Bakuena

Papa

Stiff maize meal porridge eaten at nearly every meal in Lesotho, served with moroho or meat. Cooked drier than in most neighbouring countries.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Likhobe

Whole sorghum, maize and beans boiled together for hours into a thick mixture, the mountain kingdom's oldest and most characteristic dish.

Serves 6 · 3 hours, plus overnight soaking

Makoenya

also Fat cakes

Fried dough balls sold at every taxi rank and school gate in Lesotho, eaten warm with tea or split and filled with polony.

Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours

Nama ea Konyana

Mutton stewed slowly with onion and little else, served at feasts and after initiation ceremonies. Lesotho's sheep are its wealth and this is how they are honoured.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Moroho

Wild or cultivated greens fried with onion and tomato, eaten with papa at most meals. Gathered from the fields in summer and dried for the winter.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Lesotho Chakalaka

also Vegetable relish

Carrots, peppers and beans cooked with curry powder into a spiced relish eaten with papa across the Lesotho highlands, adopted from the South African mines.

Serves 6 · 35 minutes

Motoho

Fermented sorghum porridge drunk thin, sour and cold, the Basotho breakfast and the drink taken to the fields. Non-alcoholic and mildly effervescent.

Serves 6 · 20 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting

Pap and Chakalaka

Maize porridge with a spiced vegetable relish, eaten at braais and in townships across the country. Chakalaka was invented on the mines and has spread everywhere since.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Umngqusho

also Samp and beans, Isitambu

Cracked dried maize and sugar beans cooked slowly together with onion and butter, the Xhosa staple and, famously, Nelson Mandela's favourite food.

Serves 6 · 3 hours, plus overnight soaking

Bobotie

Spiced mince baked under a savoury custard with bay leaves standing in it, a Cape Malay dish and South Africa's most-cited national plate.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Boerewors

also Farmer's sausage, Wors

Coarse beef sausage spiced with coriander, clove and vinegar, coiled in a spiral and grilled over coals. The South African braai is not a braai without it.

Serves 8 · 1 hour, plus overnight resting

Bunny Chow

A quarter loaf of white bread hollowed out and filled with curry, invented in Durban's Indian community and eaten with the hands, no cutlery permitted.

Serves 4 · 2 hours

Braai with Boerewors

Meat grilled over wood coals, with boerewors coiled in a spiral. A braai is a national institution with its own public holiday, and gas is not accepted.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Potjiekos

also Potjie, Three-legged pot stew

Meat and vegetables layered in a cast-iron pot over coals and left for hours without stirring, so each layer stays itself. The South African outdoor cooking ritual.

Serves 8 · 4 hours

Koeksisters

also Koesister, Syrup plaits

Plaited dough fried and dropped straight into ice-cold syrup so the outside stays crisp and the inside floods with sugar. A South African argument between the Afrikaans plait and the Cape Malay spiced ball.

Serves Makes about 24 · 1 hour, plus chilling the syrup overnight

Cape Malay Denningvleis

Lamb stewed with tamarind, allspice and onions until sour-sweet and dark, from the Cape Malay kitchen built by people brought to the Cape as slaves from Southeast Asia.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Rooibos Tea

Red bush tea from the Cederberg, the only place on earth it grows, drunk without milk or as an espresso-style red cappuccino. Naturally caffeine-free.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Bogobe

Sorghum porridge, cooked plain or soured, the traditional staple before maize arrived. Bogobe jwa logala is the fermented version, eaten for breakfast.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Dikgobe

also Samp and beans, Dikgobe tsa ditloo

Cracked maize cooked with bambara groundnuts or cowpeas until soft, the Botswana staple that appears at every funeral, wedding and kgotla gathering.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes, plus soaking

Seswaa

Beef or goat boiled with nothing but salt until it falls apart, then pounded in the pot. Botswana's national dish, cooked by men at weddings and funerals in three-legged pots.

Serves 8 · 3 hours 30 minutes

Magwinya

also Fat cakes

Plain fried dough balls sold from tins at every bus rank and school gate, eaten with polony, atchar or nothing at all.

Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours

Serobe

Tripe and offal cooked slowly with the intestines cleaned and cut fine, served at weddings and funerals alongside seswaa. Nothing of the animal is wasted.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Morogo wa Dinawa

Wild or cowpea leaves cooked with onion and sometimes groundnut, eaten with bogobe. Gathered rather than grown, and the dish that carries households through the dry season.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Phane

also Mopane worms, Madora

The caterpillar of the emperor moth, harvested off mopane trees, gutted, dried and then stewed with tomato and onion. High in protein, seasonal, and a genuine delicacy in Botswana.

Serves 4 · 1 hour

Madila

Milk soured in a hide or gourd until it thickens, drunk on its own or poured over bogobe. The pastoral household's preservation method and its breakfast.

Serves 6 · 2 to 3 days