Toposa

Kisra

Thin fermented sorghum flatbread spread on a hot plate and peeled off in sheets, the base of every meal in the north of the country.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting

Mulukhiyah

also Jute leaf stew, Khudra

Jute mallow leaves cooked to a thick green sauce with garlic and dried fish, poured over asida. Simple, cheap and eaten across the whole of South Sudan.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

Asida with Kudra

Sorghum porridge with a green sauce of okra or greens, the everyday meal across South Sudan. Turned out as a dome and eaten from the shared dish.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Combo

also Okra and greens stew

Fresh okra and wild greens cooked down with sesame paste into a thick, deliberately slippery stew, eaten with asida. The South Sudanese household dish.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Kajaik

Dried Nile fish stewed with onion and groundnut into a thick sauce, eaten with asida. The Nile's fish is dried in quantity and traded far inland.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Roast Goat for a Feast

A goat or bull killed and roasted whole for a wedding, a homecoming or the settlement of a dispute. In cattle-keeping societies the animal is the message.

Serves 12 or more · 4 hours

Fatta

also Bread and meat platter

Torn flatbread layered with meat broth, yoghurt and fried onion, assembled in a great tray at Eid and at weddings and eaten communally.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

Wala Wala

Sorghum or maize porridge with a simple bean or greens relish, eaten in the Equatorias. Plain food, and what most of the country eats most days.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Merissa

Sorghum beer brewed and sold by women, drunk from calabashes at markets and gatherings. It is thick, sour and cloudy, and doubles as food.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days

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

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