Recettes

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

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

West African Groundnut Milk in a glass, a creamy homemade peanut milk drink from Ghana and the Sahelian belt of West Africa

Groundnut (Peanut) Milk

Groundnut milk is what you get when raw peanuts are soaked, blended with water and strained, a plant milk made from one of West Africa's most important crops, using a method that predates the shelves of alternative milks now sold everywhere. The groundnut itself is not originally African. It came from South America and arrived through Portuguese trade, but it settled into West African farming and cooking so completely that it is now difficult to think of the region's food without it. Groundnut stew, kuli kuli, suya's spice base, roasted nuts sold by the cup at every junction, the crop runs right through the cuisine, and milk is one more thing done with it. It is drunk for straightforward reasons. It contains no dairy, which matters in a region where lactose intolerance is common in adults, and it is made from something cheap and locally grown rather than imported. Flavourings are a matter of household preference: vanilla, a little sugar, sometimes cinnamon or dates. The one thing it demands is that you make what you will drink. Fresh groundnut milk has nothing preserving it and separates within a day or two, so it is made in small quantities rather than stored, which is why it tends to be a morning thing, made and finished. It should be shaken before pouring; separation is normal, not spoilage.

NigeriaAmara

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

Grilled Plantains

Grilled plantain is street food across West Africa, and in Nigeria it is boli, ripe plantain roasted over charcoal until the outside blackens and the sugars inside caramelise. It is about as simple as cooking gets. No oil, no seasoning, nothing added. The plantain is put over heat and turned. What makes it work is entirely down to the fruit: a plantain that is ripe enough has developed sugars that caramelise under direct heat, and one that is not will taste starchy and dull no matter how long it is grilled. Plantains are not bananas, despite the resemblance. They are larger, starchier, and must be cooked before eating, raw they are unpleasant and hard to digest. The ripeness scale runs from green, which is firm and starchy and used for chips and fufu, through yellow, which is what grilling wants, to almost black, which is very sweet and better fried. Boli is sold from charcoal drums at roadsides and motor parks, usually with roasted groundnuts, and often with a pepper sauce or with fish. The pairing with groundnuts is close to fixed in Nigeria, the salt and fat against the sweetness of the plantain. It is cheap, filling and energy-dense, which is why it has stayed street food rather than becoming restaurant food.

NigeriaDebby

Peri Peri Chicken Sauce

Peri peri, also written piri piri, is a sauce built on the African bird's eye chilli, and both the chilli and the sauce belong to the Portuguese-speaking parts of southern Africa. Piri piri is Swahili for pepper, and the chilli itself grows wild across Mozambique, Angola and the surrounding region. Its history runs both ways across the Atlantic. Chillies are South American and were carried to Africa by Portuguese traders in the sixteenth century, where the small bird's eye variety naturalised and became a defining ingredient of Mozambican cooking. Portuguese settlers then took the sauce back to Portugal, and from there it spread internationally, which is why most people outside Africa first meet it as a restaurant chain flavour rather than as a Mozambican one. The sauce is not only heat. Bird's eye chilli brings a genuine fierceness, but the finished sauce carries tangy citrus from lemon, a little sweetness from sugar, and an earthy smokiness from paprika and garlic, and the result is thick, almost paste-like. The technique worth noting is emulsifying the oil into the blended sauce at the end, at reduced speed, which gives the body it needs to cling to chicken. The source is emphatic on one point: do not use extra virgin olive oil, which turns bitter when blended.

Mozambique1 hr 10 minChef.donkey

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

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

Smoked Vegetables

Vegetables tossed in oil and smoked paprika and cooked low and slow in a barbecue smoker for one to two hours. Like smoked shrimp, this belongs to American barbecue rather than to any African tradition, and no country is named in the source. Which vegetables work is the useful part. Dense, firm vegetables hold up to the long, low process: potatoes, carrots, beets, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, aubergine and winter squash such as butternut. Softer ones collapse before they take on any smoke. The recipe here uses courgette, yellow squash, onion, bell peppers, asparagus and carrots, which is at the softer end of that range and accordingly needs the shorter end of the time. Smoked paprika in the seasoning is doing something worth noticing: it brings smoke flavour independently of the smoker, which means the dish reads smoky even before the wood does its work. That is a useful trick in itself, and it means a version of this can be made in an oven with no smoker at all. Africa's charred vegetable traditions are different things entirely, Moroccan zaalouk, Egyptian baba ganoush, West African roasted pepper bases, where vegetables are blackened directly over flame rather than smoked slowly.

1 hr 45 minDebby

Baked Potato

A whole potato baked in its skin, oiled and salted for a crisp surface, and served with whatever you like on it. There is no country attached to this and none is implied. Russet potatoes are what to use, and the reason is starch. Russets are high-starch, low-moisture potatoes, sometimes sold as baking or mealy potatoes, and that composition is what produces the light, flaky interior a baked potato is judged on. Waxy potatoes hold their moisture and stay dense. Two pieces of advice in the source are worth repeating because they are both right and both commonly ignored. Pierce the potato deeply several times on each side: skipping it can genuinely make a potato burst in the oven. And do not wrap it in foil. Foil traps the moisture inside, which means the potato steams rather than bakes, and steaming gives an entirely different and softer texture with no crisp skin at all. Africa has its own baked and roasted potato and tuber traditions, roasted yam, sweet potato and plantain sold from street braziers across the continent, but a russet baked potato is not one of them.

1 hr 10 minNympha

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

Creamy Beet and Potato Salad

South African Creamy Beet and Potato Salad is a vibrant, striking side dish made from diced roasted or boiled beetroot and tender potato chunks folded together in a tangy, creamy dressing. The beetroot bleeds its deep purple-red colour through the dressing, turning the entire salad a vivid pink that makes it one of the most visually distinctive dishes on any braai spread. Beetroot holds a special place in South African food culture, it appears in salads, as a condiment on burgers, in preserves, and in baked goods. This salad is a braai staple, served alongside boerewors, grilled chicken, and pap at outdoor gatherings across the country.

Pan-AfricanCuisine228

Roasted Potatoes

Potatoes cut into chunks, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic, and roasted until browned and crisp. No country is claimed and none applies, this is the standard Western roast potato. The one piece of technique worth understanding is parboiling, which the source explains well in its text and then leaves out of its method. Boiling the cut potatoes briefly before they go into the oven does two things: it cooks the inside through so the oven only has to work on the outside, and it roughens the surface so that fat can get into the cracks. That roughened surface is what turns into crust. Skip it and the skin stays smooth and tough, and the fat sits on the outside instead of crisping it. Giving the drained potatoes a good shake in the pan before they are dressed roughs them up further, and is the single cheapest improvement you can make. Drying matters too. A wet potato steams before it browns. Any variety works, though they behave differently: floury potatoes such as russets and Maris Piper give a fluffier interior and a crisper crust, while waxy red and new potatoes hold their shape and crisp less. This recipe uses small red or white potatoes. Africa has deep roasted-tuber traditions, yam, cassava and sweet potato from street braziers, but this is not one of them.

1 hr 10 minFoodChef

Baked Plantain Loaf

Ripe plantains mashed to a paste, combined with rice flour and turmeric-infused oil, then baked in a loaf tin and sliced. The source places it in Ivory Coast, where plantain in every form is close to universal. It is worth being clear about what this is, because the title is misleading in two directions. It is not sliced plantain roasted in an oven, which is what most people mean by baked plantain. And the recipe uses rice flour as a binder and turmeric for colour, which makes it a plantain loaf or cake, closer in construction to a steamed pudding than to a side dish. The slug says load rather than loaf, which appears to be a typo in the original; the URL has been kept exactly as it is. One ingredient does not fit the stated origin. Chilli sambal is Indonesian and Malay, and it is not part of Ivorian cooking. It may be a substitution the contributor made for a local pepper paste, but the source does not say so, and rather than invent an explanation it has been flagged. The source's nutritional comparisons with potato have not been carried across. What matters for cooking is that ripe plantain is sweet and starchy, and that is what makes the loaf hold together.

Ivory Coast1 hr 30 minFoodChef

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

Grilled Vegetable and Barley Salad

Pearl barley cooked and cooled, tossed with grilled courgette, aubergine and peppers in a cumin and lemon dressing, with feta, herbs and pistachios. No country is claimed. **It is finished with pistachios, which the title gives no indication of.** Barley is the interesting part and the source makes a genuine point about it. In Egypt barley is eaten as a breakfast or dessert porridge rather than in salads, and it is one of the oldest cultivated grains in the region, domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and grown around the Nile for thousands of years. Turning it into a grain salad with grilled vegetables and feta is a modern Mediterranean move rather than an inherited one, which is worth being clear about. The technique that matters is cooling the barley completely before dressing it. Warm barley absorbs dressing greedily and unevenly, and it wilts the herbs. Cooled, it takes the dressing without soaking it all up in the first two minutes. Soaking the barley for an hour before cooking shortens the cooking time considerably and helps it cook evenly. Grilling the vegetables rather than roasting them is deliberate: the char is a flavour in its own right and it is the main thing standing up to the barley's earthiness. Its health section has not been carried across.

Egypt2 hr 10 minNympha

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

Matbucha, a slow-cooked Moroccan dip of tomatoes and roasted peppers

Matbucha (Moroccan Tomato and Pepper Dip)

Matbucha is roasted peppers and tomatoes cooked down slowly with garlic and paprika into a thick, dark, jammy dip. It is Moroccan Jewish in origin and is now eaten across Israel and the wider Middle East as a mezze staple. The name says what it is: matbucha means cooked salad in Arabic, which describes both the dish and the crucial technique. This is not a fresh salsa but something reduced by half over an hour or more, until the water has cooked out and the peppers and tomatoes have concentrated into something closer to a preserve. Rushing that stage gives you a thin tomato sauce, which is a different and lesser thing. Its journey is worth recording. Matbucha travelled from Morocco to Israel with Jewish immigrants in the mid-twentieth century, and it is now so established there that it is sold in every supermarket. In Morocco it is served as part of a mezze spread; in Israel it is understood as an appetizer. Same dish, slightly different place at the table. Red peppers rather than green is not incidental. The source notes that green peppers turn bitter in matbucha, which is correct, red peppers are ripe and sweet and reduce into something quite different. It freezes well, which is why the recipe makes three jars.

Morocco1 hr 25 minNympha

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

Taktouka, a Moroccan cooked salad of roasted peppers and tomato

Taktouka (Moroccan Pepper and Tomato Salad)

Taktouka is roasted peppers and grated tomato cooked down with onion, garlic, cumin and paprika into a thick warm salad. It is Moroccan, also popular in Algeria, and it is a mezze dish rather than a leaf salad. The name explains the texture. It comes from the Arabic taktak, meaning to grind or pound, and the vegetables end up soft and broken down rather than crisp. That is why the source opens by pre-empting the obvious question, why a salad needs a recipe, and it is a fair point: taktouka requires cooking, and cooking is most of it. It has regional names worth knowing. In eastern Morocco it is called flifla; in Algeria, felfla mechouia. Zaalouk, the aubergine version, is its closest sibling and works the same way. Grating the tomatoes rather than dicing them is the technique the source recommends and it is a good one. Cutting a tomato in half and grating the cut face against a box grater extracts the pulp and leaves the skin behind in your hand, no peeling, no blanching, and a smoother result. This dish is closely related to matbucha, the Moroccan-Jewish version, which is on this site. Matbucha is cooked longer, without onion or cumin, and the two are genuinely distinguished by community and by seasoning rather than being the same recipe under two names.

Morocco50 minBlessing

Vegan suya, oyster mushrooms grilled and tossed in Nigerian suya spice

Vegan Suya (Spiced Grilled Mushrooms)

Oyster mushrooms grilled and tossed in suya spice. It is a plant-based version of the Nigerian street food, and it works better than most meat substitutions do. **The traditional suya spice contains ground peanuts, and this recipe includes them.** The source flags it and offers to leave them out, which is honest, but it is worth stating clearly, because a peanut allergy and a suya spice blend are a genuinely dangerous combination and the name gives no warning. Suya proper is skewered beef, ram or chicken rubbed in yaji, the spice blend of ground roasted peanuts, ginger, cayenne, garlic, onion powder and paprika, and grilled over open coals. It is Hausa in origin, from northern Nigeria, and it is sold across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and parts of Sudan. Kyinkyinga is the Ghanaian name, agashe the Sudanese. Oyster mushrooms are the right substitution and not an arbitrary one. Shredded, they have a fibrous, layered structure that genuinely resembles pulled meat, they take on the dry rub readily, and they char well. Most vegetables do neither. The source's method is very compressed, one step reads "put in a preheated medium", with the word oven missing, and has been filled out below.

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