Songhai

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

Tô

also Toh

Millet or sorghum porridge cooked stiff and eaten with a leaf or okra sauce, the daily food across the Sahelian belt. Torn off in pieces and dipped with the right hand.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Tiguadege Na

also Maafe, Groundnut stew

Meat in a thick groundnut and tomato sauce over rice, Mali's national dish and the ancestor of groundnut stews from Senegal to Cameroon. The oil rising to the top is how you know it is done.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Fakoye

A sauce of powdered sesame leaves with meat and tomato, served over rice or tô. Sold from lunch pots in Bamako, and unmistakable for its slightly slippery texture.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Capitaine à la Bamakoise

Nile perch from the Niger, stuffed and grilled whole, served with fried plantain and a sharp onion salad. The dish Bamako restaurants put in front of a visitor.

Serves 4 · 1 hour

Widjila

Millet couscous with camel or mutton and curdled milk, from the Tuareg and Songhai north. The sour milk poured over at the end is what distinguishes it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Tigadèguèna Poulet

also Chicken groundnut sauce

Chicken in groundnut sauce with sweet potato and cabbage, the Bamako version of the Sahel's great sauce, served over rice.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Dabileni

Hibiscus juice, called dabileni in Bambara, sold from coolers and street-corner freezers across Bamako. The same drink as bissap and sobolo, with a Malian preference for very sweet.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling

Dèguè

also Thiakry, Millet yoghurt

Steamed millet grain in sweetened soured milk with vanilla and nutmeg, drunk cold from a plastic sachet at every Malian roadside.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus chilling

Akassa

also Lio, Koko

Fermented maize dough steamed in leaf parcels into a firm sour cake, eaten with almost every Beninese sauce. The sourness is the point and takes three days to build.

Serves 6 · 1 hour, plus 3 days fermenting

Tchigan

also Yam and bean porridge, Atassi

Yam and beans cooked down together with palm oil into a soft red porridge, the Beninese household dish and the country's most eaten evening meal.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus soaking

Amiwo

Maize dough cooked directly in a red tomato and chilli sauce so the polenta takes the colour and the flavour, served with fried chicken or fish. Benin's best-known dish outside its borders.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Ata

also Akara, Bean cakes

Black-eyed pea fritters, whipped light and deep fried, sold from roadside pans at dawn across Benin and Nigeria alike. Eaten with pepper sauce and a hunk of bread.

Serves Makes 20 · 40 minutes, plus 4 hours soaking

Kuli-Kuli

Groundnut paste pressed of its oil, spiced and fried into crisp rings and sticks. Made in quantity for festivals and journeys, and crushed over salads and porridge.

Serves Makes 30 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Sauce Gombo

Okra cooked to a deliberately drawing sauce with smoked fish and crayfish, eaten by dipping akassa or pounded yam in and swallowing without chewing. The texture is the achievement, not a flaw.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Wagasi

also Fulani cheese, Wara

Fresh cheese curdled with the sap of the calotropis plant by Fulani herders in northern Benin, fried until golden and eaten with tomato sauce.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Sodabi

Palm wine distilled to a fierce clear spirit, poured on the ground for the ancestors before anyone drinks. Central to Vodun ceremony and to every Beninese celebration.

Serves Serves as a digestif · Distilled traditionally; served in minutes