Fang

Bâton de Manioc

also Chikwangue

Fermented cassava paste wrapped in leaves and steamed into a dense sour stick, kept for days and eaten with every sauce. The Congo basin's bread.

Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus 3 days fermenting

Nkumu

also Gnetum leaves, Koko gabonais

Gnetum forest leaves shredded to threads and cooked with palm oil, groundnut and smoked fish. The green that appears on Gabonese plates more than any other.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Poulet Nyembwe

Chicken in palm nut sauce, Gabon's national dish, cooked with the pulp of the oil palm rather than its oil. Served with bâton de manioc or rice.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Brochettes de Poisson

Fish skewers grilled at roadside braziers in Libreville and Port-Gentil, served with fried plantain and a chilli sauce.

Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating

Atanga

also African pear, Safou

The purple African pear, softened in hot water or over embers until it turns buttery, salted and eaten with bread or roast maize. Gabon's seasonal obsession.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Odika

also Chocolat indigène

Wild mango kernels ground and pressed into dark blocks, melted into a rich sauce with fish or meat. Gabonese call it indigenous chocolate for its colour and its keeping.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Feuilles de Manioc

Pounded cassava leaves with palm oil, smoked fish and groundnut, cooked long. The Congo basin's most-eaten green, and Gabon's version leans on the groundnut.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Poisson au Nyembwe

also Fish in palm nut sauce

Fish cooked in the thick orange pulp of the palm nut, the sauce that defines Gabonese cooking and gives the national chicken dish its name.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Folong

also Amaranth greens

Amaranth leaves stewed with tomato, onion and smoked fish, the simplest and commonest Gabonese green dish.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Vin de Palme

Palm wine tapped from raffia or oil palms, drunk fresh or fermented, and central to Bwiti ceremony as well as ordinary sociability.

Serves Varies · Tapped daily

Malanga con Pescado

Boiled malanga cocoyam with fish in tomato sauce, the everyday plate on Bioko and the mainland. The root is the starch and the fish is whatever the boats brought.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Pepesup

A fiery broth of goat or fish with chilli and bush spices, drunk as much as eaten. Equatorial Guinea's most-cited dish and reputed to settle any stomach.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Arroz con Pescado

also Rice with fish

Rice cooked in a fish and tomato base with palm oil, the mainland Equatoguinean weekday meal and a clear inheritance from Spanish rule.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Akwadu

Banana baked with coconut, butter and lime, served warm as a sweet. Simple, cheap and made from what grows within a few metres of most kitchens.

Serves 6 · 35 minutes

Sopa de Cacahuete

Groundnut soup with chicken or smoked fish, thickened and served with rice. Made for family Sundays and celebrations, and shared with the whole Gulf of Guinea.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Bubi Banana Soup

Green banana cooked with palm oil, fish and greens in the Bubi manner on Bioko, where the island's volcanic soil grows bananas that are the community's mainstay.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Bilola

also Sea snails in sauce, Caracoles de mar

Sea snails simmered in palm oil with chilli and greens, a Bioko island dish eaten from the shell with a pin, and a Malabo bar staple.

Serves 4 · 1 hour

Malamba

Sugarcane spirit distilled locally and drunk neat or with lime, poured at celebrations and offered to guests on arrival.

Serves Serves as a spirit · Distilled traditionally

Topé

also Palm wine, Vino de palma

Palm sap tapped from the standing tree and drunk the same day, sweet in the morning and sharply alcoholic by evening. Bioko's social drink.

Serves Varies · Tapping takes days; the wine is drunk within 24 hours

Fufu Corn

Maize flour beaten into a smooth stiff paste, eaten with njama njama or huckleberry greens in the north-west. The standard plate of the Anglophone highlands.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Koki Beans

also Koki corn, Ekoki

Black-eyed beans ground to a paste with palm oil and spinach, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a savoury pudding. A Cameroonian street and household staple.

Serves 8 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking

Ndolé

Bitterleaf boiled repeatedly to draw out the bitterness, then cooked with ground groundnuts, shrimp and meat. Cameroon's national dish, from the Douala coast.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Mbongo Tchobi

also Black stew, Sauce noire

Fish or meat in a jet-black sauce made from burnt spices — mbongo seed, country onion and njangsa — from the Bassa country around Edéa. Smoky, bitter and unlike anything else in Africa.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Soya

Beef skewers rubbed in a groundnut and chilli spice mix and grilled over charcoal, sold from evening braziers across the north and in every Yaoundé quarter.

Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating

Eru

Wild forest vine leaves shredded fine and cooked with waterleaf, palm oil and smoked fish, from the south-west. Made for celebrations and eaten with water fufu.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Achu Soup

also Yellow soup, Taro fufu and yellow soup

Pounded taro served with a bright yellow palm-oil soup coloured with limestone, the ceremonial dish of Cameroon's North West grassfields, eaten with the fingers from a shared bowl.

Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Poulet DG

Chicken with fried ripe plantain and vegetables, whose name stands for Directeur Général because it was originally what you served a man of importance.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Kondre

also Plantain and goat stew

Goat and unripe plantain stewed with country onion and njangsa until the plantain thickens the pot. A grassfields dish cooked for visitors and for the head of the household.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Sanga

also Maize and cassava leaf

Fresh maize kernels cooked with cassava leaf and palm oil into a thick green-and-gold porridge. A Beti and southern Cameroonian dish of the maize harvest.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Foléré

Hibiscus juice with pineapple, ginger and mint, sold from freezers in the north and served cold at every celebration. Cameroon's name for what is bissap elsewhere.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling

Bil-Bil

also Millet beer, Bilibili

Sorghum beer of northern Cameroon, brewed by women in great clay pots and sold from the compound door. Sour, cloudy and drunk from a shared calabash.

Serves Makes about 8 litres · 1 hour active, plus 4 days germinating and 3 days fermenting