Recettes Cameroon

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Pepper Soup with Cocoyam or Plantain

Pepper soup is the thin, fiercely spiced West African broth built on meat or fish, chilli and a set of aromatic seeds that give it a flavour nothing else reproduces. This version comes with cocoyam or plantain cooked in the pot, which turns a light soup into a full meal. The ingredients place it in Cameroon rather than Nigeria, whatever the general framing suggests. Njansang, the crushed seed used as a thickener and flavouring, and bush pepper are Cameroonian pantry staples, and Cameroon pepper, the dark powder ground from dried scotch bonnets, appears throughout. Nigerian pepper soup leans instead on ehuru, the African nutmeg, and on utazi and uziza leaves. They are cousins rather than the same soup. Pepper soup is served in restaurants and bars across the region, and it is genuinely a category rather than a single recipe: catfish, goat meat, chicken, cow foot and assorted offal all have their own versions, several of which are on this site. The source makes extensive medicinal claims for it, that it cures fevers, clears congestion and aids weight loss. None of that has been carried across. It is a hot, restorative bowl of soup, which is a reasonable thing to say about it, and it is not medicine.

2 hrEasyCameroon

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

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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.

45 minEasyCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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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.

50 minEasyCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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Njama Njama (Cameroonian Greens)

Njama njama is greens blanched, squeezed dry and then cooked through a tomato, onion and chilli base. It is one of the most eaten vegetable dishes in Cameroon, particularly in the North West Region, and it is usually served with corn fufu. The plant it is named after is African nightshade, *Solanum scabrum*, also called huckleberry, a leafy green grown across Cameroon and to a lesser extent Nigeria and Kenya. It is not the same as the toxic nightshades the name might suggest; the cultivated leaf is a staple vegetable and has been for a very long time. The source is honest about a substitution that most sources would hide, and it deserves credit for it: this recipe uses turnip greens rather than actual njama njama, because the real thing is hard to find outside Cameroon. Collard greens and watercress are named as alternatives. The result is a good dish but it is not, strictly, njama njama, and that has been flagged. The technique is worth taking seriously. Blanching, then an ice bath, then squeezing out as much water as possible, is what keeps the greens green and stops them watering down the tomato base. Four bunches of raw greens reduce to about three cups cooked. Khati khati, grilled chicken in tomato sauce, is the usual partner.

50 minEasyCameroon

Recette de Blessing · Africook

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