Recettes

Afang Soup

Afang soup belongs to the Efik and Ibibio people of Cross River and Akwa Ibom in southeastern Nigeria, and it is built on two vegetables that do quite different jobs. Afang, okazi to the Igbo, and known botanically as Gnetum africanum, is a tough, wiry forest leaf with a faintly bitter edge. It is sliced extremely finely, almost shredded, because whole it would be unpleasant to eat. Waterleaf is the counterweight: soft, quick to wilt, and full of moisture, which is what gives the soup its body without much added liquid. The pairing is the point, and it is what separates afang from edikang ikong, the other great vegetable soup of the same region. Edikang ikong uses waterleaf and ugu, the pumpkin leaf, and reads as sweeter and greener. Afang uses waterleaf and okazi, and carries that characteristic bitterness. People from the region can tell them apart instantly, and the leaf is the whole distinction. Around the vegetables sits an assortment that scales with the household budget, beef, shaki, dried and fresh fish, periwinkle, crayfish, palm oil, pepper. It is a soup that has long been read as a marker of a generous table, and it is served with any of the swallows.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

10 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

African Native Sauce

Native sauce is a palm oil sauce with smoked fish, crayfish and pumpkin leaves, made in southern Nigeria and served alongside roasted or plain starches. Native in this context means locally sourced and traditionally seasoned rather than anything about the technique, and it distinguishes the sauce from tomato-based stews. What defines it is the absence of tomato. Palm oil, blended pepper, onion, crayfish and smoked fish carry the whole thing, and the result is darker, oilier and considerably more savoury than a stew built on tomato. The same principle produces native jollof rice and the family of dishes described as native across southeastern Nigeria. Ugwu goes in at the end and needs only a few minutes to wilt while keeping its colour. The sauce is quick, around twenty-five minutes from start to finish, which is unusual for a Nigerian sauce with this depth of flavour, and it comes from the fact that the smoked fish and crayfish are already concentrated. It is served with roasted yam or plantain, or with any starch, and it functions as a sauce to be spooned over rather than as a soup to be eaten with a swallow.

25 minEasyNigeria · African

Recette de Sobecooks · Africook

African Pepper Sauce

Pepper sauce is the West African condiment: blended hot pepper cooked down in oil or water until thick, spooned onto anything that needs lifting. It goes with puff puff, grilled meat, fish and eggs, and there is scarcely a dish it is not served alongside somewhere in the region. What distinguishes it from a hot sauce elsewhere is what it does not have. There is no vinegar, no fermentation and usually no sugar. The base is pepper, salt, oil and often a stock cube, and the texture is thick and coarse rather than pourable. Recipes vary with the cook, but hot pepper is the constant, and habanero and scotch bonnet are the usual choices. Heat is adjustable and worth adjusting. Most West African pepper sauces are fierce, and this one uses three habaneros against four bell peppers, which is moderate by regional standards. Deseeding the habaneros, using fewer, or leaving them out entirely all work. The other choice is water or oil: water reduces away and gives a lighter sauce that keeps about a week; oil floats to the top when the sauce is done and seals it, which keeps it considerably longer. No country is named, and the sauce belongs to the whole region rather than to one.

30 minEasy

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Peanut Butter Soup

Peanut butter soup, nkatenkwan in Twi, is one of Ghana's defining dishes, and versions of it are cooked right across West Africa under different names. It is built by combining peanut butter, or blended roasted peanuts, with stock and a tomato base, then simmering until the oil separates and rises. That separation is the marker of a finished soup and it takes time; rushed, the soup tastes raw and pasty. The dish belongs to a wider family. Nigerian groundnut soup and Senegalese mafé share the same foundation, and the differences are in what goes with it, meat, chicken or fish, and the vegetables that accompany. It is served most classically with fufu, the pounded cassava and plantain swallow, and also with rice or omo tuo, the rice balls. The soup is naturally rich and quite heavy, and it is usually made with chilli to balance that. Without heat it can be cloying. Peanuts are one of the most serious food allergens, and there is no version of this dish without them.

30 minEasyGhana · African

Recette de Blessing · Africook