to the Sahel and to the peoples who move across it. The Fulani, the Hausa and the Zarma-Songhai all make it, and it is eaten across northern Nigeria, Niger and Ghana. Its logic is the logic of cattle keeping: milk that will not keep in the heat is soured deliberately, and millet that grows where little else does is what goes with it. The way it is sold explains its form. Vendors carry the fura balls and the nono separately and combine them to order, mashing the millet into the milk in front of the customer, which lets them sell two products from one stand and keeps the fura from going soggy before it is bought. In a hot climate, a cold, sour, filling drink that costs very little is a serious thing rather than a refreshment, and fura da nono has held its place in northern Nigerian life without needing to modernise.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

30 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Debby · Africook

Hausa Masa

Masa, also called waina, is a fermented rice cake from the Hausa of Northern Nigeria: small, round, spongy underneath and browned on the surface, cooked in a dedicated pan with shallow round wells. It belongs to the Hausa, one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and it is among the dishes most closely identified with them. The fermentation is what makes it. Rice is soaked, ground with cooked rice, and left to rise overnight, and the mild sourness that develops is what separates masa from any other rice pancake. The holes that open across the surface as it cooks are the visible evidence of that ferment, and a masa without them has not been left long enough. It is breakfast food and snack food, sold from street stands and in markets across the north, and it appears at celebrations and family gatherings. What goes with it varies by household and by time of day: honey, groundnut oil, a peppery stew, or yaji, the same spice blend used on suya. Masa is a dish that has held its association with one people while spreading well beyond them, which is a fair description of how Hausa food generally has travelled through Nigeria.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hrMediumNigeria

Recette de Laila · Africook