Issa (Ciise)

Lahoh

also Canjeero

Spongy fermented pancakes cooked on one side only, pocked all over with holes. Eaten for breakfast with ghee and sugar, or under stew at any other hour.

Serves Makes 10 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Bariis iyo Muufo

also Rice with maize bread

Djiboutian spiced rice served alongside the thick maize flatbread of the Horn, the pairing that makes up most weekday lunches in the city.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Skoudehkaris

Rice cooked with lamb, tomato and a heavy hand of cardamom and cumin, Djibouti's national dish. Somali, Yemeni and Afar influences meet in one pot.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sambusa

Triangular pastries of spiced mince or lentils, fried and eaten to break the fast and sold from every Ramadan stall in Djibouti City.

Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Fah-Fah

also Soupe djiboutienne

A fiery goat soup with chilli, coriander and lime, eaten at any hour and reputed to cure anything. Served with lahoh torn straight into the bowl.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Cambaabur

also Anbabur, Spiced festival bread

A soft turmeric-tinted pancake bread eaten at Eid with yoghurt and sugar, closely related to injera and lahoh but yellower, thicker and sweeter.

Serves Makes 8 · 40 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Poisson Yéménite

Whole fish rubbed with chilli and baked against the wall of a clay tandoor, a Yemeni method brought across the Gulf of Aden and now thoroughly Djiboutian.

Serves 4 · 45 minutes, plus 1 hour marinating

Shaah

also Somali spiced tea

Black tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove and drunk very sweet, offered constantly and refused rarely. The default hospitality of the whole Horn.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Injera

Fermented teff pancake, at once the plate, the utensil and the bread. Teff is native to the Ethiopian highlands and grows almost nowhere else.

Serves Makes 8 · 45 minutes, plus 3 days fermenting

Misir Wat

also Red lentil stew, Misir wot

Red lentils cooked down with onion and berbere into a deep red stew. The backbone of the Ethiopian fasting table, eaten on the roughly 180 days a year the Orthodox calendar sets aside.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Doro Wat

Chicken stewed for hours in berbere and an enormous quantity of onions cooked down without fat. Ethiopia's national dish, served at Christmas and Easter and to any guest worth the trouble.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Tibs

also Zilzil tibs, Sautéed meat

Beef or lamb cut in strips and seared fast with onion, rosemary, chilli and spiced butter, often brought to the table still sizzling on a clay brazier.

Serves 4 · 40 minutes

Sambusa

Lentil or minced beef pastries fried crisp, sold on Addis street corners and eaten to break the fast in Ramadan and during Orthodox fasting periods in their vegan form.

Serves Makes 24 · 1 hour

Kitfo

Raw minced beef warmed in spiced butter with mitmita and served with ayib cheese and kocho. A Gurage dish that became a national delicacy, ordered leb leb or fully raw.

Serves 4 · 30 minutes

Shiro Wat

Ground chickpea flour cooked into a smooth spiced purée, the daily food of most Ethiopians and the mainstay of the 200-odd fasting days in the Orthodox year.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Gomen

also Collard greens, Ye'abesha gomen

Collard greens braised long and slow with onion, garlic and ginger until sweet and silky. The green on every Ethiopian platter and one of the fasting dishes.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Kocho

also Enset bread, False banana bread

Bread made from fermented enset — the false banana — scraped, buried in a lined pit for months and then baked flat. The staple of the Gurage, Sidama, Hadiya and Kambaata highlands, and Ethiopia's insurance against famine.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes, from prepared kocho dough

Tej

Honey wine fermented with gesho, a buckthorn twig used as a bittering agent, and drunk from a round-bottomed berele flask. Served in dedicated tej bets across the country.

Serves Makes 3 litres · 3 to 4 weeks

Tella

also Talla, Ethiopian home beer

Home-brewed beer of barley and gesho, the buckthorn leaf that stands in for hops. Cloudy, sour and low in alcohol, brewed for every wedding, funeral and saint's day.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 1 hour active, plus 5 to 8 days fermenting

Lahoh

Fermented pancakes cooked on one side, eaten in Hargeisa at breakfast with ghee, honey or stew. The everyday bread of the north.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Hilib Geel

Camel meat, the north's celebration food, stewed with xawaash or grilled fresh. Somaliland's livestock exports are the whole economy and camel is at the top of the hierarchy.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Muufo

Maize bread baked against the wall of a clay oven, thick and slightly charred, eaten with ghee and sugar or with camel milk.

Serves Makes 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Baasto iyo Suugo

Spaghetti with a spiced meat sauce, a lasting inheritance of Italian colonial administration and now served at Somali weddings alongside rice.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Maraq

A clear soup of goat or camel bones with vegetables and lime, drunk before the main dish or on its own to break a fast.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Caano Geel

Camel milk, drunk fresh and warm from the animal or lightly soured. It keeps better than cow's milk in heat and is the pastoral north's staple drink.

Serves 4 · 5 minutes