Mbororo of the Central African Republic

Gozo

Cassava flour cooked into a stiff paste, the daily starch of the Central African Republic. Rolled in the palm and dipped in whatever sauce there is.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Boule de Manioc

also Gozo ball, Cassava fufu

Cassava flour worked into a smooth dense ball, the Central African staple, torn off and used to lift sauce. Made in every household daily.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Kanda ti Nyma

Meatballs of beef and ground squash seeds cooked in a tomato and groundnut sauce, wrapped in leaves in the traditional version. A dish of the Ubangi river country.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sauce Arachide

also Groundnut sauce, Kanda ti nyma

Groundnut paste cooked with meat, tomato and chilli into a thick red-brown sauce, the dish that turns up at every Central African table.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Makara

Fried dough balls sold at markets and roadsides with sweet tea, eaten at breakfast or bought by the handful for a journey.

Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours 15 minutes

Kanya

also Peanut brittle bar, Kanyah

Roasted peanuts pounded with sugar and a little rice flour and pressed into bars, sold at markets and bus stops across the Central African Republic.

Serves Makes about 20 bars · 40 minutes

Poulet à la Moambé

Chicken cooked in palm nut pulp with chilli and garlic, made for guests and celebrations across the Congo basin. Orange, rich and served over cassava.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Koko

Forest vine leaves shredded very fine and cooked with palm oil, smoked fish and groundnut. The same plant as Cameroonian eru, gathered from the same forest.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Poisson Fumé aux Feuilles

also Smoked fish with greens

Smoked river fish cooked with cassava or gnetum leaves and palm oil, the standard meal along the Ubangi and its tributaries.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Ngbako

Maize or cassava beer fermented in villages and drunk from a shared vessel at gatherings and funerals. Cloudy, sour and drunk young.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 3 days

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

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