Dan (Yacouba)

Foutou

also Foufou

Yam, plantain or cassava pounded in a wooden mortar to a smooth elastic dough, eaten with soup. Two people work the pestle and the turning between blows in a rhythm.

Serves 4 · 45 minutes

Kedjenou

Chicken and vegetables sealed in a canari pot and cooked in their own steam with almost no added liquid, shaken rather than stirred. The most characteristically Ivorian dish there is.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Attiéké with Grilled Fish

Fermented grated cassava steamed into light sour couscous, served with a whole grilled fish and raw onion. The lunch of Abidjan, eaten off a plastic table under an awning.

Serves 4 · 40 minutes

Garba

also Attiéké thon, Garba kedjenou

Fried tuna on a heap of attiéké with raw onion, tomato and chilli, sold from wooden kiosks by Nigerien vendors across Abidjan. The cheapest full meal in the city.

Serves 4 · 35 minutes

Alloco

also Fried plantain, Aloko

Ripe plantain fried in palm oil and served with a raw onion and chilli relish, sold in the evening on every Abidjan street by the women called allocodrome vendors.

Serves 4 · 25 minutes

Sauce Graine

Palm nut pulp cooked down with meat, smoked fish and crab into a deep orange sauce, served with rice or foutou. Made for family Sundays and celebrations across the south.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Sauce Claire

A thin, clear, fiercely peppery broth of fish and aubergine, from the lagoon country. Named for what it is not: no palm oil, no groundnut, no thickening at all.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Bissap

also Jus d'oseille

Hibiscus steeped with mint and pineapple and served ice cold in sealed plastic sachets from every cooler box in Abidjan. The default soft drink of West Africa.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling

Liberian Rice Bread

A dense sweet loaf of rice flour and mashed ripe plantain, baked rather than boiled. Liberians count a meal without rice as no meal at all, and this is rice in its Sunday form.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Dumboy

also Pounded cassava, Dumbouy

Cassava boiled and pounded into a smooth heavy ball, swallowed rather than chewed, with a soup poured around it. Liberia's staple swallow.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Liberian Jollof Rice

Rice fried with meat, vegetables and tomato in the Liberian manner, closer to a fried rice than the Ghanaian or Nigerian one-pot. The differences are argued over at every diaspora gathering.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Kala

also Liberian doughnuts

Small yeasted doughnuts spiced with nutmeg and fried dark, sold in stacks from enamel basins on street corners in Monrovia from early morning.

Serves Makes 24 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Palava Sauce

Potato greens or bitterleaf cooked down with palm oil, meat and smoked fish into a thick dark sauce over rice. Named for the palaver, the long discussion, that goes with a meal like this.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Check Rice with Dumboy

Rice cooked with greens and palm oil, served with dumboy, cassava pounded to a smooth ball. Country food from the interior, and eaten with soup rather than cutlery.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Torborgee

also Bitter greens with fermented fish

Bitterball, greens and fermented fish cooked in palm oil with a great deal of chilli, a Liberian dish for people who like their food to fight back.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Liberian Ginger Beer

Ginger steeped with lime and clove and drunk very cold, sold in bottles and frozen bags. Made strong enough that a first sip catches the throat.

Serves 8 · 20 minutes, plus overnight steeping

Fouti

Fonio steamed to a light, fine grain and served with sauce. Fonio is one of the oldest cultivated cereals in West Africa and grows on the Fouta Djallon where little else will.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Riz Sauce Feuille

Rice with a dark sauce of pounded cassava leaves, palm oil and smoked fish. The most-eaten dish in Guinea, cooked in every household in Conakry and the Fouta alike.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Soupou Kandia

also Okra and palm oil sauce

Okra cooked into red palm oil with smoked fish and meat until thick and glossy, poured over rice. The Guinean and Casamance sauce, deliberately viscous.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Poulet Yassa

Chicken marinated in lemon and mustard, grilled and finished in a mass of slow-cooked onions. Casamance in origin and eaten from Dakar to Conakry, served over rice.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating

Konkoé Fumé

Smoked catfish stewed in a tomato and palm oil sauce, the celebration fish of coastal Guinea. The smoking is done over green wood for a full day before the cooking starts.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Lafidi

Rice noodles or fine pasta with groundnut sauce, from the Fouta Djallon. A Fula dish adapted to whatever grain or pasta is available, and eaten at Friday gatherings.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Fonio au Poulet

also Fonio with chicken

Fonio, the tiny fast-growing Sahelian grain, steamed and served with chicken and onion sauce. The Fouta Djallon's grain and now a global health-food export.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Jus de Gingembre

Raw ginger blended, steeped and strained into a fierce cold drink, sweetened and sold in frozen sachets. Guinean ginger is strong enough to make a first-timer cough.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus 4 hours steeping