Recettes

Mufete

Mufete is a plate from Luanda, and more precisely from Ilha de Luanda, the sandbar that curves off the Angolan capital. It is grilled fish with an onion salsa, set alongside beans in palm oil, plantain, sweet potato and cassava, and it is assembled on a shared platter rather than plated per person. It is weekend food. Angolans eat mufete at lunch or at a late brunch, and the scale of it is the point: the full version, with the beans and all three starches, is understood to require the rest of the day to sit with. There is a lighter version, fish and onion salsa alone, for those who intend to do something afterwards. Mufete has moved from occasion to routine within living memory. It was served at parties, weddings and celebrations, and it is now eaten regularly, particularly by islanders, in Luanda itself. That shift from ceremonial food to weekend food is the kind of movement that usually goes the other way, and it has kept the dish present in the city rather than preserved in it.

Angola3 hr 20 minNympha

Potjiekos, a South African stew cooked in a three legged cast iron pot over an open fire

Potjiekos (Afrikaans Stew on the Fire)

Potjiekos takes its name from its vessel. A potjie is the round, three legged cast iron pot that sits directly in the embers, and potjiekos, pronounced poi-key-kos, is simply the food that comes out of it. The pot is a descendant of the Dutch oven brought to the Cape in the 17th century, and it is now found in households across southern Africa. The defining rule of a potjie is that it is not stirred. Ingredients are layered, meat at the bottom, vegetables above it in the order of how long they need, and the lid stays on. What comes out is not a stew in the ordinary sense: the layers hold something of their own identity rather than dissolving into a common sauce, and that separation is the point of the method. It is also a social form. A potjie runs for three to six hours, and the cooking is the occasion rather than the preparation for one. People sit around the fire while it happens. South Africans distinguish it from a braai, which is the other great outdoor cooking institution, and rank the two as the country's twin claims on the fire.

South AfricaAmara

Banku, a Ghanaian fermented corn and cassava dish, shaped into balls and served with grilled tilapia and pepper sauce

Easy and Simple Way to Make Banku

Banku is fermented corn and cassava dough, cooked to a smooth, slightly sour mass and shaped into balls. The sourness is the whole identity of the dish. Unfermented, the same ingredients produce something else entirely, which is why the two to five days the dough spends fermenting are not a preliminary to making banku but the making of it. The name is Ga-Dangme, and banku belongs most closely to the Ewe, Fante and Ga-Adangbe peoples of southern Ghana, though it is eaten throughout the country. Its most recognised pairing is with grilled tilapia and hot pepper sauce, a combination that functions as a national plate: the sour dough against the freshwater fish and the raw heat of the pepper. It is eaten with the hands, in pieces pinched off the ball and used to lift soup or sauce. Ghanaians distinguish banku from akple, its close Ewe relative, and from fufu, which is a different preparation entirely, and those distinctions matter to the people who make them. Fermentation is what sets banku apart from the other starches on the same table.

Ghana2 daysJennifer

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

Pork Trotters

Pork trotters are the foot and ankle of the pig, and almost all of what they offer is collagen. Cooked for hours they break down into something gelatinous and rich that thickens its own liquid, and they are eaten both as a full meal with gravy and as something picked at with the fingers. In South Africa the trotter carries a specific history. Trotters, like offal, were what was left over, the parts of the animal that commercial butchery and the households that could afford choice cuts did not want. They were what was available to people who had been made poor by law. The black community took the trotter and made it a dish with its own standing rather than a marker of scarcity, and that transformation is what the dish now carries. It is claimed rather than merely eaten. It is served with pap, the maize porridge that takes up the gravy, and it appears at home meals and at gatherings without being reserved for either. The long cook is unavoidable, which makes it food for a day when you are in the house anyway.

South Africa3 hr 35 minTshego Stone

Pap En Vleis

Pap en vleis is Afrikaans for porridge and meat, and the name describes the whole of it. Maize meal cooked to a smooth, firm mass, and grilled meat beside it. Two components, no sauce required, and a dish that the entire country recognises regardless of which language its household speaks. Its natural setting is outdoors and social. Pap en vleis is what comes off a braai and what is served at a shisanyama, the grill and gathering place where meat is bought, cooked over open fire and eaten on site. The dish exists in the same space as the fire and the people standing around it, and eating it indoors at a table is possible but slightly beside the point. Maize is the foundation of the South African diet, and pap is its most direct expression: nothing added, nothing disguised, judged entirely on texture. The meat is whatever the household or the grill has, and its variability is why the dish has stayed universal rather than becoming the property of any one community. A dish defined by two nouns leaves room for everyone's version.

South Africa55 minLaila

Pap and sous, South African maize porridge served with a tomato and onion gravy

Pap & Sous

Pap and sous is maize porridge with tomato gravy, and between them they account for a very large share of what is eaten in South Africa on an ordinary day. Pap is the smooth, firm maize meal that anchors the plate. Sous, Afrikaans for sauce, is the tomato and onion gravy that goes over it. The comparison South Africans reach for when explaining pap to outsiders is grits or polenta, and it holds up as far as the grain goes. What it misses is the position the dish occupies. Pap is not a side. It is the centre of the plate, and everything else is arranged in relation to it, which is why the quality of a household's pap is noticed and remarked on. The gravy is where the cook is visible. A sous is built from onion, pepper, chilli, garlic and tomato with paprika and a little sugar and vinegar, and every household has a version. Pap and sous is eaten on its own as a complete meal and served alongside grilled meat and boerewors when there is a fire going, which is the same dish playing two different roles depending on the day.

South Africa1 hrChef.donkey

Nyama Choma

Nyama choma is Swahili for roasted meat, and the name is the entire description. Goat is the meat of choice in Kenya, cooked over charcoal at a low heat for hours, seasoned in its most orthodox form with nothing but salt. The restraint is deliberate: the dish is a test of the meat and the fire rather than of a marinade. It is eaten on occasions rather than on weekdays. A weekend family gathering, a celebration, an afternoon that has been set aside for it. Nyama choma comes with ugali and kachumbari, the raw tomato and onion salad whose acidity cuts the fat, and the three together form a plate that is recognised across Kenya and Tanzania without variation in its structure. The social arrangement around it is as fixed as the plate. The grilling is done outdoors and generally by men, standing around the fire, eating as they go and talking for as long as the meat takes. The meat is pulled from the bone with the fingers. Nyama choma is not a dish that is prepared and then served; the preparation is the event, and it is not designed to be hurried.

Kenya2 hr 40 minFoodChef

Hausa Masa

Masa, also called waina, is a fermented rice cake from the Hausa of Northern Nigeria: small, round, spongy underneath and browned on the surface, cooked in a dedicated pan with shallow round wells. It belongs to the Hausa, one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, and it is among the dishes most closely identified with them. The fermentation is what makes it. Rice is soaked, ground with cooked rice, and left to rise overnight, and the mild sourness that develops is what separates masa from any other rice pancake. The holes that open across the surface as it cooks are the visible evidence of that ferment, and a masa without them has not been left long enough. It is breakfast food and snack food, sold from street stands and in markets across the north, and it appears at celebrations and family gatherings. What goes with it varies by household and by time of day: honey, groundnut oil, a peppery stew, or yaji, the same spice blend used on suya. Masa is a dish that has held its association with one people while spreading well beyond them, which is a fair description of how Hausa food generally has travelled through Nigeria.

Nigeria1 hrLaila

Moroccan Chicken Rfissa

Rfissa is chicken and lentils stewed with onions in a broth heavy with fenugreek, ras el hanout and saffron, poured over a bed of shredded msemen or trid pastry. The pastry takes up the broth and becomes the base of the dish rather than an accompaniment to it, which is what distinguishes rfissa from a tagine served with bread. It is a family dish above all else. Rfissa is what appears at reunions and at religious occasions, at what Moroccans call a zarda, and it is not a restaurant dish. Its most specific role is at childbirth: it is served to women who have recently given birth, traditionally on the third day, because fenugreek, lentils and the spice blend are held to support recovery and milk production. A dish with a fixed place in a family's most significant week carries a weight that a good stew does not. The bed underneath it has its own vocabulary. Served over crumbled harcha it becomes rfissa medhoussa; over cubed bread it is treda. Moroccan households commonly buy the trid or msemen from a souk or a local bakery rather than making it, because the pastry is the slow part and the stew is not.

Morocco3 hrBlessing

Rwandan brochettes, goat meat skewers grilled over charcoal and served with plantain and salad

Rwandan Brochettes (Grilled Meat Skewers)

Brochettes are skewered grilled meat, and in Rwanda they are the food most reliably present wherever people gather in the evening. Goat is the usual choice, threaded onto skewers with onion, grilled over charcoal, and eaten standing at a bar, sitting in a restaurant, or bought from a street vendor on the way somewhere else. The word is French, meaning skewer, and its presence in Rwandan usage is a plain marker of the colonial period. What the word describes is entirely Rwandan: a particular cut, a particular char, and a particular way of eating, with grilled or fried plantain, potatoes and a fresh salad alongside. They are not heavily spiced, which distinguishes them sharply from the grilled meat traditions further west. Where Nigerian suya is built on a dry spice coating and West African peppered goat is aggressively hot, a Rwandan brochette is seasoned simply and relies on the meat and the fire. Heat, when it is wanted, arrives separately at the table as akabanga, the thin orange Rwandan chilli oil that is sold in small bottles and used a drop at a time. That separation of meat and heat is a matter of preference in Rwanda rather than an absence of one.

Rwanda55 minDebby

Danwake, Northern Nigerian bean and baobab leaf dumplings tossed with oil, pepper and fresh vegetables

Danwake Assorted

Danwake is a Northern Nigerian dish of small dumplings made from bean flour and ground baobab leaf, then cooled and dressed with oil and pepper. The dumplings are pale green from the kuka, soft and slightly springy, and they are eaten in quantity rather than as a delicate portion. Its origin is given as Niger, and it has been adopted so completely across Northern Nigeria that it now reads as a staple of the region rather than an import from it. The flour blend varies from one part of the north to another, which means there is no single correct danwake and households treat the mix as something to have an opinion about. Traditionally it is eaten as danwake da mai da yaji, which is Hausa for danwake with oil and pepper, and that is the whole dish in its plain form. The eating method is part of the memory people carry of it: children pick up a single ball with a broomstick, swirl it in the oil and pepper, and eat it that way, one at a time. A fork is the modern substitute and is more hygienic, which is not the same as saying it is better. The assorted version here carries egg, tomato, onion and bell pepper alongside the base.

Nigeria45 minMaryam

Boerewors Stew

Boerewors is South African sausage, and the name is Afrikaans: boer for farmer, wors for sausage. It is coarsely minced beef, sometimes with pork or lamb, seasoned with toasted coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and allspice, and it is made in one continuous coil rather than in links. Its identity is protected in law. South African regulation sets out what may be sold as boerewors, including a minimum meat content and a cap on other ingredients, which is an unusual level of legislative attention for a sausage and a fair measure of how seriously the country takes it. That regulation is also why boerewors is genuinely hard to buy outside South Africa and why South Africans abroad end up making their own. The sausage belongs to the braai above all, grilled in its coil over coals. This stew is what happens to it indoors: cut into pieces, browned, and simmered with tomato, garlic and spices into something closer to a weeknight dish. Boerewors is also eaten with pap and a tomato and onion sauce, which is the standard plate across the country. The stew is a newer treatment of an old sausage, and its spread beyond South Africa has come with the diaspora.

South Africa30 minNympha

Kilishi, Northern Nigerian spiced dried beef coated in a groundnut and pepper paste

Killishi (Beef Jerky)

Kilishi is Northern Nigerian dried meat, and it is a considerably more deliberate thing than the jerky it is usually compared to. Beef is sliced thin enough to be translucent, dried, coated in a paste built on ground groundnuts and spices, dried again, and briefly finished over heat. The groundnut coating is what separates kilishi from every other dried meat in the world. It is a preservation technology first. In the Sahel, where refrigeration was not available and the dry season is long, thin slicing and sun drying kept meat edible for months, and the spice paste added flavour while doing further preservation work. That the result is now sold as a delicacy rather than as survival food does not change what it was built for. Kilishi is Hausa, sold in markets across the north and increasingly across the whole of Nigeria and among the diaspora, where it travels well precisely because it was designed to. It is eaten as a snack rather than as part of a meal, torn into pieces, often with a cold drink. The heat level varies by maker, and the yaji spice logic that runs through northern Nigerian cooking, the same groundnut and pepper base used on suya, is visible in it.

Nigeria5 hr 35 minLaila

Tarb, Egyptian kofta wrapped in lamb caul fat and grilled until golden

Tarb (Grilled Kofta Wrapped in Lamb Fat)

Tarb is kofta wrapped in caul fat and grilled, and the caul is what the dish is named for. Tarb is the Egyptian word for the lacy membrane of fat that surrounds a lamb's stomach, and wrapping seasoned minced lamb in it produces something that ordinary kofta cannot: the fat renders during cooking, bastes the meat from the outside in, and crisps to a golden shell. Its occasion is Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, and the connection is direct rather than customary. Eid al-Adha involves the slaughter of an animal and the distribution of its meat, and caul fat is one of the parts that becomes available when a whole lamb is broken down at home. A dish built on caul is a dish that belongs to the moment when a whole animal is being used, which is why tarb appears then and rarely otherwise. Kofta itself runs across Egypt and the whole Middle East, minced meat with onion, parsley and spices, formed and grilled. Tarb is the version that takes it somewhere richer, and Egyptians treat it as a heavy dish for a family celebration rather than everyday food. It is found in the grilled meat restaurants that specialise in kofta, kebab and grilled chicken across Egypt, served with rice or pasta.

Egypt1 hr 55 minBlessing

Ghana Jollof Rice

Ghanaian jollof rice is defined against its rivals as much as on its own terms, and Ghanaians are entirely comfortable with that. It is a tomato based rice, aromatic rather than fiery, seasoned with curry powder, garlic and ginger, and cooked in basmati. Every one of those choices is a position in an argument. The rice is the clearest one. Ghanaians use basmati, which stays separate and perfumed and carries the aromatics; Nigerians use long grain parboiled, which absorbs the tomato base and takes on the smoke. Neither is a mistake. They produce genuinely different dishes that share a name, and the preference in each country is consistent enough to be a national marker. The jollof rivalry between Ghana and Nigeria is the continent's most famous culinary argument, conducted on social media, at dinner tables and in the press with an intensity that has very little to do with rice and a great deal to do with two confident countries enjoying themselves. The honest position on the origin is that the dish descends from the Senegambian rice tradition rather than from either country. The honest position on which is better is that both are right within their own tradition, and Ghanaians serve theirs at every social gathering and celebration that matters.

Ghana1 hr 20 minDebby

Boerewors, a coiled South African beef sausage seasoned with coriander, grilling over coals

South African Sausage (Boerewors)

Boerewors is South Africa's sausage and one of the few foods in the world whose composition is set in law. Regulation requires at least 90 percent meat and caps the fat, which means anything sold under the name has to be the real thing. That is an unusual amount of legislative attention for a sausage and a reasonable measure of what it means to the country. It is coarsely minced beef, often with pork or lamb, seasoned with coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and allspice, bound with vinegar and filled into a natural casing in one continuous spiral. The coriander is the note people recognise. The spiral is not decorative: boerewors is grilled whole in its coil and cut only after cooking, because the casing holds the juices and cutting it first dries the sausage out. Its setting is the braai, and the braai is not a quick barbecue. It is an afternoon or an evening built around constructing a wood or charcoal fire and waiting for it to reach the right heat, during which a good deal of talking and drinking happens. When the braai master declares the fire ready, the meat takes half an hour and everything else has to be ready. For South Africans abroad, boerewors is the food most often named as the one they cannot get, which is why so many of them learn to make it.

South Africa2 hr 38 minFoodChef

Suya spice, the Nigerian yaji blend of ground roasted peanuts, cayenne, ginger and paprika

How to Make Suya Spice at Home (Nigerian Yaji)

Yaji is the spice blend that makes suya suya. Ground roasted groundnuts form its base, and that is what separates it from every other dry rub in the world: a spice mixture built on a nut rather than on seeds and chillies alone. Ginger, garlic, onion and paprika go in around it, with cayenne carrying the heat. It belongs to the Hausa of Northern Nigeria, and the recipes are held closely. Every suya vendor guards a proprietary arrangement of spices, and the specific balance is treated as commercial property rather than shared knowledge, which is why no two suya taste quite the same and why the exact composition is genuinely difficult to pin down. What is consistent is the groundnut, the aromatics and the heat. Its use extends well past the meat it is named for. Yaji is a marinade, a dry rub applied before grilling, and a finishing powder scattered over meat as it comes off the fire, and Nigerians use it on roasted vegetables, on fish, on chips, on plantain and on nuts. It is sold ready made at Nigerian grocers, and having a jar of it in the house is the single fastest route to making Nigerian food taste like itself.

Nigeria37 minDebby

Namibian Venison

Namibia is among the world's significant producers of game meat, and venison there means something more specific than deer. Kudu, springbok, oryx, impala and wildebeest are all farmed and hunted under conservancy systems, and the country's approach to wildlife management, which places conservation and controlled offtake in the same framework, is what allows game to be a normal food rather than an occasional one. That range of species is why Namibian venison is described in the plural. Each animal eats differently: springbok is fine grained and mild, oryx is denser and stronger, kudu sits between them. All are very lean, which is the single fact that governs how they are cooked. Fat is what keeps meat moist over long cooking, and game has almost none, so it is either cooked fast and served rare or braised long and slow with added liquid. Namibian cooking pairs indigenous foodways with the German and Afrikaner traditions left by colonial settlement, and venison appears across all of it: dried into biltong, cooked slowly in a potjie over open embers, or grilled at a braai. The recipe here takes a different route, treating the meat with a yoghurt and whole spice curry, which is a contemporary approach rather than a Namibian one.

Namibia2 hr 30 minDebby

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

Liver suya, Nigerian spiced liver kebabs coated in groundnut and pepper yaji and grilled on skewers

Liver Suya (Liver Kebab)

Suya is not restricted to any one cut, and liver is among the most common of the alternatives. Kidney and tripe appear too, and the offal versions are cheaper, cook faster and carry the yaji spice differently from beef, which is a large part of why they have their own following rather than being a fallback. Liver takes spice better than muscle meat does. It is soft, mineral and slightly sweet, and it absorbs the groundnut and pepper coating almost immediately rather than needing time to marinate. It also cooks in minutes, which suits the trade: a suya vendor working a roadside grill at night needs something that goes from raw to served while the customer waits. The name changes across West Africa without the thing changing much. Suya in Nigeria, soya in Cameroon, chinchinga or sitsinga in Ghana, and brochettes in the Francophone countries. The spice blend, yaji, is what holds it together, and it has no fixed recipe: the composition varies by vendor and by region, and each is guarded. What is consistent is ground groundnut, chilli, ginger and garlic, and a heat level that varies from cook to cook while the intensity of flavour does not.

Nigeria45 minCuisine228

Egyptian Kofta

Kofta is minced meat, seasoned and shaped by hand, and it runs across an enormous stretch of the world: from the Balkans through Turkey, the Levant and Egypt, across the Arabian peninsula, into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and along the North African coast. The Egyptian version is lamb or beef with onion, parsley, mint and a warm spice mix, moulded onto skewers and grilled. Its written history is old. Recipes appear in the earliest surviving Arab cookbooks, where large ground lamb meatballs were glazed in saffron and egg yolk, a technique that later reached Europe and was known there as gilding or endoring. From the Arab world it travelled east, and nargisi kofta was served at the Mughal court in India. In Egypt, kofta belongs to the grilled meat restaurants that exist in every town, where it is cooked alongside kebab, grilled chicken and tarb and served with rice, bread and salad. The distinction Egyptians draw between kofta and kebab is worth knowing: kebab is cubed meat on a skewer, kofta is minced meat shaped by hand. It is essentially sausage without a casing, and the comparison to a hamburger, sometimes made, misses that it is almost never served in bread.

Egypt1 hrCuisine228

Zviti

Zviti is a very hot Algerian dish from Bou Saada in M'Sila province, and it is defined as much by how it is served as by what goes into it. A semolina flatbread called rakhsis is crumbled into a tall wooden mortar, the mehrez, along with grilled peppers, tomatoes, garlic and a large quantity of chilli, and everything is crushed together with a wooden pestle. The mortar then goes to the table. Zviti is not portioned onto plates: everyone gathers around the mehrez and eats directly from it, and in some places it is presented on a special table with a hole cut in the middle to hold the pestle upright. It also goes by the name slata mehrez, which translates as the mortar salad. The heat is the point and Algerians are entirely open about the effect. Eating zviti involves sweating and gasping, and the description of it as a fire dish is affectionate rather than a warning. Some restaurants reduce the chilli or work olive oil and butter through it to soften it, which regulars regard as missing the idea. It is eaten as an accompaniment rather than a course, with a glass of lben, the fermented buttermilk, to cool the mouth between mouthfuls.

Algeria45 minBlessing

Chicken Feet

Chicken feet are eaten across a very large part of the world, and the reason is always the same: an animal is not wasted. What the foot offers is skin, tendon and collagen rather than muscle, and cooked properly that produces a texture no other part of the bird gives. The geography is broad. China is the reference point most people reach for, where chicken feet are a standard dim sum item and a beer snack, and where demand is high enough to sustain a substantial international trade. Beyond that they are eaten across much of Asia, in Mexico, Peru and Jamaica, and across West and Southern Africa, where they are grilled, stewed and sold at roadsides. The recipe that follows is a Chinese style braise, and it should be read as that rather than as an African preparation. Sake, soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin, star anise and scallions are the flavour base of a Cantonese braised dish, and the technique of blanching, peeling, salting, dry searing and then simmering in a dark sauce is a Chinese one. It is a good recipe. It is not an African one, and this platform has a separate African treatment of the same cut, where the feet are precooked and then fried crisp with garlic, ginger and pepper.

Amara

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

Ivorian alloco, fried plantain served with braised chicken and chilli sauce

Ivorian Alloco Recipe and Braised Chicken

Alloco is fried plantain, and the name comes from the Baoulé, one of the large Akan groups of eastern Côte d'Ivoire, whose word loko described a plantain that had ripened. That etymology tells you what matters most about the dish: the ripeness of the fruit. Plantain is a staple across the humid West African belt and fried plantain exists everywhere in it under different names. Benin and Nigeria call it dodo, Ghana has kelewele, Togo has amadan, Congo has makemba. What sets alloco apart is not the plantain but the company it keeps: a fierce sauce de piment, and grilled fish, braised chicken or eggs alongside. It has its own building. The Allocodrome in the Cocody district of Abidjan grew up in the mid 1980s around a cluster of street vendors, mostly women, who were already selling alloco to passers by, and it is now an open air institution where people go to eat, talk and watch the street. Very few dishes anywhere have a place named after them. Getting the plantain right is the whole technique: somewhere between semi ripe and ripe, yellow with black spots but not black all over, so it caramelises without collapsing into sweetness.

Côte d'Ivoire50 minCuisine228

Shito, the Ghanaian black pepper sauce of dried fish, shrimp and pepper cooked in oil, in a glass jar

Shito (Black Pepper Sauce)

Shito is Ghana's black pepper sauce, and it is the condiment the country's food is built around. Dried fish, dried shrimp, onion, ginger and a very large quantity of ground pepper are cooked down in oil until the whole thing turns near black and the oil separates and rises. It is intensely savoury, genuinely hot, and used a spoonful at a time. What makes it structurally interesting is that it keeps. Fried properly, shito lasts weeks or months on a shelf without refrigeration, because the oil seals it and there is almost no water left in it. That is why Ghanaians abroad carry jars of it in luggage and why it is made in large batches rather than small ones. Its reach across the Ghanaian table is close to total. Waakye, kenkey and banku are barely considered complete without it. Beyond those it goes with jollof, fried rice, braised rice, gari, fried yam, fried plantain, grilled meat and, as the source for this recipe points out, bread. It is the thing that carries Ghanaian food, and the one rule about keeping it matters: only ever take shito out with a clean dry spoon, because a wet spoon introduces water and the jar will spoil.

Ghana1 hr 20 minAmanda Dadson

Catfish and Carrot Sauce

Catfish is everywhere in Nigeria now, and the reason is farming rather than fishing. Catfish aquaculture expanded enormously across the country from the 1990s onward, at both household and commercial scale, and a fish that was once a river catch became one of the most available proteins in the market. Dishes built around it have multiplied accordingly. This one is a contemporary Nigerian preparation rather than an inherited dish. Carrot and tomato are blended into a sauce in a three to one ratio, so the carrot rather than the tomato carries it, giving a sweeter and thicker base than a standard Nigerian stew. The fish is marinated, grilled or baked separately, and set into the sauce at the end rather than cooked in it. Cleaning is the part that determines whether it works. Catfish is naturally slimy and has to be scrubbed with salt, alum, potash or maize chaff, and soaking it briefly in hot water both removes the remaining slime and firms the flesh so it holds together instead of breaking apart. Grilling rather than frying keeps that firmness. It is served with rice, potato or yam.

Nigeria50 minMaryam

Ghanaian Chale Sauce

This is a blended tomato, onion and chilli sauce in the West African style, cooked down in oil and finished with a spice blend, and it is presented here as it appeared in the source archive. It is used as a dip for fried plantain and grilled meat and as a marinade for chicken or fish. The name needs care. Chale is Ghanaian pidgin, an address between friends roughly equivalent to mate or bro, and it appears in Ghanaian food naming most familiarly in chale wote, the flip flop sandal that gives its name to the Accra street art festival. It is not, on the available record, an established name for a documented Ghanaian sauce, and this may be a contemporary or house name rather than a traditional one. Ghana's documented pepper sauces are shito, the dark fermented sauce of dried fish, prawn and pepper, and the fresh pepper sauces made with tomato, onion and chilli that accompany kelewele and grilled tilapia. This recipe sits closer to the second group, though the nutmeg and curry powder in its spice list are not characteristic of either. It is included as found, and flagged so the naming can be checked before it goes live.

Ghana1 hr 10 minLaila

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.

Nigeria35 minBlessing

Asun, Nigerian smoked goat meat tossed with habanero, onions and bell peppers

Asun (Peppered Goat Meat)

Asun is smoked or roasted goat meat tossed through a fierce pepper and onion mix, and it is one of the fixtures of the Nigerian owambe, the large Yoruba party that runs on food and music. It arrives as part of the small chops circuit, alongside puff puff and peppered snails, and it disappears fast. Goat is the whole point. Yoruba speakers call it ogunfe, and it carries a stronger, more mineral flavour than beef that stands up to the quantity of scotch bonnet involved. The meat is simmered until tender before it ever meets fire, then roasted or grilled to dry the surface and pick up smoke, and only then does it go into the pepper mix. Skipping the first stage is the most common way it goes wrong, since goat that has not been softened stays tough no matter how long it spends in the pan. Sliced onions and bell peppers go in for sweetness against the heat rather than for bulk. Whether asun is a starter or something else is a matter people disagree about: the source archive files it under both appetizer and dessert, and Nigerians treat it as a small chop, a side to jollof rice, or a main course with plantain, depending entirely on the occasion.

Nigeria1 hr 15 minDebby

Senegalese Chicken Yassa

Chicken Yassa is one of Senegal's most internationally celebrated dishes, a deeply flavoured stew where chicken is marinated in an aggressive mixture of lemon juice, mustard, and onions, grilled or seared until charred, then slowly cooked with an enormous quantity of caramelised onions until they collapse into a rich, tangy, slightly sweet sauce. The dish is a masterclass in the power of onions as a flavour base. Five or six large onions per chicken is not unusual, they cook down dramatically and transform into a completely different thing: sweet, golden, and complex. The lemon keeps the sauce bright and the mustard adds a subtle depth. Yassa is eaten across Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau and wherever Senegalese communities have settled globally.

SenegalNympha

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