Recettes

Matapa, a Mozambican dish of cassava leaves cooked with groundnuts, coconut milk and shrimp, served with rice

Mozambique Matapa Recipe

Matapa is Mozambique's cassava leaf dish, and it is where the country's two food geographies meet. Cassava leaves and groundnuts belong to the interior; coconut milk and dried shrimp belong to the Indian Ocean coast. Matapa puts all four in one pot, and the result tastes like nowhere else on the continent. It is most common in the south of the country, where the ingredients are close at hand and inexpensive, and it is everyday food rather than occasion food. Mozambican households eat it with rice or bread. The dish is also known as matata in some accounts, and the naming shifts across regions in the way that dishes carried by many communities usually do. The cassava leaves are what make it. They are finely chopped and cooked long enough to lose their fibre and their raw edge, and the groundnuts thicken the coconut milk around them into something dense and savoury. Cooks substitute spinach, kale, collard greens or pumpkin leaves where cassava leaves are hard to come by, and every Mozambican will tell you the substitution is not the same dish.

Mozambique1 hrDebby

Edo Black Soup

Edo black soup takes its name from its colour, and the colour comes entirely from its leaves. Bitter leaf, scent leaf and uziza are ground together until they release a dark green so deep it reads as black in the bowl, and that grinding is the whole architecture of the dish: the leaves are the thickener, the flavour and the appearance at once. It belongs to Edo State in southern Nigeria and is particularly associated with the Esan people. Within Nigeria's enormous catalogue of soups, black soup is distinguished by how little palm oil it uses. Most southern Nigerian soups are built on a generous quantity of it; this one uses enough to round the leaves and no more, which leaves the bitterness and the aromatic sharpness of the greens in the foreground rather than behind a screen of oil. The three leaves are argued about. Some Edo cooks hold that two are sufficient, others that all three are necessary for balance, and the ratio between them is a matter of household preference. Black soup is eaten with fufu or pounded yam, and the pairing of a dense swallow against a soup this concentrated is the point of both.

Nigeria40 minTaiwo Oladapo

Garden Egg Stew, a Ghanaian stew ground in an earthenware bowl and served with boiled yam and avocado

Garden Egg Stew (Earthenware Bowl Method)

Garden eggs are the small white and pale green African aubergines that give this stew its name and its body. They are firmer and more bitter than the large purple aubergine, and when they are cooked soft and ground down they produce a thick, faintly bitter base that no other vegetable substitutes for. This is the earthenware bowl version, and the bowl is not incidental. The pepper, onion, roasted tomato and cooked garden eggs are ground directly in an asanka, the ridged clay bowl used across Ghana, which crushes rather than purees and leaves a coarse, uneven texture. A blender produces a different dish. The other common preparation fries the components instead, and Ghanaian cooks treat the two as separate recipes rather than as variations. The stew is most closely associated with the Akan of Ghana, and its usual partners on the plate are yam or plantain. Koobi, salted and cured fish, is what supplies the savoury weight, alongside smoked mackerel and herring, and palm oil finishes it. Egg and avocado go on top. It is a dish assembled at the table as much as made at the stove.

Ghana50 minAmanda Dadson

Gullisuwa

Gullisuwa is a Hausa fried pastry from Northern Nigeria, made from wheat flour worked with ground roasted peanuts and fried until crisp. The groundnuts are what distinguish it. They give the pastry a toasted, faintly sweet base that a plain flour dough does not have, and groundnuts are one of the defining crops of the northern Nigerian savannah. It belongs to celebration rather than to the everyday. Gullisuwa appears at weddings, at festive occasions and as street food, made in quantity because it keeps well and travels well, and it is offered to guests as part of the spread rather than served as a course. That is the usual position of a fried snack in Hausa hospitality: present, plentiful and not the point of the meal. Its exact origin is not documented. What can be said is that it belongs to the Hausa, that it has been made for generations, and that Northern Nigeria's long trade and cultural connection with the Sahara and the Arab world is visible in a good deal of its sweet and fried food. Beyond that, the specific lineage of gullisuwa is not recorded, and the honest position is to say so rather than to construct one.

Nigeria50 minLaila

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

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

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

Homemade Pilau Masala

Pilau masala is the spice blend behind pilau, the spiced rice of the East African coast, and it is a short list of whole spices rather than a long one. Cumin, black peppercorns, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon are roasted briefly and ground, and that is the whole thing. The blend belongs to the Swahili coast, where centuries of Indian Ocean trade brought spices from South and Southeast Asia into the cooking of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Pilau itself is a relative of the pilaf and pulao found from Persia to India, adapted along the coast into something distinctly East African, and the masala is the point at which that trade history is most visible. Whether to buy it or make it is the practical question. Pre-ground blends are widely sold and perfectly usable, but ground spices lose their volatile oils quickly, and the difference between a jar that has sat on a shelf for a year and spices roasted and ground the same day is not subtle. It requires no grinder: a mortar and pestle does the job, and the roasting step is what makes it worth doing at all, since brief heat opens up the aromatics before they are broken down.

Kenya30 minDebby

African salad, the Igbo dish of shredded cassava abacha with fermented ugba and palm oil

African Salad (Abacha and Ugba)

African salad is the Igbo dish of abacha and ugba, and it is a salad only in the loosest sense. Abacha is cassava that has been cooked, shredded on a special grater, soaked overnight, rinsed and dried in the sun. Ugba is fermented oil bean seed, cooked for hours, sliced, rinsed and left to ferment. Neither is cooked when the dish is assembled. That is the striking thing about it: almost the entire preparation happens off the stove. Palm oil is turned into a thick yellow paste by working it with potash solution, and everything else is folded into that paste in sequence. The order matters, and Igbo cooks are firm about it, because the components will not distribute evenly if they all go in together. It belongs to ceremony. At an Igbo wedding, abacha is reserved for the important guests, and it is served with chilled palm wine, which is the pairing anyone from the region will name. Despite being filling enough to be a meal, it is treated as a snack rather than a main course. It can be served cold or warmed briefly, and the choice between the two is a matter of household preference rather than correctness.

Nigeria30 minFoodChef

African Mango and Cucumber Salad

This is an East African salad of mango, cucumber and tomato with chilli, cumin and a little cinnamon, dressed with lime and finished with roasted peanuts. It is served on its own or alongside grilled meat, and its appeal is the contrast: crunchy against soft, sweet against tart. Mangoes are not indigenous to Africa. They reached the East African coast through Persian traders around the tenth century, part of the same Indian Ocean exchange that brought rice, spices and coconut into Swahili cooking, and they have been grown and eaten there ever since. Kenya and Tanzania are now substantial producers. The seasoning is what places it. Cumin with a dash of cinnamon in a fruit salad is a Swahili coast combination rather than a Western one, reflecting the same trade history, and the peanuts and lime give it the texture and acidity that hold the whole thing together. Salting the cucumber and onion first and letting them drain for twenty minutes is the technique that matters most: cucumber holds a great deal of water, and skipping it leaves a salad sitting in liquid within minutes of being dressed.

Kenya25 minAmara

African Native Sauce

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

Nigeria25 minSobecooks

Kati Kati

Kati kati is grilled chicken finished in palm oil, and it belongs to the Nkom people of the Northwest region of Cameroon. It is one of the older and more distinctive dishes of that area, and the method is unusual: the chicken is charred over an open flame first, then simmered in palm oil with seasoning. Made traditionally it is stark. Freshly butchered chicken, salt and freshly ground pepper only, roasted over open fire until well coloured, then lightly simmered in palm oil with a stock cube. Everything else is a later addition. This version uses granulated garlic, onion powder and cayenne before grilling, which the contributor is clear is their own adjustment rather than the traditional preparation. The contributor also makes a point worth passing on: do not throw any part of the chicken away. Neck, gizzard, feet and back are, in their view, the best parts, and breast and thigh the least interesting. That is a common position across West and Central African cooking and it runs directly counter to how chicken is usually sold and eaten elsewhere. Rooster is recommended over hen for being lean and the most flavourful while still cooking through on the grill. It is served with corn fufu and njama njama, the huckleberry greens of the region.

Cameroon1 hrBlessing

Nigerian Yam Brownie

This is a brownie made with mashed yam in place of much of the flour, and it is a deliberate fusion rather than a traditional dish. The contributor presents it as exactly that: a twist on a familiar dessert using a Nigerian staple. Yam is not a substitute ingredient in Nigeria; it is a central one, eaten pounded, fried, roasted and in porridge, and it carries cultural weight that potatoes do not. Using it in a brownie is a contemporary move, and it works on the same principle as sweet potato or black bean brownies: the starch gives body and moisture while the cocoa carries the flavour. What results is denser and fudgier than a flour brownie, with an earthy background note from the yam. Two cups of mashed yam against half a cup of flour is a high ratio, so the texture is closer to a baked pudding than a cakey brownie. There is no tradition behind it and this entry does not invent one. It belongs to the growing body of Nigerian home baking that treats local staples as ingredients for Western formats, alongside plantain cakes and yam flour breads.

Nigeria50 minLaila

Sukuma Wiki

Sukuma wiki is braised collard greens, and the name tells you what it is for. In Swahili it means to push or stretch the week, and it describes a cheap, filling vegetable dish that makes the household's resources last. Served with ugali and perhaps a little roasted meat or fish, it is a typical Kenyan or Tanzanian meal. Sukuma is the Swahili name for collard greens, called colewort in older English and often confused with kale. It is grown across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, it is inexpensive, and it is available all year round, which is exactly why it occupies the place it does. The greens are the most in demand vegetable in Kenya on both nutritional and economic grounds. The method is simple and the order matters. Onion is softened first, the greens go in by the handful so each addition wilts before the next, and tomatoes and liquid follow. Twenty to thirty minutes of gentle cooking takes it from tough to tender. It is naturally vegan as written, which is unusual for a staple side dish, and it is often eaten that way rather than by choice. A chopped chilli is the most common addition.

Kenya50 minFoodChef

Kelewele

Kelewele is Ghanaian spiced fried plantain: ripe plantain cut into cubes, tossed in a paste of ginger, chilli, garlic and spices, rested, then fried until the outside crisps and the inside stays soft. It is one of the country's best known street foods and is sold from stalls in the evening across Accra. The spicing is what distinguishes it, and it is worth being clear about this because the source is not. **Kelewele is not the same as aloco.** Aloco is the Ivorian name for plain fried ripe plantain, salted and nothing more, and the same dish is dodo in Nigeria and makemba in the Congo. Kelewele is marinated first, and the ginger and chilli are the entire reason it has its own name. Ginger, hot pepper and salt are the base, and nutmeg, garlic, onion and lemon appear in most versions. The rest matters: ten to twenty minutes lets the spice paste get into the cut faces of the plantain rather than sitting on the surface. It is eaten on its own, with roasted peanuts, or alongside rice and bean dishes, and it is sometimes described as vegetarian meat for the substance it lends a plate. Traditionally it is fried in red palm oil.

Ghana35 minDeborah

Seafood Garden Egg Stew

Garden egg stew is a West African palm oil stew built on garden eggs, the small white and green African aubergines that are nothing like the large purple ones sold in most supermarkets. They are firmer, more bitter and hold their shape, and they are eaten across Ghana and Nigeria both cooked and raw. This version is a seafood one, with prawns, shrimp and smoked mackerel, and it departs from the plain garden egg stew in one further respect: a spoonful of peanut butter goes into the ground pepper base. That is not universal but it is a recognised West African move, giving body and a background richness that thickens the stew without flour. What it is served with is the point. The stew is made to go with yam, plantain and cocoyam, all cooked plain, and the contributor is explicit that palm oil is what makes that combination work. Vegetable oil is possible and gives a different, lighter dish. The method also uses an air fryer to char the peppers, tomatoes and onion before grinding, which is a modern substitute for roasting them over an open flame, and it produces the same smokiness. Contains peanut.

Ghana55 minRashidatu Alhassan

Corn Dough Porridge

Corn dough porridge is a Ghanaian breakfast, particularly in the south, made from fermented corn dough thinned with water and cooked with grains of selim until thick. It is closely related to koko and to ogi across the border in Nigeria, all built on the same fermented maize. Fermentation is what gives it its character. Corn is soaked, ground and left to sour for several days, which produces a distinctly tangy flavour and makes the grain easier to digest. Fermented corn dough is sold ready made at Ghanaian and Nigerian markets and grocers, in blocks or bags, and making it from scratch takes days rather than minutes. Grains of selim, also called negro pepper or hwentia, is the spice that makes this Ghanaian rather than generic. It is a long dark pod with a smoky, slightly bitter, aromatic flavour, crushed into the water before the corn goes in. The other technique that matters is straining: the dough is slaked with water and passed through a strainer before it meets the heat, which is the only reliable way to avoid lumps. It is served hot with sugar, and often with milk, roasted nuts or coconut flakes.

Ghana30 minAmanda Dadson

Gages

Gages is a Sierra Leonean aubergine and tomato salad, marinated in vinegar and oil and finished with flaked coconut and roasted peanuts just before serving. The aubergine is fried in butter first, which is what separates it from a raw salad. The structure is a marinated salad rather than a cooked dish, and the long chill is where the work happens. Three hours minimum, and overnight is better, lets the vinegar and oil work into the fried aubergine and the raw tomato and onion soften slightly without losing their shape. It is one of very few African dishes served genuinely cold. Coconut and peanuts go on at the last moment and are the point of the dish. Both go soft within minutes of meeting the dressing, so adding them early loses the crunch that the whole thing is built around. Both are staples of Sierra Leonean cooking, where groundnuts appear in everything from stews to snacks and coconut grows along the coast. Because of the peanuts and the butter, this is neither vegan nor peanut-free, which the ingredient list makes clear but the name does not.

Sierra Leone55 minFoodChef

Lamb Steak

Lamb steaks are cut from the leg or the shoulder, rubbed with garlic, chilli and herbs, and roasted on a rack. The source names no country, though it observes that lamb is eaten widely across Africa, and the bouillon cube in the rub is a West African marker rather than a European one. Lamb has an unusually long documented history: sheep were first raised in the Middle East around nine thousand years ago, and lamb is central to cooking across North Africa, the Sahel and the Horn. Moroccan mechoui, Algerian mtewem, Senegalese dibi and Ethiopian tibs are all built on it, and each is a distinct dish this recipe is not. What lamb tastes of is worth knowing if you have not eaten much of it. It is sharper, earthier and slightly gamier than beef, and that comes from branched-chain fatty acids that beef does not have. Diet affects flavour as it does with beef. Most cuts are naturally tender, so very little needs doing to them, and the source's own advice is the important part: cooked to rare or medium-rare it is soft and excellent, and beyond that it toughens. The rub needs four hours in the fridge.

40 minCuisine228

Moroccan Couscous Salad

This is couscous with roasted vegetables, chickpeas, raisins and almonds, dressed with lemon, cumin and olive oil. It is a salad in the sense of being served at room temperature rather than a leafy one: the couscous is the bulk of it and the vegetables are folded through. Couscous was first made by the Amazigh people of North Africa, who worked out how to turn wheat into fine granules, and it remains a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Moroccan couscous is the smallest of the common grades, finer than Israeli or Lebanese couscous, and it is what this recipe uses. The technique is absorption rather than steaming. Hot broth is poured over the dry couscous, which has been tossed with olive oil and turmeric, and it is covered and left for five minutes. The raisins go in during that time so the residual heat plumps them. Traditional Moroccan couscous is steamed repeatedly in a couscoussier, which produces a lighter grain; this is the quick domestic method. The vegetables are roasted separately and folded in, which keeps them caramelised rather than steamed into the grain.

Morocco50 minDebby

Cape Malay Pickled Fish

Firm white fish, floured and fried, then layered under a sweet-sour curried onion sauce and left in the fridge for at least a day before it is eaten. It is Cape Malay, it is South African, and in Cape Town it is inseparable from Easter. The Cape Malay community descends from people brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia, largely from the Indonesian archipelago, as slaves and political exiles by the Dutch from the seventeenth century onwards. Their cooking is the origin of much of what is now considered characteristically Cape cuisine, and pickled fish belongs squarely to it, the turmeric, the coriander seed, the bay leaves and the sweet-sour balance are all markers of that lineage. The Easter association is real but the explanations for it vary, and the dish is not exclusively Christian: it is eaten in Muslim Cape Malay households too, which is one of the reasons the "made for Good Friday" account is contested. Its practical origin is simpler. Vinegar and sugar preserve cooked fish for weeks without refrigeration, which mattered a great deal in the early colonial Cape. It genuinely improves with time. A day in the fridge is the minimum; two or three is better, and it holds for several weeks. The source's nutritional claims have not been carried across.

South Africa50 minAmara

Chicken Seasoning

A dry rub for chicken: thyme, cayenne, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, oregano, onion powder and salt. It carries no country and it is a broadly Western blend, the direct counterpart to the fish seasoning already in this collection. That is worth saying plainly on a platform documenting African food, because Africa has a great many chicken seasonings that this is not. Nigerian suya spice, yaji, is built on ground peanuts with paprika, cayenne and ginger. Ethiopian berbere combines chilli with cardamom, fenugreek and rue. Moroccan ras el hanout can run to a dozen or more spices. Peri peri from Mozambique and Angola leads with African bird's eye chilli and lemon. Any of those would be the regional answer. What is here is a competent all-purpose rub, useful for roasting, grilling or frying, and it keeps for months in a sealed jar. It is filed under Worldwide Recipes rather than presented as African. One practical note the source makes and is right about: the salt is adjustable and can be left out entirely, which is worth doing if you are also using a seasoning cube or a brine, since both already carry a great deal.

5 minDebby

Instant Pot Cabbage

Cabbage sautéed and then pressure cooked briefly with broth, finished with apple cider vinegar. It is an appliance recipe with no country attached, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged. What the pressure cooker does is worth understanding. Cabbage has tough cell walls, and the pressurised environment breaks them down far faster than boiling, braising or roasting: three minutes under pressure against the hour or more those methods take. That speed is the entire appeal, and it also means the margin between tender and collapsed is narrow. The apple cider vinegar at the end is doing real work. Cabbage turns sweet as it cooks and a splash of acid at the finish cuts through that and sharpens the whole dish, which is why it goes in after cooking rather than before. Africa's own cabbage dishes are quite different and are worth naming: South African chakalaka combines it with carrot, beans and curry spice; East African cabbage is fried with onion, tomato and carrot alongside ugali; Ethiopian tikil gomen cooks it slowly with potato, carrot and turmeric. None of them is this.

25 minDebby

Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori chicken is chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices and roasted at very high heat in a tandoor, the cylindrical clay oven it takes its name from. The source states plainly that it originated in the Indian subcontinent, specifically the Punjab, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes under South Asian. The tandoor is what the dish is built around. It runs far hotter than a domestic oven, which is how the chicken cooks fast enough to char on the outside while staying moist inside. Cooking it elsewhere means adapting, and Western kitchens grill or roast instead. This recipe uses a conventional oven, which the source acknowledges as an adaptation. Two ingredients do the work. Yoghurt tenderises through its acid and lactic enzymes and keeps the meat moist, and garam masala provides the aroma. The food colouring in the ingredient list is worth knowing about: the characteristic red is achieved commercially with colouring rather than by any ingredient, and it can simply be left out with no effect on flavour. Tandoori chicken is also the foundation of butter chicken and several other cream-based curries.

45 minCuisine228

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

Cape Malay Yellow Rice

Rice cooked with turmeric, cinnamon, raisins and sugar into a sweet golden side dish. It is South African, from the Cape Malay tradition, and it is served alongside savoury curries and meat. Sweet rice as a savoury accompaniment is the thing to understand. Cape Malay yellow rice contains sugar, raisins and cinnamon, and it goes with curry, bobotie and roast meat, the sweetness is deliberately set against savoury and spiced food rather than served as a dessert. That contrast runs right through Cape Malay cooking and it is the same instinct behind bobotie's fruit chutney and the apricot jam in pickled fish. The community it comes from was formed by people brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia as slaves and political exiles by the Dutch from the seventeenth century onwards, and the dish is one of many that carries that history directly. Related yellow rices exist across the world, nasi kuning in Indonesia, kaha buth in Sri Lanka, and the family resemblance is not coincidental. Turmeric is what colours it. Saffron is used in more expensive versions and annatto elsewhere. **A significant problem with this page.** Its ingredient list merges two separate recipes, a yellow rice and a marinated roast chicken, into one list, and its method covers both. Only the rice belongs here.

South Africa50 minAnthonyJ

Dukkah, an Egyptian blend of toasted hazelnuts, sesame and spices

Dukkah (Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend)

Dukkah is a dry Egyptian blend of toasted nuts, seeds and spices, pounded to a coarse crumb and eaten by dipping bread into olive oil and then into the dukkah. It is sold in cones of paper in Cairo's spice markets and made at home to family recipes. **It contains hazelnuts, which is not obvious from the name.** The name explains the texture. Duqqa comes from the Arabic for to pound, and the defining characteristic is that the mixture is crushed to a state that is neither a powder nor a paste, coarse enough to have texture in the mouth, fine enough to stick to oiled bread. Grind it too far and the nut oils release and it turns into a paste, which is the one thing it must not be. There is no fixed formula. Sesame, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper are near-universal; beyond that it varies by household and by vendor. A nineteenth-century account mentions marjoram, mint, za'atar and chickpeas; a 1978 report names nigella, millet flour and dried cheese; pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds are more recent. The simplest market version is nothing but crushed mint, salt and pepper. Dry-toasting each element separately, as the method does, is not fussiness, nuts, sesame and whole spices all reach their best at different rates.

Egypt35 minFoodChef

Homemade Chilli Garlic Oil

Hot oil poured over garlic and dried chilli, then strained. It is a condiment rather than a dish, and it belongs to East and Southeast Asian cooking, where versions of it are a kitchen staple. The technique is the whole thing, and it hinges on a short window. Oil is heated until shimmering, taken off the heat, and the garlic goes in for ten to thirty seconds only. The residual heat is enough to draw the flavour out; any longer and the garlic burns, which happens fast and produces a bitterness that cannot be removed. Chilli flakes go in after, because they scorch even more readily. Straining is the source's choice and it is a legitimate one, but it is worth knowing it is not the only approach. Chinese chilli crisp and many Southeast Asian versions deliberately keep the solids in, so you get texture as well as flavour. Straining gives you a clear, clean infused oil; leaving it gives you something to spoon over food. Both keep. The flavour improves for a day or two as the oil continues to take on the garlic and chilli, so making it ahead is worthwhile. It has a real African cousin worth mentioning. Ghanaian shito, the dark fried pepper sauce, works on the same principle of chilli cooked into oil, and it has its own recipe on this site.

10 minDebby

Jebena, Sudanese coffee brewed in a clay pot with spices

Jebena (Sudanese Spiced Coffee)

Green coffee beans roasted, ground with spices and brewed in a clay pot, then poured through a filter of palm fibre. It is Sudanese, and it is a preparation rather than simply a drink. **This page had no recipe card in the source.** The ingredients and method below are reconstructed from its article, and that is flagged. The context is worth stating. Coffee is East African in origin, Ethiopia is where *Coffea arabica* comes from, and Sudan and Kenya are among the places where it was first used. That makes Sudanese coffee culture not an import but part of the plant's home ground, and the source is right to be proud of it. What distinguishes jebena is that the whole process happens at the point of serving. Beans are roasted fresh in a pan, ground by hand, traditionally in a mortar, with ginger, cardamom and sometimes cloves or cinnamon, and brewed in the clay jebena pot the drink is named after. It is then poured through a filter of palm fibre stuffed in the spout. The source contradicts itself in a single sentence, saying the coffee is brewed very sweet and then that it is served black with no sugar. Both practices exist; the sentence as written cannot be true.

Sudan30 minNympha

Moroccan Lamb Chops with Chermoula herb marinade served over rice with lemon, a fragrant North African grilled lamb dish

Lamb Chops, Chermoula & Rice

Lamb chops with chermoula and yellow rice is Moroccan, grilled or roasted lamb served with a fresh herb sauce and turmeric-stained rice. Chermoula is the part worth knowing. It is a North African sauce and marinade built on fresh coriander and parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon and oil, and its name comes from the Arabic chermel, meaning to rub or to marinate. That etymology describes exactly how it is used: rubbed into meat or fish before cooking, and often served again alongside as a sauce. It is most associated with fish, where it is close to standard across Morocco and Algeria, but it works with lamb particularly well, the herbs and lemon cut through fat in a way that a heavier sauce would not. Lamb runs through Moroccan cooking at every level, from long slow tagines to chops straight off a grill, and this is at the fast end of that range. The rice is coloured and lightly perfumed with turmeric rather than saffron, which is the everyday choice, visually similar, entirely different in flavour and cost.

Morocco25 minFoodChef

Peanut Butter Soup

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

Ghana30 minBlessing

Sese plantains, Cameroonian green plantain cooked with palm oil and tomato

Sese Plantains (Cameroonian Plantain Porridge)

Green plantain cooked down in water with tomato, onion, pepper and palm oil until soft and the liquid has thickened around it. It is Cameroonian and eaten across West Africa, and it is one of the most straightforward one-pot meals in the repertoire. The name is a description of the cooking. Sese refers to the motion of turning the plantains as they cook, which is what gives the dish its texture, the pieces soften and their starch leaches into the liquid, thickening it without any need for a thickener. It is also called sese planti, turning planti, or simply unripe plantain porridge. Green plantain is the requirement rather than a preference. Unripe plantain is starchy and firm, holds its shape through the cooking, and provides the starch that thickens the pot. Ripe plantain is sweet and soft, disintegrates, and turns the dish into something else entirely. It scales in both directions. At its simplest it is plantain, palm oil, salt and crayfish; elaborated, it takes fish, any meat and vegetables. Both versions are made routinely. The source's water quantity is malformed and its health claims about palm oil have not been carried across. Cashews as a garnish are an unusual touch and worth keeping.

Cameroon50 minBlessing

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