Kanuri

Pounded Yam and Egusi Soup

White yam pounded to a smooth elastic mound with a soup of ground melon seeds, greens and meat. The centrepiece of Yoruba and Igbo tables alike.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Tuwo Shinkafa

also Rice swallow

Soft short-grain rice cooked and beaten into a smooth mound, the northern Nigerian staple eaten with miyan kuka or miyan taushe.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Nigerian Jollof

Long-grain rice cooked in a reduced pepper and tomato base until the bottom of the pot lightly scorches, which is where the smoky flavour comes from and is not a mistake.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 20 minutes

Miyan Kuka

also Baobab leaf soup, Luru

Dried baobab leaf powder cooked into a dark, faintly slippery soup with dried fish and locust bean. The Hausa soup of northern Nigeria, eaten with tuwo.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Suya

Thin beef skewers rubbed in yaji, a groundnut and chilli spice mix, grilled over open charcoal by Hausa mallams and served on newspaper with raw onion and tomato.

Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating

Ofe Nsala

also White soup

A pale peppery soup of catfish thickened with pounded yam and scented with uziza and ehuru. Made in Anambra for a woman who has just given birth, and served at important occasions.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Moi Moi

Steamed bean pudding of peeled black-eyed peas, peppers and onion, wrapped in leaves and studded with egg and fish. Eaten alone or beside jollof at every party.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours soaking

Efo Riro

also Yoruba spinach stew

Shredded greens cooked into a base of blended pepper, onion and palm oil with assorted meat and stockfish. The Yoruba vegetable soup, and the one Lagosians argue about most.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Banga Soup

also Ofe akwu, Palm nut soup

Palm nut pulp cooked with catfish and the Delta's particular spices — beletientien, oburunbebe stick, ataiko — into a thick orange soup. The Urhobo and Isoko signature.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Zobo

Hibiscus infused with pineapple, ginger and clove, bottled and sold cold at every Nigerian gathering. The non-alcoholic drink of choice at weddings.

Serves 8 · 40 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

La Boule

also Aiysh

Millet or sorghum porridge shaped into a ball and served with sauce, the daily food of most of Chad. Eaten by hand from a shared bowl by the whole household.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Sauce Longue

also Okra sauce, Sauce gluante

Dried okra powder cooked into a deliberately viscous sauce with meat and sesame, ladled over boule. The stringiness is the point and the mark of a good one.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 20 minutes

Daraba

Okra, sweet potato, aubergine and greens stewed with groundnut paste into a thick vegetable sauce, served over la boule. Chad's national dish and almost always meatless.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Nachif

also Minced beef with spices

Beef minced or finely chopped and fried hard with onion, tomato and spice until dry and crisp at the edges, served with boule or bread across Chad.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Kissar

Thin fermented sorghum flatbread spread on a hot plate, the same as Sudanese kisra and eaten across eastern Chad with stew.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting

Mouton Grillé

Whole mutton grilled over embers for Eid and for guests, seasoned with nothing more than salt and cumin. The animal itself is the statement.

Serves 10 · 3 hours 30 minutes

Karkanji

also Spiced hibiscus drink

Hibiscus steeped with ginger, cloves and mint, the Chadian festival and Ramadan drink, sweeter and more heavily spiced than the Sudanese karkade.

Serves Makes 2 litres · 30 minutes, plus 3 hours steeping

Poisson Salanga

Fish from the Chari or Lake Chad, split, salted, sun-dried and then grilled, from the Sara country of the south. The smell of the drying racks carries for a long way.

Serves 4 · 40 minutes, plus 2 days drying

Poisson Séché en Sauce

also Dried fish stew, Salanga en sauce

The Chari's sun-dried fish rehydrated and stewed with tomato, onion and dried okra, the everyday protein of the Chadian river country.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Bili Bili

Millet beer brewed and sold by women from courtyards in southern Chad, drunk warm and cloudy from a calabash. A marked pot outside means today's batch is ready.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days

Bouillie de Mil

also Millet porridge, Bouillie

Millet porridge soured overnight and thinned with milk or tamarind, drunk in the morning and at the breaking of the fast across the Chadian sahel.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes, plus overnight souring

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