Ogaden

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

Canjeero

Thin fermented pancakes cooked on one side, eaten at breakfast with sesame oil and sugar, or torn into suqaar at any other time.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting

Bariis Iskukaris

Spiced rice with goat, coloured with xawaash and studded with raisins, served with a banana. Somalia's national plate and the centre of every gathering.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Digaag Qumbe

also Chicken in coconut, Somali coconut chicken

Chicken stewed in yoghurt and coconut with xawaash spice, a southern Somali dish that shows the coast's Indian Ocean connections in every spoonful.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Bur and Sambusa

Fried dough sticks and meat pastries sold together at tea shops and Ramadan stalls, eaten with shaah and dates.

Serves Makes 20 each · 2 hours

Hilib Ari

Goat roasted or fried in its own fat and served over rice or canjeero, the meat put out when a family celebrates. Cooked simply because good goat needs nothing else.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Xalwo

also Halwa, Somali halwa

A dense translucent sweet of cornflour, sugar and ghee scented with cardamom and often studded with peanuts, made for every Somali wedding and Eid.

Serves 12 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Suqaar

Meat and vegetables cut into small cubes and fried fast with xawaash, eaten with canjeero or chapati. The Somali answer to a quick meal.

Serves 4 · 30 minutes

Basbaas

also Somali green chilli sauce, Basbaas cagaar

The green chilli, coriander and lime relish that arrives with every Somali meal and without which nothing is considered properly served.

Serves Makes about 300ml · 15 minutes

Shaah Adays

Spiced milk tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove, offered within minutes of any arrival. Turning down the first glass is not really available to a guest.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Ugali

White maize meal cooked stiff enough to hold its shape when turned out, eaten with sukuma wiki or stew. Kenya's daily bread, and judged entirely on whether it is lump-free.

Serves 6 · 25 minutes

Githeri

also Muthere, Boiled maize and beans

Maize and beans boiled together, eaten plain in the fields and fried up with onion and tomato at home. The default Kenyan school and prison meal, and the thing most Kenyans have eaten more of than anything else.

Serves 6 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking

Nyama Choma

Goat or beef roasted slowly over charcoal, weighed raw, then chopped on a board and served with kachumbari and ugali. Kenya's national eating occasion as much as its dish.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Mutura

A sausage of minced meat, blood and offal packed into intestine and grilled over charcoal, sliced and served with kachumbari from evening street stalls in Nairobi.

Serves Makes 4 sausages · 1 hour 30 minutes

Mahamri

also Mandazi ya nazi, Swahili doughnut

Triangular coconut-and-cardamom doughnuts of the Swahili coast, fried until hollow. Eaten at breakfast with mbaazi, at tea, and at every coastal celebration.

Serves Makes about 24 · 1 hour, plus 3 hours rising

Pilau

Rice cooked in spiced meat stock until every grain is brown, made for weddings, Eid and Christmas alike. The coast's Omani inheritance, adopted by the whole country.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sukuma Wiki

Collard greens fried with onion and tomato, whose Swahili name means push the week: the cheap dish that gets a household to payday. Eaten with ugali more than anything else in Kenya.

Serves 4 · 25 minutes

Mukimo

also Irio, Kienyeji

Potatoes mashed with maize, beans, pumpkin leaves and green peas until the whole thing turns a deep green. The central Kenyan celebration dish, and what a Kikuyu wedding is judged on.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mbaazi wa Nazi

also Pigeon peas in coconut

Pigeon peas stewed in thick coconut milk with cardamom and cumin, eaten on the Kenyan coast for breakfast with mahamri doughnuts. Sweet, spiced and heavy.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus soaking

Omena

also Dagaa, Silver cyprinid

The tiny silver fish of Lake Victoria, sun-dried and then fried with onion and tomato. Cheap, intensely savoury and the protein that western Kenya actually eats.

Serves 4 · 40 minutes

Chai ya Maziwa

Tea boiled entirely in milk with sugar, and often ginger and cardamom, drunk several times a day. Kenya is one of the world's largest tea exporters and drinks it milkier than anyone.

Serves 4 · 15 minutes

Uji wa Wimbi

also Millet porridge, Fermented uji

Finger millet porridge, drunk rather than eaten, often lightly soured by a day's fermentation. The Kenyan breakfast and the standard food for nursing mothers and the sick.

Serves 4 · 25 minutes, plus optional overnight fermenting