Recettes

Kuli Kuli

Kuli kuli is a peanut snack eaten across Nigeria, Benin, northern Cameroon and Ghana, and it is one of the most widely recognised street foods in West Africa. It is made from peanuts alone, and the technique is what makes it: the oil is deliberately pressed out of the ground paste before the remaining solids are shaped and fried. That extraction is the point. Removing the oil leaves a dense, dry paste that fries into something genuinely crunchy rather than soft, and it also produces the frying oil as a by-product, so nothing is wasted. It is a piece of processing knowledge that predates industrial oil pressing and is still done by hand in Hausa communities in northern Nigeria, where the snack has its strongest association. It takes different shapes in different places: small sticks, rings, flat discs and irregular pieces are all standard, and the form varies by region and by seller. English names for it, groundnut cake and peanut snack among them, are approximations rather than translations. Kuli kuli is eaten on its own, mixed into garri with sugar and water, crumbled over salad, or served alongside fura and koko. Crushed to a powder it becomes the peanut component of suya spice, which is where most people outside the region encounter it without knowing.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

35 minMediumNigeria · West African

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Plantain Chips

Green plantain sliced paper-thin and fried until crisp. It is a snack made across West Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, and no single country is claimed for it. **One correction to the source, and it matters.** It says plantain chips are "also known as alloco, dodo, or chicharritas". Chicharritas is right, that is the Cuban and Puerto Rican name for exactly this. But alloco and dodo are not chips. Both are the West African dish of *ripe* plantain cut into thick pieces and fried soft: sweet, tender and yielding, the opposite of a crisp. Alloco is the Ivorian name and dodo the Nigerian one, and both have their own pages on this site. Conflating them with chips confuses two quite different foods. The distinction comes down to ripeness. Green plantain is starchy and barely sweet, and sliced thin it dries and crisps. Ripe plantain is full of sugar and moisture; sliced thin it burns before it crisps, and cut thick it fries soft. The source's own instructions are good, do not salt before frying, do not use overripe fruit, season while hot, but they are written as a list of tips rather than as a method. A method has been constructed.

35 minEasy

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Taro Fries

Taro root cut into batons, seasoned and baked or fried until the outside crisps. No country is claimed, and none is implied by the recipe, which is a modern snack rather than a traditional dish. Taro is worth knowing about, because it is not a novelty ingredient anywhere except in Western supermarkets. It is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world, and across West and Central Africa it is a staple under the name cocoyam, the corm cooked and pounded, or worked into soups, and the leaves eaten as a vegetable. Nigerian ekpang nkwukwo and Ghanaian kontomire both belong to that tradition and are on this site. So while taro fries as a format are a contemporary invention, the vegetable itself is thoroughly African as well as Asian and Pacific. What makes it behave differently from potato in the pan is starch. Taro is denser and starchier than potato, with a mild nuttiness and a faint natural sweetness, which is why it crisps well and why the soaking step in the method is worth doing rather than skipping. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. The relevant point for cooking is texture, and that is covered in the tips.

40 minEasy

Recette de Debby · Africook

Baked Plantain Loaf

Ripe plantains mashed to a paste, combined with rice flour and turmeric-infused oil, then baked in a loaf tin and sliced. The source places it in Ivory Coast, where plantain in every form is close to universal. It is worth being clear about what this is, because the title is misleading in two directions. It is not sliced plantain roasted in an oven, which is what most people mean by baked plantain. And the recipe uses rice flour as a binder and turmeric for colour, which makes it a plantain loaf or cake, closer in construction to a steamed pudding than to a side dish. The slug says load rather than loaf, which appears to be a typo in the original; the URL has been kept exactly as it is. One ingredient does not fit the stated origin. Chilli sambal is Indonesian and Malay, and it is not part of Ivorian cooking. It may be a substitution the contributor made for a local pepper paste, but the source does not say so, and rather than invent an explanation it has been flagged. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. What matters for cooking is that ripe plantain is sweet and starchy, and that is what makes the loaf hold together.

1 hr 30 minMediumIvory Coast

Recette de FoodChef · Africook