Recettes

Dombolo, a South African steamed bread, cut into wedges and served with stew

Dombolo (Dumplings or Steamed Bread)

Dombolo is South African steamed bread, and it occupies a particular place in the country's kitchens because it is bread that never sees an oven. Where a loaf is baked in dry heat, dombolo rises under a lid over water, and the result is soft, dense and slightly damp in a way no baked bread achieves. It belongs to the stew. Dombolo is not eaten alone and is not a side thought about separately. It arrives with chicken stew, beef stew, oxtail, lamb or tripe, and its job is to take up the gravy that the meat has spent hours building. In Zulu households the same technique produces jeqe, and the distinction between the two names is one that South Africans hold firmly even when it is drawn differently from one family to the next: broadly, jeqe is steamed as its own loaf, while dombolo is the dough set to rise over the pot the stew is already in. It is Sunday food and gathering food, made in quantity, cut into wedges at the table, and eaten with the hands.

South Africa3 hr 30 minAmara

Ablo, a steamed rice cake from Benin and Togo, served warm alongside a stew

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.

Benin2 hr 10 minAnthonyJ

Banana Soup

Bananas and their cooking relatives are among the most important foods in Africa's Great Lakes region and across its humid tropical belt. In Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DR Congo and parts of Tanzania and Kenya, the plant is a staple rather than a fruit: green cooking bananas are steamed, mashed, worked into stews and eaten daily, and the sweet ripe banana is only one use among many. That distinction between cooking banana and ripe fruit matters for placing this recipe. It uses ripe bananas, blended smooth with coconut milk and finished with curry powder and turmeric, which puts it closer to the spiced coconut cooking of the Swahili coast than to the green banana dishes of the interior. The pairing of coconut milk with warm spice is genuinely East African coastal; the blended sweet banana base is not a documented preparation from any specific tradition. This is best understood as a contemporary dish rather than an inherited one. It uses African ingredients and an East African coastal flavour logic, but no country, community or lineage can honestly be attached to it on the evidence available. What it does well is show what ripe banana does under savoury treatment, which is a legitimate thing for a recipe to do without claiming a heritage it does not have.

50 minLaila

Kenkey

Kenkey is fermented maize dough, wrapped in banana leaf or corn husk and steamed into firm parcels. It is sour, and the sourness is the whole character of it. The fermentation runs one to three days before anything is cooked, and a kenkey that has been rushed is immediately identifiable to anyone who eats it regularly. It comes from the Ga people of Accra and the surrounding coast, who have been making it for centuries, and it has spread across Ghana without losing that origin. Ga kenkey and Fante kenkey are recognised as distinct: the wrapping differs, and so does the ratio of fermented to fresh dough, which changes how sour the finished parcel is. Kenkey is street food in the most functional sense. It is bought in its wrapping, which serves as the plate, and eaten with fried fish, shito and a raw pepper and tomato grind, standing up or sitting on a bench. The wrapping is not presentation; it is what the dough is steamed in and what keeps it for days without refrigeration. That combination of sour dough, hot pepper and fried fish is one of the most recognisable plates in West Africa.

Ghana55 minLaila

Ngalakh

Ngalakh is Senegal's Easter dish, and the sentence needs the qualification that in Senegal Easter is not primarily about chocolate or eggs. It is about ngalakh: a thick millet porridge bound with peanut paste and baobab fruit, made in quantity and sent out of the house. That last part is the dish. Ngalakh is prepared by Christian households and distributed to neighbours, friends and colleagues, most of whom are Muslim, in a country where the two communities live closely and intermarry. It is also served at Korité, marking the end of Ramadan, moving in the other direction. A dessert that exists to be given away across a religious line is doing something more than feeding people, and Senegalese describe it directly as an expression of teranga, the national value of hospitality and sharing. Its base is thiakry, the medium grain millet semolina, as distinct from thiéré, which is finer. The peanut paste supplies richness and the bouye, the powdered pulp of the baobab fruit, supplies a tart acidity that cuts it. That pairing of heavy and sharp is what makes ngalakh work where a sweet porridge alone would not. It is eaten cold, from large bowls, dusted with sugar.

SenegalBlessing

Thiakry, a Senegalese dessert of millet couscous with sweetened yogurt, served cold

Thiakry Couscous

Thiakry is millet couscous stirred into sweetened yogurt and milk, served cold, and it is one of the most widely eaten sweet things in Senegal and the Gambia. It is also written thiakri, chakery, caakiri and degue, and the spelling shifts with the language and the writer while the dish stays the same. Millet is the reason it exists. It is one of the principal grains of Senegal, grown across the drier interior where rice does not do well, and thiakry is among the most common things made from it. The grain is milled to a couscous and steamed, then cooled and folded into the dairy. In Dakar it is sold in every grocery store, which is a fair measure of how ordinary a food it is. It is eaten at breakfast as readily as at the end of a meal, which puts it in the same category as yogurt everywhere: sweet, cold, and not confined to dessert. Raisins, mango, grated coconut and chopped almonds are all standard on top, and vanilla and nutmeg are the usual flavourings. Its close relation ngalakh, made with peanut paste and baobab, is the elaborated festival version of the same base. Thiakry is the everyday one.

Senegal15 minCuisine228

Ugali

Ugali is white maize meal cooked with water into a firm, smooth mass, and it is the staple of Kenya, Tanzania and much of East and Southern Africa. It is not a flavoured dish and does not try to be. Its role is to anchor and complete a plate, and everything else is arranged in relation to it. Making it is a physical skill rather than a recipe. The cook works flour into boiling water over heat, stirring continuously against real resistance, until the mass pulls away from the sides of the pot and holds its shape. The ability to make good ugali is a basic domestic competence in Kenyan households, and a poorly made one is noticed and remarked on. It is eaten by hand. A portion is broken off, pressed between the fingers into a scoop, and used to lift stew, greens or fish. Ugali alone is not a meal; it is the constant against which the rest of the plate is judged. The same preparation runs across the region under other names: nsima and nshima in Malawi and Zambia, sadza in Zimbabwe, posho in Uganda, pap in South Africa. Sorghum, millet and cassava flour are all used in place of maize in different areas, and in Kenya nyama choma with kachumbari is the pairing most associated with it.

Kenya1 hr 20 minFoodChef

Alkubus

Alkubus is a Hausa steamed wheat bread from Northern Nigeria, plain by design and made to be eaten with something else. It is soft, faintly sour from the yeast, and it holds its shape well enough to be cut into rounds or wedges. Its role on the plate is the role bread plays across the north: the thing that carries the soup. Alkubus is eaten most often with miyan taushe, the pumpkin and groundnut soup, and it also goes with agushi soup, vegetable soup, cabbage stew or a plain tomato sauce. That pairing with miyan taushe is the one Northern Nigerians name first. There are two ways to make it and they produce different things. Baked in a greased pan and topped with carrot and onion, it is a loaf to be cut and eaten in slices. Portioned into wrappers and steamed over boiling water, it comes out softer and denser, closer to a dumpling, and that is the method the recipe here follows. Steaming rather than baking runs through a great deal of Hausa cooking, from dambu to danwake to masa, and alkubus belongs to that family more than it does to any oven tradition.

Nigeria25 minNympha

Aslooz, a Libyan steamed couscous dish with asparagus, dill and a spiced tomato sauce

Aslooz (Libyan Couscous-Based Dish)

Aslooz is a Libyan couscous dish named after a plant, and the plant is the reason it belongs to a season rather than to a calendar. Aslooz is a wild weed that grows across the countryside and the mountain regions of western Libya, gathered rather than farmed, and harvested in a narrow window through January and February. It is picked from roadsides and hillsides in the Nafusa mountains and the western districts, and only the tender twigs and flowering branches are used. Because it grows wild and its season is short, aslooz has never been a commercial crop, and it is effectively unavailable outside Libya. Libyan families abroad substitute, most often asparagus with dill, sometimes carrot with cumin leaves, and this recipe is written that way. Everything about it is plain: steamed couscous, a tomato base, a wild green and a carrot sauce sharpened with lemon and chilli. Libyans describe it as cheap and cheerful and treat it as a family dish, made and eaten together rather than served to guests. The couscous is steamed over the greens so it takes their flavour from below, which is the technique that separates it from a couscous simply mixed with vegetables, and it is what a Libyan cook would notice first if it were skipped.

Libya1 hrBlessing

Okpa

Okpa is a steamed pudding of Bambara nut flour and palm oil, wrapped and cooked in boiling water until it sets solid. It is the street food of Enugu, and anyone travelling into the city from Onitsha or Lagos will hear the sellers calling okpa di oku, meaning okpa is hot. Bambara groundnut is an indigenous African legume, grown long before peanuts arrived from South America, and it is the same nut behind several dishes across the continent. It is known as jugo beans in southern Africa, and okpa itself is also called igba and ntucha. The seeds come in small pods and are extremely hard, so hard that domestic grinders cannot handle them and only industrial mills will do the job. That is why okpa flour is bought rather than made. Restraint is the principle. Bambara nuts have a good flavour of their own, and the source is emphatic that adding onions and crayfish ruins it, which is unusual advice in Nigerian cooking where those two go into almost everything. Palm oil, salt, stock cubes and pepper are the whole seasoning. The mixture looks alarmingly watery when mixed, and that is correct. The ratio in the recipe gives the right texture, and using less water produces something rock hard.

Nigeria1 hr 25 minFoodChef

Matoke

Matoke is green cooking banana, and in Uganda it is close to being the national dish. The word names both the banana variety and the dish made from it, which tells you how central it is. These are not the bananas eaten raw. They are harvested green, when the flesh is firm and starchy rather than sweet, and they must be cooked. Treated this way they behave much more like a potato than a fruit, they take on the flavour of whatever they are cooked with, and they fill you up in a way that has made them a staple across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. The classic Ugandan preparation steams the peeled bananas, often wrapped in their own leaves, until soft, then mashes them. Served that way it is the base of a meal, eaten with groundnut sauce, beans or meat. It is also known as ebitookye in parts of Uganda and as matoke or mataba more broadly across the region. The version here is the stewed form rather than the steamed and mashed one, sliced bananas simmered with tomato, chilli and lemon into something closer to a vegetable stew, finished with coriander. Both are matoke, and which one is meant depends entirely on where you are. Peeling raw green banana stains the hands and the sap is sticky; oiled hands help.

UgandaBlessing

Baked Potato

A whole potato baked in its skin, oiled and salted for a crisp surface, and served with whatever you like on it. There is no country attached to this and none is implied. Russet potatoes are what to use, and the reason is starch. Russets are high-starch, low-moisture potatoes, sometimes sold as baking or mealy potatoes, and that composition is what produces the light, flaky interior a baked potato is judged on. Waxy potatoes hold their moisture and stay dense. Two pieces of advice in the source are worth repeating because they are both right and both commonly ignored. Pierce the potato deeply several times on each side: skipping it can genuinely make a potato burst in the oven. And do not wrap it in foil. Foil traps the moisture inside, which means the potato steams rather than bakes, and steaming gives an entirely different and softer texture with no crisp skin at all. Africa has its own baked and roasted potato and tuber traditions, roasted yam, sweet potato and plantain sold from street braziers across the continent, but a russet baked potato is not one of them.

1 hr 10 minNympha

Coconut rice cooked in a rice cooker with peas and diced carrots

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

Coconut rice made in a rice cooker: rinsed long grain rice, a tin of coconut milk, water, oil and salt, with peas and carrots folded in at the end. No country is named and the dish belongs to many, which is why none is claimed here. Coconut rice is genuinely pan-regional. It is made across West Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South America and Oceania, and it takes a different form in each: Nigerian coconut rice carries pepper and vegetables, Jamaican rice and peas uses kidney beans and thyme, Thai khao man gai poaches chicken over it, and Indonesian nasi uduk is scented with lemongrass and pandan. Two practical notes about this version. There is a discrepancy in the source: its ingredient list and its method give different quantities of water, and the method names sugar and turmeric that never appear in the ingredients. The ratio here follows the ingredient list. The other point is the one the source is right about: leave it alone while it cooks. Agitating rice releases starch and turns it gluey, and in a rice cooker there is no reason to lift the lid at all until it switches to warm.

40 minDebby

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.

Ivory Coast1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Beetroot Pancakes

Beetroot pancakes are ordinary pancakes with cooked beetroot blended into the batter, which turns them deep pink and adds an earthy sweetness. The beetroot does two things. It colours the batter dramatically, which is most of the appeal and the main reason the recipe exists for children. And it contributes moisture and a mild natural sweetness, so the pancakes need less sugar than a plain batter would. They are made in the ordinary way, blended, rested briefly, cooked on a moderately hot pan, and the technique holds no surprises. Cooking them slightly slower than plain pancakes helps, because the extra moisture from the beetroot means the middle needs a little longer while the outside is already colouring. Served with fresh fruit or berries on top, which is the usual suggestion, they make a breakfast that looks considerably more elaborate than it is. **Filed as Worldwide**, the source describes it as a Continental recipe, and it makes no African claim. The page is kept and reclassified rather than removed.

South Africa1 hrFoodChef

Cameroonian Koki Corn steamed corn pudding wrapped in banana leaves, a traditional Central African dish from Cameroon

Cameroon Koki Corn

Koki corn is a Cameroonian steamed pudding made from ground fresh corn mixed with palm oil and greens, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed until it sets firm. It is the corn version of a dish more commonly made with black-eyed peas. Koki beans, ground soaked beans treated the same way, is the better-known form, and the two are close relatives using the same technique on different staples. Both belong to a wider West and Central African family of leaf-wrapped steamed puddings that includes moi moi and abala. The wrapping is not decorative. Banana leaves are warmed over a flame first, which makes them pliable enough to fold without splitting, and they hold the loose mixture in shape while it steams. They also contribute a faint grassy aroma that the pudding takes on. Palm oil is heated before it goes in, which changes how it behaves in the mixture and gives the finished koki its deep orange colour. Njama njama, huckleberry leaves, a Cameroonian staple green, or spinach is folded through. It sets firm enough to slice and is eaten hot, on its own or with plantain.

CameroonBlessing

Feteer Meshaltet (Egyptian Layered Pastry)

Feteer meshaltet is an Egyptian pastry made by stretching dough until it is almost transparent, brushing it with butter, folding it, and repeating until it consists of a great many paper-thin layers. It is baked in a very hot oven and eaten either plain with honey, molasses and tahini, or filled with anything from cheese to minced meat to custard. The name means something like flattened or stretched pie, and that describes the method exactly. The dough is not rolled, it is stretched by hand until the surface below is visible through it, then folded with butter between every layer. What produces the texture is the butter turning to steam between the layers in a very hot oven and forcing them apart, which is the same physics as puff pastry arrived at by a completely different route. The oven temperature the source calls for looks like an error and is not, it is far above ordinary baking heat. Feteer needs that to puff before the layers set, and Egyptian bakeries use wood-fired ovens hotter still. A domestic oven at its maximum with the broiler finishing the top is the practical approximation. It has a long and reasonably well-attested history, the source traces it to ancient Egypt, where a version was offered in temples. Its claim that feteer became the croissant in Europe is repeated widely but not established, and it has been recorded here as a claim rather than a fact.

Egypt1 hr 25 minBlessing

Prepared couscous, fluffed with a fork in a bowl

How to Cook Couscous

How to prepare instant couscous: boiling water or stock poured over, covered, left to steam, then fluffed. This is a technique page for a staple ingredient rather than a recipe for a dish, and it is filed as such. Couscous is North African, specifically Berber in origin, and it is a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Its status was recognised by UNESCO in 2020, when the knowledge and practices around couscous were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in a joint submission by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. It is not a grain, despite looking like one. Couscous is pasta, durum wheat semolina moistened, rolled into tiny granules and dried. Three sizes are common: Moroccan, the smallest; Israeli or pearl couscous, about the size of peppercorns; and Lebanese, the largest. The traditional method has nothing to do with pouring boiling water on. Couscous is steamed, usually more than once, in the upper chamber of a couscoussier over a stew whose vapours flavour it as it cooks. That is how it is made for a proper meal in North Africa and the results are much lighter. Almost all couscous sold in supermarkets is pre-steamed and dried, which is why the rehydration method here works.

Morocco20 minFoodChef

Ka'ak (Libyan Ring Bread)

Ka'ak is a ring-shaped bread, crisp outside and soft within, scattered with sesame seeds. It is Libyan in this version, and made across a wide stretch of the Arabic-speaking world, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria all have their own. The shape is what defines it. Ka'ak is formed into a large ring, bigger and thinner than a bagel, which is why street vendors across the region can carry stacks of them on a pole or a cart. In Libya it is eaten at breakfast alongside hummus and falafel, and it comes in savoury and sweet versions. The name travels further than the shape does. Ka'ak, sometimes kahk or kahqa, covers a whole family of baked goods across the Arabic-speaking world, from this ring bread to the small filled Egyptian cookies eaten at Eid, which are a completely different thing. The word means something closer to "baked good" than to any specific item. One technique in this recipe is worth borrowing for other breads. A tray of water is placed in the bottom of the oven while it heats, so the loaves bake in a steamy environment. Steam keeps the crust soft for the first minutes, letting the bread rise fully before the surface sets, and then produces a thin, crisp finish.

Libya2 hr 45 minBlessing

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Masfouf is steamed couscous sweetened with milk and honey and mixed with dates, raisins, nuts and banana, layered with a vanilla custard. It is Tunisian and it belongs to Ramadan. It is the sweet counterpart to Tunisian couscous, which is otherwise a savoury dish, and that inversion is the whole idea, the same grain, the same steaming technique, turned into a dessert or a breakfast. During Ramadan it appears at suhoor, the meal before dawn, because it is filling and sustaining, and at iftar as a sweet. Geranium water is the ingredient that places it. Distilled from scented geranium leaves, it is used across Tunisian sweets in the way rose water and orange blossom water are used further east, and it has a green, faintly citrus perfume that neither of those reproduces. Middle Eastern and North African grocers stock it. Steaming the couscous properly rather than pouring boiling water over it is what the recipe asks for, and it is the difference between light separate grains and a claggy mass. This is a dessert made from properly cooked couscous rather than instant. **It contains almonds and walnuts, which the title gives no indication of.** The source's ingredient list repeats milk, honey and geranium water without indicating that the second set belongs to the custard.

Tunisia1 hrBlessing

Mashed Potatoes

Potatoes cooked until tender, then mashed with warm butter and milk. No country is claimed, it is a European staple that has travelled everywhere, most associated in Britain with bangers and mash. The one thing the recipe does that matters is warming the butter and milk together before they go in. Cold dairy into hot potato drops the temperature and makes the mash claggy; warm dairy is absorbed smoothly. It is a small step that nobody does and everybody should. The other decision is the tool, and it determines the result. A hand masher leaves texture and works quickly. A ricer or food mill gives the smoothest possible mash by pushing the potato through small holes without working it. An electric mixer or food processor is the one to avoid: over-beating ruptures the starch cells and releases enough starch to turn mashed potato genuinely gluey, and there is no recovering from it. The source's explanation of mashed versus smashed potatoes contradicts itself between paragraphs, it defines smashed as roughly mashed, then describes mashed as the chunkier of the two. The distinction generally drawn is that smashed potatoes are left rough and lumpy, often with the skins on, while mashed are worked smooth.

40 minNympha

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes cooked until tender and mashed with butter and milk, seasoned sweet or savoury depending on preference. No country is claimed. **This page had no recipe card in the source.** The ingredients and method below are reconstructed from its article, and that is flagged. Sweet potato behaves differently from potato in one important way, and it changes the technique. It contains far less starch and much more sugar and moisture, which means it cannot go gluey the way ordinary potato does, you can beat it with a mixer or work it in a food processor without ruining it, which is exactly what you must not do with a floury potato. The source recommends both, and for once that advice is sound. The other consequence is that it needs less dairy. Sweet potato is already moist, so the same quantity of milk that a floury potato absorbs will leave sweet potato loose. The seasoning question is genuinely open. Brown sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon push it towards dessert, which is the American Thanksgiving direction; garlic, herbs and cheese push it savoury and make it work alongside meat. Both are common. Sweet potato is not a potato. It is unrelated botanically, and West and Central Africa grow and eat enormous quantities of it.

40 minDebby

Matbucha, a slow-cooked Moroccan dip of tomatoes and roasted peppers

Matbucha (Moroccan Tomato and Pepper Dip)

Matbucha is roasted peppers and tomatoes cooked down slowly with garlic and paprika into a thick, dark, jammy dip. It is Moroccan Jewish in origin and is now eaten across Israel and the wider Middle East as a mezze staple. The name says what it is: matbucha means cooked salad in Arabic, which describes both the dish and the crucial technique. This is not a fresh salsa but something reduced by half over an hour or more, until the water has cooked out and the peppers and tomatoes have concentrated into something closer to a preserve. Rushing that stage gives you a thin tomato sauce, which is a different and lesser thing. Its journey is worth recording. Matbucha travelled from Morocco to Israel with Jewish immigrants in the mid-twentieth century, and it is now so established there that it is sold in every supermarket. In Morocco it is served as part of a mezze spread; in Israel it is understood as an appetizer. Same dish, slightly different place at the table. Red peppers rather than green is not incidental. The source notes that green peppers turn bitter in matbucha, which is correct, red peppers are ripe and sweet and reduce into something quite different. It freezes well, which is why the recipe makes three jars.

Morocco1 hr 25 minNympha

South African Stewed Green Beans

Green beans cooked slowly with potato and onion until everything is completely soft, then roughly mashed and finished with butter and nutmeg. It is South African, and it is old-fashioned in the best sense. The dish exists for a specific reason and the source is refreshingly honest about it: this is what to do with green beans that have gone past their best. Beans that are too tough and stringy to steam and serve whole become excellent when cooked long and mashed, because the slow cooking breaks down exactly the fibres that made them unpleasant. It is a technique for rescuing produce rather than showcasing it, which is why it belongs to an older way of cooking. The potato is structural. It breaks down completely and binds the mash, which is why the dish holds together rather than being beans in water. Nutmeg with green beans is a Cape Dutch habit, and the same pairing turns up across South African vegetable cookery. It is not a garnish, it is what makes the dish taste South African rather than generically braised. The source is also honest that quantities do not matter much, which is true of most old traditional recipes and rarely admitted. Do not mash it to a purée. Texture is meant to survive.

South Africa50 minFoodChef

Taktouka, a Moroccan cooked salad of roasted peppers and tomato

Taktouka (Moroccan Pepper and Tomato Salad)

Taktouka is roasted peppers and grated tomato cooked down with onion, garlic, cumin and paprika into a thick warm salad. It is Moroccan, also popular in Algeria, and it is a mezze dish rather than a leaf salad. The name explains the texture. It comes from the Arabic taktak, meaning to grind or pound, and the vegetables end up soft and broken down rather than crisp. That is why the source opens by pre-empting the obvious question, why a salad needs a recipe, and it is a fair point: taktouka requires cooking, and cooking is most of it. It has regional names worth knowing. In eastern Morocco it is called flifla; in Algeria, felfla mechouia. Zaalouk, the aubergine version, is its closest sibling and works the same way. Grating the tomatoes rather than dicing them is the technique the source recommends and it is a good one. Cutting a tomato in half and grating the cut face against a box grater extracts the pulp and leaves the skin behind in your hand, no peeling, no blanching, and a smoother result. This dish is closely related to matbucha, the Moroccan-Jewish version, which is on this site. Matbucha is cooked longer, without onion or cumin, and the two are genuinely distinguished by community and by seasoning rather than being the same recipe under two names.

Morocco50 minBlessing

Tamina (Algerian Toasted Semolina with Honey)

Tamina is semolina steamed, toasted until golden, and worked into warm honey and butter. It is Algerian, and it is made for occasions, engagements, weddings, baby showers and Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The three ingredients carry meaning, and the source explains it well: semolina for sustenance, honey for the sweetness of love, butter for blessings. That symbolism is why tamina appears at the birth of a child in particular, offering it to guests is the Algerian way of announcing a new baby, which makes the dish a message as much as a dessert. The toasting is the whole technique and it cannot be rushed. Semolina taken to a proper golden colour tastes nutty and complex; under-toasted, it tastes raw and pasty. It also burns from golden to black very quickly, so it needs constant movement over medium-low heat. The steaming step is unusual and the source explains its own reasoning: it is a safety measure, in case the semolina has not been toasted thoroughly enough. Many recipes skip it and toast alone. Economics have changed the ingredients. Margarine and sugar syrup now often replace butter and honey, which the source records without judgement. One caution: it identifies tamina with bsisa, which is a different Tunisian and Libyan preparation.

Algeria50 minBlessing

Tsaramaso, a Malagasy white bean and tomato stew served with rice

Tsaramaso Malagasy (White Bean and Tomato Stew)

Dried white beans cooked until tender, then finished with red onion and sliced tomatoes into a thick, soupy stew. It is Malagasy, and it is served everywhere on the island. It is laoka, which is the useful word here. In Malagasy eating, rice is the meal and laoka is whatever accompanies it, the thing that goes on top of, or beside, a large plate of rice. Tsaramaso is one of the most popular laoka in the country, and it is eaten as a matter of course rather than as an occasion dish. It is very often not vegetarian. Zebu meat, the humped cattle that are central to Malagasy life, makes it hen'omby sy tsaramaso, and pork makes it tsaramaso sy henakisoa. The shank is the cut the source recommends. This version is the plain one, which is also widely eaten. The technique in the recipe is worth noting: the beans are cooked separately in water, seasoned only at the end, and a cup of their cooking liquid is kept back. That liquid is what the finished stew is loosened with, and it carries starch and flavour that plain water would not. The source compares it to cassoulet, which is a reasonable shorthand, beans and meat cooked long and slow, though the seasoning is entirely different.

Madagascar2 hr 15 minBlessing

Vegan suya, oyster mushrooms grilled and tossed in Nigerian suya spice

Vegan Suya (Spiced Grilled Mushrooms)

Oyster mushrooms grilled and tossed in suya spice. It is a plant-based version of the Nigerian street food, and it works better than most meat substitutions do. **The traditional suya spice contains ground peanuts, and this recipe includes them.** The source flags it and offers to leave them out, which is honest, but it is worth stating clearly, because a peanut allergy and a suya spice blend are a genuinely dangerous combination and the name gives no warning. Suya proper is skewered beef, ram or chicken rubbed in yaji, the spice blend of ground roasted peanuts, ginger, cayenne, garlic, onion powder and paprika, and grilled over open coals. It is Hausa in origin, from northern Nigeria, and it is sold across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and parts of Sudan. Kyinkyinga is the Ghanaian name, agashe the Sudanese. Oyster mushrooms are the right substitution and not an arbitrary one. Shredded, they have a fibrous, layered structure that genuinely resembles pulled meat, they take on the dry rub readily, and they char well. Most vegetables do neither. The source's method is very compressed, one step reads "put in a preheated medium", with the word oven missing, and has been filled out below.

Nigeria30 minduchessnena

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Baked Plantain Loaf

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Ka'ak (Libyan Ring Bread)

Okpa

Aslooz (Libyan Couscous-Based Dish)

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Dombolo (Dumplings or Steamed Bread)

No Corn Starch Rice Cakes (Ablo)

Banana Soup

Kenkey

Ngalakh

Thiakry Couscous

Ugali

Alkubus

Aslooz (Libyan Couscous-Based Dish)

Okpa

Matoke

Baked Potato

Coconut Rice in a Rice Cooker

Baked Plantain Loaf

Beetroot Pancakes

Cameroon Koki Corn

Feteer Meshaltet (Egyptian Layered Pastry)

How to Cook Couscous

Ka'ak (Libyan Ring Bread)

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Mashed Potatoes

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Matbucha (Moroccan Tomato and Pepper Dip)

South African Stewed Green Beans

Taktouka (Moroccan Pepper and Tomato Salad)

Tamina (Algerian Toasted Semolina with Honey)

Tsaramaso Malagasy (White Bean and Tomato Stew)

Vegan Suya (Spiced Grilled Mushrooms)