Recettes

Buka Stew With Assorted Meats (Obe Ata)

Buka stew is the pepper stew of western Nigeria, named for the places that made it famous. A buka is a small, cheap local eating house, and the buka is where working Lagos eats: fresh food, several dishes, no cooking at home, and no pretensions about any of it. The stew belongs to those kitchens and carries their signature. It is a pepper stew rather than a tomato stew, and the distinction is the whole recipe: tatashe and rodo dominate and tomato is kept back, which is the reverse of the everyday Nigerian stew ratio. The palm oil is bleached first, heated until it changes character, and that step produces the specific aroma that makes a buka identifiable from the street. Seasoning is kept minimal on purpose, because the peppers and the oil are doing the work. It is made with assorted meats, the cow parts that a household kitchen might skip and a buka never does, deep fried before they go into the pot. The women who run these kitchens are known collectively in Nigerian speech as Iya Basira, a name that stands in for all of them, and mama put is what the roadside version is called. Buka stew is eaten with white rice, beans, yam, fried plantain or agege bread.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minMediumNigeria

Recette de Jennifer · Africook

Red-Red Stew

Red red is a Ghanaian black-eyed pea stew, and the name is a plain description of what it looks like. The beans are cooked in red palm oil, zomi, with tomato, and both give the dish the deep rust colour it is named for. It is usually vegetarian, which is worth noting because it is unusual among West African stews in being so by default rather than by adaptation. The beans carry it, and the palm oil provides the richness that meat would otherwise supply. Some households add fish or meat, but the standard version does not need it. Zomi is not interchangeable with ordinary red palm oil. It is palm oil that has been heated and infused, and it carries a deeper, slightly smoky flavour that is much of what makes red red taste Ghanaian rather than generically bean-stewed. The classic accompaniment is fried plantain, and the pairing is close to inseparable, the sweetness of ripe plantain against the savoury, oily beans is the whole balance of the meal. Gari is often served alongside too. It is cheap, filling and slow-cooked, and it is street food as much as home food across Ghana. Black-eyed peas are the usual bean, but the dish tolerates others without complaint.

EasyGhana

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Halabessa (Egyptian Chickpea Drink)

Halabessa is chickpeas cooked in a spiced tomato broth and served hot in a glass, with a spoon for the chickpeas and a straw for the liquid. It is Egyptian winter street food, and the way it is served is the most interesting thing about it. Nothing else is quite drunk this way. Halabessa occupies a category between a soup and a drink, it is sold from kiosks along the Nile and the Mediterranean corniche, in cafés and clubs, and the glass with both spoon and straw is standard rather than a novelty. It is also called hummus el-sham, which translates roughly as Levantine chickpeas. The setting matters to how it is understood in Egypt. The kiosks are strung with coloured lights, they play classic Egyptian music, and halabessa is what you drink standing by the water on a cold night. The source is right that eating it is as much about the occasion as the food. The broth is what carries it: bouillon, grated tomato, garlic, cumin and pepper, sharpened with lemon at the end and served with extra lemon and chilli on the side. Dried chickpeas soaked overnight are not optional, tinned ones give you no broth, and the broth is half the drink. The source's brand-specific bouillon note has been generalised.

3 hr 40 minEasyEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook