Recettes

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.

Liberia1 hr 20 minLaila

Egusi Soup

Egusi soup is eaten across every region of Nigeria, every ethnic group and every economic class, which is a claim very few dishes anywhere can support. Its name changes with the language and the dish does not: miyan gushi in Hausa, ofe egusi in Igbo, efo elegusi in Yoruba. Its defining ingredient is ground egusi, the dried seed of a gourd related to the watermelon, milled to a meal that thickens and enriches the soup around it. The seeds are ground dry, without water, until the powder turns to a paste under the blade. Nothing else produces the particular nutty, faintly bitter depth that egusi gives, which is why the soup is named for the seed rather than for the meat or the greens that also go into it. There is no single method. The caking approach lets the ground seed set into soft curds in the stock; the frying approach starts the egusi in palm oil; the moulding approach forms it into balls that are eaten like meat. Ijebu cooks in Ogun State make it with no vegetables at all. Every one of these is egusi soup, and Nigerians will argue for their own without seriously disputing anyone else's. It is eaten with pounded yam, fufu, eba, amala or any swallow at hand.

Nigeria50 minFoodChef

Atakilt wat, an Ethiopian stew of cabbage, carrot and potato with berbere spice, served with injera

Ethiopian Berbere Cabbage - Atakilt Wat

Atakilt wat is the vegetable stew of the Ethiopian table: cabbage, carrot and potato cooked down with onion, garlic and spice until they are tender without collapsing. The name is Amharic, atakilt for vegetable and wat for stew, which describes it exactly. Its place is on the shared injera platter rather than on a plate of its own. An Ethiopian meal is served as several dishes arranged together on a single round of injera, and atakilt wat is almost always among them, providing a mild, sweet counterweight to the sharper and hotter wat alongside it. It is the dish that gives the platter its balance. That role also makes it central to fasting. The Ethiopian Orthodox calendar includes many days on which no animal products are eaten, and the country's vegan cooking is consequently deep and long practised rather than recent. Atakilt wat contains nothing animal at any point, which is why it appears as reliably during fasting periods as outside them. Berbere, the chilli and spice blend built on chilli, garlic, ginger, fenugreek and a long list of aromatics, is what carries it, though this version keeps the quantity modest so the vegetables stay forward.

Ethiopia1 hr 5 minDebby

Muamba de galinha, an Angolan chicken stew cooked in red palm oil with okra and squash

Muamba De Galinha (Angolan Chicken Stew)

Muamba de galinha is the dish most often named as Angola's national one, and it earns the title by being the clearest single statement of what Angolan cooking is. Chicken marinated in garlic and paprika, seared in red palm oil, simmered with onion, tomato and hot pepper, thickened with okra and given body by squash. The palm oil is not a background ingredient. It is what turns the stew the deep orange that muamba is recognised by, and it carries a specific flavour that no other fat provides. Angolans call it dendem or red oil, and a muamba made with anything else is a chicken stew rather than a muamba. The name itself points somewhere older. Muamba refers to a family of dishes built on palm across Angola and the wider Congo basin, of which muamba de galinha is the chicken version and muamba de ginguba the groundnut one. The Portuguese in the name is only the galinha. It is eaten with funge, the cassava porridge, or with rice, and the version here serves it with cassava tossed in lemon and garlic, which is a contemporary treatment of a very old accompaniment.

Angola45 minChef.donkey

Angwa Moo

Angwa moo is oiled rice, and the Akan name says it plainly. Onions are browned in oil, rice goes in and is fried briefly, then water is added and the whole thing cooks together. The result is golden, faintly sweet from the caramelised onion, and unlike fried rice in one important respect: the rice is raw when it enters the oil rather than cooked and cooled. Ghanaians treat it as the emergency dish, and they are cheerful about saying so. It is what a child cooks when a parent is not home, what a young man living alone makes because it needs almost nothing, and what gets made when there is no time and no plan. That does not make it lesser. The browning of the onion is doing real work, and a well made angwa moo has a depth that its ingredient list does not predict. The traditional accompaniment is ground pepper made in an earthenware asanka, with tinned sardines or fried eggs alongside, and that combination is the version most Ghanaians picture. The salted beef known as tolobeef, cured at home over two days, is the more considered addition. The crisp scorched layer at the bottom of the pot is prized and fought over, which is the case for rice dishes across the continent, and the way to get it is to let the rice finish in its own steam without stirring.

Ghana40 minJennifer

Moi moi, Nigerian steamed bean pudding wrapped in leaves with a boiled egg inside

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Moi moi is steamed bean pudding, and it is among the small group of Nigerian dishes that turn up everywhere: at breakfast, at parties, at weddings, in lunchboxes, beside jollof rice, and on its own. Black eyed peas or brown beans are soaked, peeled, blended with pepper and onion, seasoned, and steamed until they set. The peeling is what most people underestimate. The bean skins have to come off before blending, because they are what stands between a smooth moi moi and a gritty one, and the quality of the blend decides the texture of the finished dish more than any other single factor. Nigerian markets have heavy duty commercial mills for exactly this reason, and home blenders often cannot manage it. What it is steamed in changes the result and the name. Uma leaves, from Thaumatococcus daniellii, give the best flavour and cook fastest; banana leaves are the common alternative; aluminium foil and heatproof containers are the modern route. Nutmeg is the ingredient people leave out and then wonder why their moi moi does not taste like the one at the party. Egg, corned beef or bone marrow goes into the middle, and moi moi appears as a side to jollof and fried rice, as breakfast with pap or bread, and as a meal in itself.

Nigeria1 hr 30 minFoodChef

Fried Yam

Fried yam is called dundun in Yoruba, and it is one of the most eaten street foods in Nigeria. Yam is peeled, cut into thick chips, salted and fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft and floury. It is sold from roadside stands with a pepper sauce, and it is eaten at breakfast, at lunch and late at night. Yam is the crop that Nigeria produces more of than anywhere else in the world, and dundun is the most direct thing to do with it. It costs almost nothing, needs three ingredients, and the frying takes minutes. That combination is what makes it street food: a vendor with a pot of oil and a sack of yam is in business. Its usual partner is akara, the fried bean cake, and the pairing of dundun and akara with a ground pepper sauce is a standard Nigerian breakfast. It is also eaten with egg sauce, with fried fish, with stew, or on its own. The word dundun covers the fried treatment specifically, as distinct from the plain, pounded and porridge treatments of the same tuber, each of which occupies its own place on the Nigerian table.

Nigeria35 minAnthonyJ

Domada (Gambian Peanut Stew)

Domada, also written Domoda, is Gambia's national dish and one of West Africa's most comforting stews, a rich, thick groundnut (peanut) based stew cooked with chicken or beef, tomatoes, sweet potato, and cabbage. The peanut paste dissolves into the broth as it cooks, creating a silky, deeply flavoured sauce that coats every piece of protein and vegetable in the pot. The dish belongs to the family of West African groundnut soups found across Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon, but Domada has its own character, sweeter from the potato, more mellow than the spicier Ghanaian versions, and always generous in the quantity of groundnut used. In Gambia it is eaten at celebrations, family gatherings, and as everyday home cooking.

Pan-AfricanNympha

Goat Gari Pinon

Goat Gari Pinon is a robust Ghanaian dish where spiced, slow-cooked goat meat is served over or mixed with gari, dried, fermented, and toasted cassava flakes, creating a satisfying combination of tender, boldly seasoned meat and the slightly sour, grainy texture of the gari absorbing all the cooking juices. The dish is deeply practical in its origins: gari is a preserved, shelf-stable staple that can absorb liquid and flavour readily, making it an ideal accompaniment to richly cooked meats. The combination of goat meat and gari is a classic of Ghanaian home cooking and street food culture.

Pan-AfricanCuisine228

Injera, Ethiopian fermented teff flatbread with its characteristic open surface

Injera (Ethiopian Flatbread)

Injera is the fermented flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and it is not a side dish. It is the plate: stews and vegetables are spooned directly onto a large injera, and diners tear pieces from a second one to scoop, so the meal ends with the plate itself eaten. Teff is what it is made from, a tiny round grain that grows in the Ethiopian highlands and is among the smallest cereals in the world. Teff carries almost no gluten, which means it cannot be raised in the way wheat bread is, and injera instead depends on fermentation. Wild yeasts and lactic bacteria in a starter, called ersho, work the batter over several days, producing the carbon dioxide that gives injera its distinctive surface of small holes, its spongy texture and its sour flavour. That sourness is the point and it varies. A short fermentation gives a mild injera; three days or more gives the sharpness Ethiopians expect. The recipe here uses commercial yeast and a shorter rest, which is a practical shortcut rather than the traditional method, and it produces a milder bread. It also allows very fine millet flour in place of teff, which is easier to find but changes the flavour and the colour.

Ethiopia25 hr 15 minFoodChef

South African Picnic Bread sliced to reveal cheese, bacon, and spring onion filling, a popular braai bread from South Africa

Picnic Bread (From South Africa)

Picnic bread is a South African savoury quick bread, heavy with cheese, spring onion and bacon, bound with egg, and made to be eaten cold in a slice with nothing on it. The category matters. It is a quick bread, raised chemically rather than with yeast, which means no proving and no kneading. Everything is mixed and baked. That is much of why it exists: it is a bread that can be made in an evening for the next day without planning. Its association is with food carried away from home. It is described as an old recipe favoured by fishermen for their packed lunches and by schoolchildren, and the reasoning is visible in the recipe itself. It needs no butter because there is enough fat in it already. It holds together in a slice rather than crumbling. It does not dry out the way a plain loaf does. And it is dense enough that one slice is a meal rather than an accompaniment, which is exactly what you want on a boat or a long day out. The texture is unusual for a bread. It is moist, almost pudding-like in the middle, without being heavy, and the cheese keeps it soft for days. It is honest about what it is: nobody has ever pretended this is a low-fat recipe.

South Africa55 minFoodChef

Jollof Rice

Jollof rice is the best-known dish in West Africa and the one most argued over. Rice is cooked in a base of blended tomato, red pepper, onion and chilli until it takes the colour and flavour all the way through, not rice with sauce on it, but rice that has become the sauce. Its origins are traced to the Senegambian region and the Wolof, or Jolof, Empire, which from the fourteenth century covered parts of present-day Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, and where rice was grown. The ancestor dish is thiéboudienne, the Senegalese one-pot of rice, fish and vegetables. The name jollof carries the empire's own name with it. From there it spread and diverged. Nigerian jollof leans on long-grain rice and a heavily reduced pepper base, often with a deliberate smokiness from the bottom of the pot. Ghanaian jollof commonly uses aromatic rice and a different spice balance. Senegalese thieboudienne remains its own dish. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Togo and the Gambia all have versions. The rivalry between the Nigerian and Ghanaian claims is genuine, loud and largely affectionate, and it has done more to carry the dish internationally than any amount of promotion. Whatever the version, it is not a side dish. Jollof is the centre of the table.

Nigeria1 hrBeatrice

Tunisian loubia, a spiced white bean stew with chicken and tomato

Tunisian Loubia (White Bean Stew)

Loubia is white bean stew, and it is eaten across North Africa: Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Dried white beans are cooked slowly in a tomato sauce heavy with ras el hanout, paprika and turmeric, and the result is a robust, spicy stew scooped up with bread. It works as a main course or a side, and in Morocco it is a particularly common accompaniment to fried fish. Everyone has their own touch: some cook it with olives, some finish it with parsley or coriander, and chicken, beef or lamb all appear in it. This version uses chicken, cooked in the pot and lifted out while the beans finish, then returned to warm through. Two practical points the source is clear about. The beans are dried and need overnight soaking, so it has to be planned a day ahead. And the cooking time given assumes a pressure cooker, which the source describes as essential equipment in Moroccan kitchens; without one, allow roughly double. The seasoning should be generous, since a timid hand produces a thin sauce rather than the robust one the dish is known for.

Tunisia1 hr 45 minBlessing

Zogale Nigerian moringa leaf salad served with macaroni, groundnut paste, and spices, a northern Nigerian Hausa dish

Zogale (Moringa Salad) And Macaroni

Zogale is a traditional Hausa dish from northern Nigeria made from fresh or dried moringa leaves combined with macaroni, groundnut paste, spices, and chilli into a complete, nutritionally dense meal. The moringa tree, known locally as zogale, grows abundantly across northern Nigeria and has been used in cooking and traditional medicine by the Hausa people for generations. The dish is remarkably nutritious, moringa leaves are exceptionally rich in vitamins, minerals, and protein, making Zogale a meal that nourishes as much as it satisfies. In northern Nigerian communities where moringa trees are household staples, Zogale is an everyday practical food rather than a special occasion dish.

NigeriaMaryam

Gizdodo, Nigerian gizzards and fried ripe plantain in a spicy pepper sauce

Gizdodo (Gizzard and Plantain)

Gizdodo is a portmanteau and a fair description: gizzard plus dodo, the Yoruba word for fried ripe plantain. Cooked gizzards and fried plantain cubes are combined in a spicy pepper sauce, and the two textures against each other are the whole point. It is party food and home food in equal measure across Nigeria. At an owambe it appears as a side alongside jollof rice, and it works as a starter or a substantial snack in its own right. The pairing with jollof is close to standard. Gizzards are the reason it works. They are muscular and dense, and they need proper cooking, about twenty-five minutes, before they are fried, at which point they become firm and chewy in a way that holds up against the soft sweetness of the plantain. Chicken gizzards are the usual choice and turkey or duck both substitute. The technique that matters is draining the blended pepper mix through a sieve before it goes in the pan, which removes excess water so the sauce clings rather than pooling. This recipe carries no quantities at all, which is common in Nigerian home recipes and is flagged here.

Nigeria55 minJennifer

Tatale

Tatale is the Ghanaian plantain pancake, made from plantains so ripe their skins have blackened, mashed with onion, ginger and pepper, bound with corn flour and fried in spoonfuls. It is street food and a side dish, and it is sometimes called the golden pancake for its colour. It exists because of thrift. Overripe plantain is too soft to fry as slices and too sweet to use as a starch, and tatale is what was worked out to use it. That origin is common to a great many good dishes and it is worth stating rather than glossing over. Its traditional partner is aboboi, the Bambara bean stew, and the two are eaten together as a complete meal across Ghana. It is also served warm as an appetizer with beans in various forms. It is eaten in Nigeria as well. The source claims a link between the dish and Tatale, a district in northern Ghana. That district exists, but the connection to the dish is not something the record supports, and it is flagged rather than repeated as fact.

Ghana1 hr 5 minFoodChef

Air Fryer Baby Potatoes

Baby potatoes tossed in olive oil, garlic powder and paprika and cooked in an air fryer until crisp outside and soft inside. There is no country attached to this and none is implied: it is a modern appliance recipe of the kind that exists in every cuisine that has adopted the air fryer. It sits in Worldwide Recipes for that reason. Nothing about the seasoning, the technique or the ingredients points to any tradition. Paprika, garlic powder and rosemary is a broadly Western profile, and the air fryer itself is a domestic appliance of the last fifteen years. African potato dishes exist and are quite different. Chtitha batata is the Algerian potato stew built on dersa, a garlic and chilli paste. Maakouda is the Moroccan fried potato cake. Irio is the Kenyan potato, pea and corn mash. Each has a name and a place. This is a good side dish and it is honestly labelled as what it is. One practical note: the source states a cook time of ten minutes and its own method says twenty to twenty-five, which is what the timing here follows.

30 minDebby

Chakalaka

Chakalaka is a South African relish of onions, tomatoes, peppers and often baked beans, spiced with curry powder and chilli, and it is close to compulsory at a braai. It came out of the townships, where it has been a staple of black South African cooking for decades. Accounts of its origin vary and none is firmly documented, which is common for food that developed in domestic and working-class settings rather than in restaurants. What is certain is that it is now everywhere, served at braais, at funerals and weddings, in lunchboxes, tinned and sold in supermarkets. Its usefulness is in its flexibility. It works hot as a side dish, cold as a relish, spooned over pap, alongside grilled meat, or in a sandwich. It is light, quick, keeps well, and gets better after a day. Grated carrot is near universal, baked beans are common though not obligatory, and the heat level varies from mild to considerable depending on who is making it. It is naturally vegan in its standard form, which is unusual for a dish that spends most of its life next to grilled meat.

South AfricaFoodChef

Fish Stew

Nigerian fish stew is the same red pepper base that underpins beef stew and jollof, cooked with tilapia rather than meat, and the change of protein changes how the dish is handled more than how it tastes. The base is the constant of West African cooking: blended tomatoes, red bell peppers, onion and chilli, fried down in oil until the water drives off and the oil separates. Everything else in the Nigerian stew repertoire is built on that, and fish stew is simply one branch of it. What is specific to fish is timing and handling. Fish cooks quickly and breaks apart easily, so it is usually fried or seasoned and set aside, then returned to the finished sauce near the end rather than simmered through it. Cooked the way beef would be, tilapia disintegrates and the stew turns cloudy. Tilapia is the usual choice, widely farmed, affordable and firm enough to hold together, though catfish, mackerel and croaker are all used. It is served with white rice, with any of the swallows, or alongside a vegetable soup such as efo riro.

NigeriaCuisine228

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.

GhanaFoodChef

Bhajias

Bhajias are thinly sliced potatoes coated in a spiced gram flour batter and fried until crisp, and they are an East African street snack, popular in Kenya and Tanzania. They arrived from India and have been made locally long enough to be entirely at home. Gram flour is what makes them work and what makes them naturally gluten free. Milled from chana dal, it fries into a crisp shell in a way wheat flour does not, and it carries an earthy, slightly nutty flavour of its own. Rice or corn flour goes in alongside for extra crispness. They belong to the same Indian inheritance in East Africa as chapati, samosas and pilau masala, brought by Indian merchants and labourers over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and absorbed completely into Kenyan and Tanzanian eating. What has changed locally is what goes with them: kachumbari, the tomato and onion salad, is the standard Kenyan accompaniment rather than the chutneys of India, though tamarind chutney and ketchup are both used. The batter should coat the back of a spoon, and it will thin as the potatoes go through it, so more flour is added as you go.

Kenya45 minNympha

Coconut Chicken Curry

Coconut chicken curry is a one-pan dish of chicken simmered in coconut milk with a curry spice blend and whatever vegetables are to hand, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, potato, carrot. The word curry is worth being precise about. It is not a single spice or a single dish. It comes from English usage during colonial rule in India, applied broadly to spiced saucy dishes, and it now covers an enormous range of unrelated cooking across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and East Africa. A curry powder sold in a jar is a blend, and the blends differ substantially between manufacturers and regions. Coconut milk versions belong mainly to the coastal and tropical end of that range, southern India, Thailand, Malaysia, the Caribbean, and the Swahili coast of East Africa, where coconut is grown and used heavily. This particular recipe is a general one rather than a regional tradition, which is its strength: it tolerates substitution well and is designed to be varied. **Filed as Worldwide**, the recipe as written makes no specific national claim, so attributing it to any one cuisine would be inventing detail.

Nigeria40 minJennifer

Grilled tilapia with a green pepper, herb and ginger base

Grilled Tilapia with Lemon, Garlic and Ginger

Whole tilapia scored, marinated in an oil-based spice mixture, oven-grilled, then coated in a fresh green pepper base and returned to the heat. The two-stage seasoning is what makes it, and it is a West African approach rather than a simple marinade. The first stage is a dry-spice oil: vegetable oil with fish seasoning, white and black pepper, ginger, garlic, onion powder and lemon juice, worked into the cuts. The second is a green pepper base built in a food processor from green and red scotch bonnets, bell peppers, spinach, dill, coriander, ginger, garlic and onion, fried briefly in oil and then smeared over the part-cooked fish. That green base is the interesting part. Blending leafy greens and fresh herbs into a pepper sauce is characteristic of Ghanaian and wider West African fish cookery, and it gives colour and a fresh, sharp finish that a marinade applied only at the start cannot. The scoring is not decorative either: two or three cuts on each side let both stages of seasoning reach the flesh rather than sitting on the skin. Tilapia is native to African fresh waters and is the fish most associated with Ghanaian grilling, usually eaten with banku.

Ghana50 minRashidatu Alhassan

Fondant Potatoes golden and crispy outside in a pan, the South African version of the French classic butter-basted potato

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Fondant Potatoes are cylindrical potato portions browned aggressively in butter until deeply golden on both flat ends, then finished in a bath of herb-infused stock in the oven until they are completely tender and have absorbed the fragrant cooking liquid throughout. The result is a potato with a crackling, caramelised exterior and an interior that is so soft and flavourful it seems to dissolve. The preparation is a French restaurant technique that South African home cooks have adopted enthusiastically, particularly for special-occasion meals where the elegance and specific texture of fondant potatoes earns their place alongside quality proteins and sauces.

Pan-AfricanThulisile_

Accra banana, Cameroonian fritters of banana and grated cassava, fried golden

Accra Banana (Cameroonian Banana and Cassava Fritters)

Overripe bananas mashed with grated cassava, seasoned with salt and deep-fried into small golden balls. In Cameroon it is street food sold nationwide, and it is also celebration food, a fixture at Christmas parties and weddings. What sets it apart from the many other West African banana fritters is the starch. Most versions bind mashed banana with wheat flour, rice flour or cornmeal; this one uses grated cassava, which is why it is also called accra cassava. Cassava is worked into an enormous number of forms in Cameroonian cooking, fufu, garri, bobolo sticks, and this is one more. The result is chewier and denser than a flour-based fritter, with the cassava's faint sourness cutting the sweetness of the fruit. Overripe bananas are not a compromise here, they are the requirement. A firm banana has neither the sweetness nor the softness the mixture needs, and the dish exists partly as a way of using fruit that has gone too far to eat out of hand. The usual accompaniment is African pepper sauce, which is worth taking seriously: the contrast between a sweet fried fritter and a fierce chilli sauce is the whole point of eating them together.

Cameroon45 minBlessing

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

Farofa, Brazilian toasted cassava flour with bacon and onion

Farofa (Toasted Cassava Flour)

Farofa is cassava flour toasted in fat with onion, garlic and usually bacon, until it turns golden and sandy. It is Brazilian, and it appears on the table at almost every Brazilian meal that involves a stew or grilled meat. Its job is texture. Brazilian cooking produces a great deal of rich, soupy food, feijoada above all, and farofa is scattered over it to absorb the liquid and give a dry, crunchy contrast. Eaten on its own it makes little sense; eaten over a wet dish it makes complete sense, and that is how it is used. The African connection is direct and worth stating. Cassava is South American in origin, but the technique of toasting cassava meal into a dry accompaniment moved across the Atlantic in both directions with the transatlantic slave trade, and farofa's closest relatives are West African. Garri, the fermented and toasted cassava granules eaten across Nigeria, Ghana and Benin, is made by essentially the same process. Brazilian cooking, and Bahian cooking in particular, carries an enormous amount of West African influence, and farofa sits squarely in that history, which is precisely why it belongs in a Worldwide collection on an African food site rather than being simply foreign. The method is short and the one instruction that matters is to keep it moving. Cassava flour burns quickly and unevenly.

15 minNympha

French toast made with thick slices of brioche, baked with chocolate

French Toast with Brioche

Thick slices of brioche soaked in a sweetened egg, milk and cream custard, then baked with chocolate and butter. No country is claimed. French toast in one form or another is eaten across Europe and beyond, and it is considerably older than its English name, a version appears in Apicius, the Roman recipe collection, and it is known in France as pain perdu, lost bread, because its purpose was to rescue bread that had gone stale. The bread choice is the substance of the recipe and the source is right about it. Brioche and challah are both enriched doughs, made with eggs and butter, which means they are structurally sturdier and can absorb a great deal of custard without collapsing. Plain sandwich bread turns to mush. Cutting the slices thick, around 2 cm, matters for the same reason. Baking rather than pan-frying is the other decision here, and it solves a real problem. Thick slices fried in a pan brown on the outside long before the custard in the middle has set, which is why so much home-made French toast is soggy inside. The oven cooks it through evenly. The method has a copy error worth noting: it refers to baguette slices twice, having specified brioche in the ingredients. Brioche is correct.

45 minCuisine228

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Zogale (Moringa Salad) And Macaroni

Coconut Chicken Curry

Bhajias

Red-Red Stew

Fish Stew

Injera (Ethiopian Flatbread)

Goat Gari Pinon

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Liberian Jollof Rice

Egusi Soup

Ethiopian Berbere Cabbage - Atakilt Wat

Muamba De Galinha (Angolan Chicken Stew)

Angwa Moo

Moi Moi / Moin Moin

Fried Yam

Domada (Gambian Peanut Stew)

Goat Gari Pinon

Injera (Ethiopian Flatbread)

Picnic Bread (From South Africa)

Jollof Rice

Tunisian Loubia (White Bean Stew)

Zogale (Moringa Salad) And Macaroni

Gizdodo (Gizzard and Plantain)

Tatale

Air Fryer Baby Potatoes

Chakalaka

Fish Stew

Red-Red Stew

Bhajias

Coconut Chicken Curry

Grilled Tilapia with Lemon, Garlic and Ginger

Simple Fondant Potato Recipe

Accra Banana (Cameroonian Banana and Cassava Fritters)

Baked Plantain Loaf

Farofa (Toasted Cassava Flour)

French Toast with Brioche