Amazigh (Berber)

Khobz

Round semolina and flour loaves baked daily, often carried to a communal neighbourhood oven and collected again with the family mark still on them. Bread is the utensil at a Moroccan table.

Serves Makes 2 loaves · 2 hours

Tagine of Lamb with Prunes

also Lham bel barkouk

Lamb cooked slowly in a conical earthenware pot with prunes, cinnamon and honey, finished with sesame and almonds. The sweet-savoury balance is the signature of Moroccan festive cooking.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Msemen

Square laminated flatbreads, folded around butter and semolina and griddled until layered and crisp. Sold at breakfast stalls and eaten with honey, amlou or simply torn into mint tea.

Serves Makes 8 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Bissara

also Broad bean soup, Bessara

Dried broad beans cooked to a thick purée with garlic and cumin, finished with a slick of olive oil and paprika. Morocco's winter breakfast, sold from carts before dawn.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking

Pastilla

also Bstilla, B'stilla

Pigeon or chicken and almonds in warqa pastry, dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. Served at weddings as the first course, and the clearest survival of Andalusian cooking in Morocco.

Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Rfissa

also Trid, Rfissa bel djaj

Chicken cooked with lentils and fenugreek in ras el hanout, served over torn msemen or trid pastry that soaks up the broth. Cooked in Morocco for a woman who has just given birth.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Sellou

also Sfouf, Slilou

Toasted flour, almonds and sesame bound with butter and honey into a dense unbaked sweet, made for Ramadan and for new mothers and kept for weeks.

Serves 12 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Harira

Tomato, lentil and chickpea soup thickened with a flour and water tedouira, eaten to break the fast every evening of Ramadan, usually with dates and chebakia alongside.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Amlou

Argan oil, roasted almonds and honey ground to a thick spread, from the Souss where the argan tree grows and nowhere else. Eaten at breakfast with bread and mint tea.

Serves Makes 1 jar · 30 minutes

Couscous

also Seksu, Kesksu

Steamed semolina under a vegetable and lamb broth, eaten on Fridays and at every family occasion. UNESCO listed it in 2020 as shared heritage of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, after the four countries filed jointly rather than fight over it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Chakhchouka

also Chakhchoukha Biskria

Torn flatbread soaked in a tomato and lamb stew, from the Aurès and Biskra. The bread is made specifically to be shredded, and the dish is the centrepiece of large family gatherings across the east.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Mhadjeb

also Mahjouba

Thin semolina crêpes folded around a slow-cooked tomato, onion and pepper filling, griddled and sold from carts and hole-in-the-wall counters all over Algiers, especially through Ramadan.

Serves Makes 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Bourek

also Brik algérien, Bourek annabi

Cigars of dioul pastry filled with minced meat, onion and egg and fried crisp, the first thing on the Algerian table at every iftar.

Serves Makes about 20 · 1 hour

Rechta

Hand-cut steamed noodles in a pale cinnamon and turnip broth with chicken, made in Algiers and Tlemcen for the Prophet's birthday and for Eid. The whiteness of the sauce is the point: no tomato is allowed near it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Tajine Zitoune

also Olive tagine, Chicken with olives

Chicken and meatballs braised in a white lemon and olive sauce with carrots and mushrooms, the Algerois wedding dish, quite different from the Moroccan tagine.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Chorba Frik

Lamb soup thickened with freekeh, green wheat harvested young and roasted. It breaks the fast in Algerian households every night of Ramadan, and the smell of it carries down whole streets at sunset.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mint Tea

also Atay, Thé à la menthe

Green tea with spearmint and a great deal of sugar, poured from height to raise a head of foam. Refusing the second glass is possible; refusing the first is not.

Serves 4 glasses · 15 minutes

Bazin

A firm dome of barley dough boiled in the broth it is served with, eaten by hand from a communal dish. The dough is beaten with a stick called a magraf until it is stiff enough to hold its shape.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Shorba Libiya

Lamb soup with orzo, mint and a great deal of tomato, eaten daily through Ramadan and at almost every Libyan table besides. The dried mint stirred in at the end is not optional.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mbekbka

also Libyan pasta soup

Broken pasta cooked in a spiced tomato and lamb broth until it absorbs everything, the Libyan weekday dinner and a dish of the whole Tripolitanian coast.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mbatten

Potato slices sandwiched around spiced minced meat, battered and deep fried. Sold from Ramadan stalls in Tripoli and Benghazi and made at home in quantities that never seem to be enough.

Serves Makes 12 · 45 minutes

Couscous bil Osban

Couscous served with osban, a sausage of offal, rice, herbs and spices packed into tripe. Made for Eid from the sacrificed animal, and the dish Libyans abroad miss most.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Ghraiba

also Chickpea flour biscuits

Crumbling biscuits of roasted chickpea flour and butter, made for Eid across Libya and gone within a day.

Serves Makes about 40 · 1 hour

Rishda

Hand-cut noodles steamed and served with a chickpea and onion sauce, from Tripolitania. A quiet, unspiced dish in a cuisine that is otherwise emphatic, and usually eaten in winter.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Asida bil Rub

A soft wheat pudding served in a pool of date syrup and olive oil, eaten for the Prophet's birthday and to celebrate a birth. Sweet, plain and eaten from the shared dish with the fingers.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Tunisian Couscous with Fish

Couscous stained red with tomato and harissa, steamed over a fish broth on the Sahel coast. Tunisia's version is the spicy one, and the fish version is what Sfax and Mahdia make on Fridays.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Brik à l'Oeuf

A whole egg wrapped in malsouka pastry with tuna, capers and parsley, deep fried so the yolk stays running. Eating one without spilling it is a small national test of skill.

Serves Makes 4 · 25 minutes

Lablabi

Chickpea soup poured over torn stale bread with cumin, harissa, olive oil and an egg, assembled to order in bowls in tiny shops. Cheap, hot, and the best hangover food in North Africa.

Serves 4 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking

Kafteji

also Fried vegetable chop

Peppers, courgette, potato, pumpkin and tomato fried separately then chopped together on a board with egg and harissa, sold from Tunisian corner shops in a bread roll.

Serves 4 · 45 minutes

Mloukhia Tunisienne

Beef cooked for hours in powdered jute mallow until the sauce goes almost black. Eaten at the start of the year and at family celebrations, where a long slow blackening is taken as a good omen.

Serves 6 · 4 hours

Makroudh

also Makrout, Date semolina diamonds

Semolina pastry filled with spiced date paste, fried and dipped in honey, from Kairouan, which has made them for a thousand years.

Serves Makes about 30 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Ojja bil Merguez

Eggs poached in a fierce tomato, pepper and harissa sauce with merguez sausage, cooked and served in the same pan. A fast, hot supper found in every Tunisian household.

Serves 4 · 35 minutes

Boukha

A clear fig spirit distilled by Tunisia's Jewish community from the nineteenth century and drunk cold as an aperitif. One of very few traditional distilled spirits in North Africa.

Serves Serves as an aperitif · Commercially distilled; served in minutes

Tô

also Toh

Millet or sorghum porridge cooked stiff and eaten with a leaf or okra sauce, the daily food across the Sahelian belt. Torn off in pieces and dipped with the right hand.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Tiguadege Na

also Maafe, Groundnut stew

Meat in a thick groundnut and tomato sauce over rice, Mali's national dish and the ancestor of groundnut stews from Senegal to Cameroon. The oil rising to the top is how you know it is done.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Fakoye

A sauce of powdered sesame leaves with meat and tomato, served over rice or tô. Sold from lunch pots in Bamako, and unmistakable for its slightly slippery texture.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Capitaine à la Bamakoise

Nile perch from the Niger, stuffed and grilled whole, served with fried plantain and a sharp onion salad. The dish Bamako restaurants put in front of a visitor.

Serves 4 · 1 hour

Widjila

Millet couscous with camel or mutton and curdled milk, from the Tuareg and Songhai north. The sour milk poured over at the end is what distinguishes it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Tigadèguèna Poulet

also Chicken groundnut sauce

Chicken in groundnut sauce with sweet potato and cabbage, the Bamako version of the Sahel's great sauce, served over rice.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Dabileni

Hibiscus juice, called dabileni in Bambara, sold from coolers and street-corner freezers across Bamako. The same drink as bissap and sobolo, with a Malian preference for very sweet.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling

Dèguè

also Thiakry, Millet yoghurt

Steamed millet grain in sweetened soured milk with vanilla and nutmeg, drunk cold from a plastic sachet at every Malian roadside.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus chilling

Tuwon Masara

Stiff maize or millet porridge served with a sauce of baobab leaf or okra, the daily meal in most of Niger. Eaten hot from a shared calabash.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Dambou

Steamed couscous of millet or maize tossed with moringa leaves, oil and onion. Niger's signature dish, eaten at weddings and named as the national plate.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Kilishi

Beef sliced paper thin, dried in the sun, coated in a groundnut and spice paste and dried again. It keeps for months and is the traveller's meat of the Sahel.

Serves Makes 500g · 3 days

Masa

also Waina, Rice cakes

Small fermented rice cakes fried in a dimpled pan until crisp at the edges and soft in the middle, sold at Nigerien markets with a peppery sauce or with sugar.

Serves Makes about 24 · 40 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Fari Masa

Light fried rice-flour puffs eaten at breakfast and at Eid, hollow inside and dusted with sugar or dipped in pepper sauce depending on the household.

Serves Makes 20 · 3 hours

Sauce Kopto

A Zarma sauce of moringa or jute leaves with soumbala and dried fish, poured over tuwo. Green, salty and deeply savoury from the fermented locust bean.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Fura da Nono

Balls of spiced millet dough crumbled into fermented cow's milk, a Fulani drink and meal in one. Sold by women carrying calabashes on their heads.

Serves 4 · 45 minutes

Mauritanian Couscous

Barley or millet couscous with camel or mutton, coarser and less vegetable-heavy than its Maghrebi cousins. Mauritania joined the four-country UNESCO couscous listing in 2020.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Chebujin

also Thieboudienne

Fish and rice cooked in tomato with stuffed fish and vegetables, shared with Senegal across the river. Mauritania's version leans drier and is eaten from a communal platter with the right hand.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Méchoui

Whole lamb or goat roasted over embers or in a pit, cut up and eaten in the hand with salt and cumin. The desert celebration food, and the standard way of honouring a guest.

Serves 10 or more · 4 hours

Lakhchef

also Mauritanian pancake

A thin sorghum or wheat pancake cooked on one side until it is full of holes, eaten at breakfast with butter, honey or a meat sauce.

Serves Makes 10 · 40 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Marou we Laham

Rice with meat, cooked in one pot and served on a wide communal platter. The plain name is accurate: this is the dish put out when a family has guests and wants everyone to eat well.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Hakko

A Haalpulaar dish of the Senegal river valley: leaf sauce over millet couscous, thickened and soured, eaten in the villages of the south where the millet is grown.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Zrig

Camel or goat milk thinned with water and sweetened, drunk cold across the Sahara. It is what a herder offers on arrival and the first thing given to a traveller who has come far.

Serves 4 · 10 minutes