Recipes

Umqombothi

Umqombothi is Xhosa beer, brewed from maize meal, maize malt and sorghum malt. It is thick, cloudy, sour smelling and low in alcohol, usually under three per cent, and it is not made to be compared with lager. It is a different category of drink with a different purpose. Its purpose is ceremonial before it is social. In Xhosa practice umqombothi is brewed for the return of the abakwetha, the young men coming back from ulwaluko, the initiation and circumcision rite. It is central when families communicate with the amadlozi, the ancestors, and it appears at traditional weddings, funerals and imbizo, the community meetings where matters are decided. A gathering of consequence has umqombothi at it, and its absence would be noticed as a statement. The drink is not confined to South Africa. Sorghum beer is brewed across the continent under many names: dolo in Burkina Faso, pito in Nigeria, ingwebu among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, which is their word for froth. Brewing is done outdoors over an open fire, cooled at ambient temperature, and the recipes are held within families and passed down rather than written.

3 days 1 hrHardSouth Africa

Recipe by Jennifer · Africook

Boeber (Cape Malay Sweet Milk Drink)

Boeber is a Cape Malay sweet milk drink, thick with vermicelli and sago and scented with cardamom, cinnamon and rose water. It sits somewhere between a drink and a pudding, and Cape Town households do not find the ambiguity a problem. Its place in the calendar is precise. Boeber is served on the fifteenth night of Ramadan, marking the midpoint of the fast for those who have completed the first fifteen days. That single fixed date gives it a weight that a dish eaten year round does not carry: it belongs to a moment, and its appearance signals that the moment has arrived. The drink comes from the Cape Malay community, whose ancestors were brought to the Cape from Indonesia, India and East Africa, and boeber carries the marks of all three. It has close relatives across that map. Malaysians break the fast with bubur lambuk, a porridge; Trinidadian households serve sawine at Eid al-Fitr; kheer and payasam on the Indian subcontinent are its nearest kin, most likely carried to the Cape by enslaved and later indentured Indians. In South Africa itself, the Afrikaans melkkos is the comparable dish. Boeber is what all of those became in one place.

★★★★★Highest Rated

55 minEasySouth Africa · East Africa

Recipe by Jennifer · Africook

Palm Fruit Juice

Palm fruit juice is not a drink despite the name. It is the thick orange extract pressed from the flesh of the palm fruit, and it is the base ingredient of an entire family of West African soups including banga, ofe akwu and abak atama. Getting it right is the difference between those soups working and not. It is distinct from palm oil, which comes from the same fruit. Palm oil is the extracted fat, thin and deep red. Palm fruit juice is the whole pulp suspended in water, thicker, more substantial and carrying the fruit's flavour rather than just its fat. Substituting one for the other is the single most common error people make with these soups, and it produces something oily and thin instead of rich and full. Extraction is manual and physical, and it is the reason the ingredient is more often bought than made. Softening the fruit, pounding it in a mortar and working the pulp free of its fibre and nuts is close to an hour's labour before any soup has been begun. Across Nigeria it was and in many households still is done by hand, and tinned concentrate exists precisely because the process is so laborious. Fresh extract freezes for three months, which is what most people do who go to the trouble.

★★★★★Highest Rated

1 hr 5 minMediumNigeria

Recipe by Sobecooks · Africook

Zobo Drink

Zobo is the Nigerian name for a deep red infusion made from dried hibiscus calyces, and it is one of the few drinks that crosses every line in the country, sold from coolers at motor parks, poured at weddings, made at home in large jugs and kept cold for whoever passes through. The same flower travels under different names almost everywhere it is drunk. In Senegal and much of francophone West Africa it is bissap. In Ghana it is sobolo. Across the Caribbean it is sorrel, carried there through the Atlantic trade and now inseparable from Christmas. In Egypt it is karkade. The plant is Hibiscus sabdariffa, and what is steeped is not the petal but the calyx, the fleshy cup left behind after the flower falls. What varies from house to house is what goes in beside it. Ginger and cloves are near universal in the Nigerian version. Beyond that the argument is open, pineapple skin, garden egg leaf, cucumber, lemongrass, a stick of cinnamon. Sweetness is the real dividing line: purists take it plain and tart, while most drinkers add sugar or fruit juice until it turns almost like a cordial. It is caffeine-free, which is part of why it is poured for everyone including children, and it holds its colour for days in the fridge.

★★★★★Highest Rated

EasyNigeria

Recipe by Beatrice · Africook