Recettes

Ghana Jollof Rice

Ghanaian jollof rice is defined against its rivals as much as on its own terms, and Ghanaians are entirely comfortable with that. It is a tomato based rice, aromatic rather than fiery, seasoned with curry powder, garlic and ginger, and cooked in basmati. Every one of those choices is a position in an argument. The rice is the clearest one. Ghanaians use basmati, which stays separate and perfumed and carries the aromatics; Nigerians use long grain parboiled, which absorbs the tomato base and takes on the smoke. Neither is a mistake. They produce genuinely different dishes that share a name, and the preference in each country is consistent enough to be a national marker. The jollof rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria is the continent's most famous culinary argument, conducted on social media, at dinner tables and in the press with an intensity that has very little to do with rice and a great deal to do with two confident countries enjoying themselves. The honest position on the origin is that the dish descends from the Senegambian rice tradition rather than from either country. The honest position on which is better is that both are right within their own tradition, and Ghanaians serve theirs at every social gathering and celebration that matters.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 20 minMediumGhana

Recette de Debby · Africook

Thieboudienne

Thieboudienne is the national dish of Senegal and the origin point of the rice tradition that spread along the whole West African coast. The name is Wolof and means rice and fish, which understates it considerably: the dish involves a stuffed whole fish, a long braise of tomato and vegetables, and a rice cooked in the liquid all of that produced. Its history reaches the modern table through oral tradition rather than through documents, and it carries more than one account. One attributes the dish to the city of Saint-Louis in the nineteenth century, where a version known as thieboudienne Penda Mbaye was prepared. Another holds that it emerged in a colonial governor's kitchen when rice was substituted for barley during a shortage. Senegalese tradition names Penda Mbaye, and that named attribution matters in Senegal, where the dish is held as an inheritance with an author rather than an anonymous custom. It is eaten from a large communal platter, each person working the section in front of them, and it is what opens a significant family lunch. Its relatives are everywhere: riz gras in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea, jollof rice across Anglophone West Africa, and Savannah red rice in the American South, which many hold was carried there and adapted by Creole cooks.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 15 minHardSenegal

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Ablo, also written abolo, is a steamed rice cake with a light, springy crumb, eaten across the coastal stretch of West Africa where Togo, Benin, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire meet. It is white, faintly sweet, faintly sour, and built to be torn and dipped. Its texture is the result of fermentation rather than of any raising agent alone. Rice is soaked, ground and left to rise, and the sourness that develops in that time is the difference between an ablo and a plain steamed dumpling. In Benin the cakes are steamed wrapped in banana leaf bundles, which leaves a green, faintly grassy note that a metal mould cannot give. Ablo occupies the position that bread occupies elsewhere: it is the mild thing on the plate that the sauce is for. It is eaten with thick stews and grilled fish, and it belongs equally to a party table and a home meal. In a food culture where most starches are pounded or stirred, a steamed and leavened cake is a distinct approach, and one that Togolese, Beninese, Ghanaian and Ivorian cooks share across their borders.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

2 hr 10 minMediumBenin

Recette de AnthonyJ · Africook

Liberian Jollof Rice

Jollof rice belongs to the whole of West Africa, and every country that claims it claims it as its own. The Liberian version sits inside that family without being anyone's copy. It is a tomato rice, built on long grain parboiled grains, sweetened by onion and sweet pepper, sharpened with garlic and ginger, and carrying a smokiness that Liberian cooks treat as the mark of a pot done properly. Rice is the centre of the Liberian diet rather than an accompaniment to it, and a one pot rice that can be built around whatever protein a household has, or around no protein at all, earns its place in an everyday kitchen as readily as at a gathering. It feeds a room from a single vessel, which is part of why it survives. Across West Africa the jollof pot is argued over with genuine feeling, and the loudest of those arguments runs between Nigeria and Ghana. Liberia is rarely named in that particular fight. That says less about the quality of the Liberian pot than about who is holding the microphone.

1 hr 20 minEasyLiberia · West African

Recette de Laila · Africook