Recipes

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Split Pea Soup

Split pea soup is South African winter food, and it belongs to the same domestic tradition as sugar bean soup and other legume stews made to get a household through cold months cheaply. Split peas are ordinary peas dried and split along their natural seam, which lets them break down into a thick purée rather than staying whole. It is usually built on a meat base. Beef bones are the most common choice for the depth they give, though this version uses chicken drumsticks simmered first so their flavour goes into the water the peas then cook in. A meat free version is entirely possible and is made, but most South African households treat the meaty stock as the point of it. What it is served with is not negotiable in the households that make it: bread spread generously with margarine, or hot pap. It is the kind of dish that attaches itself to particular people and particular kitchens, and the contributor who submitted it describes it as their late grandmother's winter standby, made when the grandchildren visited during school holidays. That is how most South Africans encounter it.

Highest Rated

55 minEasySouth Africa

Recipe by Tshego Stone · Africook

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Cachupa

Cachupa is the national dish of Cape Verde, a slow cooked stew of hominy corn, several kinds of bean, root vegetables and preserved meats or fish. Every island has its own version, every family has its own version, and Cape Verdeans are clear that no two pots are ever quite the same. Corn and beans are the constant. Beyond that it takes in cassava, sweet potato, collard greens or kale, and whatever protein is to hand: corned beef, salt pork, chouriço or linguiça, or freshly caught fish. It reflects an archipelago where imported preserved meat and locally caught fish sat alongside a limited range of crops, and where nothing was wasted. The name is contested in the diaspora. In Cape Verde itself only cachupa is used, on any island, while some Cape Verdean families who have been in the United States for generations say munchupa, and the disagreement between the two runs along generational lines. There is also cachupa rica and cachupa pobre, the rich and poor versions, distinguished by how much meat goes in, and leftover cachupa refried with egg and sausage the next morning is called cachupa refogada and is regarded by many as the better meal.

Highest Rated

4 hr 30 minMediumCape Verde

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

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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.

Highest Rated

MediumSenegal

Recipe by Nympha · Africook

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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.

Highest Rated

EasyPan-African · Gambia

Recipe by Nympha · Africook

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