Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq)

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

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

Couscous

also Seksu, Kesksu

Steamed semolina under a vegetable and lamb broth, eaten on Fridays and at every family occasion. UNESCO listed it in 2020 as shared heritage of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, after the four countries filed jointly rather than fight over it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Chakhchouka

also Chakhchoukha Biskria

Torn flatbread soaked in a tomato and lamb stew, from the Aurès and Biskra. The bread is made specifically to be shredded, and the dish is the centrepiece of large family gatherings across the east.

Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Mhadjeb

also Mahjouba

Thin semolina crêpes folded around a slow-cooked tomato, onion and pepper filling, griddled and sold from carts and hole-in-the-wall counters all over Algiers, especially through Ramadan.

Serves Makes 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Bourek

also Brik algérien, Bourek annabi

Cigars of dioul pastry filled with minced meat, onion and egg and fried crisp, the first thing on the Algerian table at every iftar.

Serves Makes about 20 · 1 hour

Rechta

Hand-cut steamed noodles in a pale cinnamon and turnip broth with chicken, made in Algiers and Tlemcen for the Prophet's birthday and for Eid. The whiteness of the sauce is the point: no tomato is allowed near it.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Tajine Zitoune

also Olive tagine, Chicken with olives

Chicken and meatballs braised in a white lemon and olive sauce with carrots and mushrooms, the Algerois wedding dish, quite different from the Moroccan tagine.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Chorba Frik

Lamb soup thickened with freekeh, green wheat harvested young and roasted. It breaks the fast in Algerian households every night of Ramadan, and the smell of it carries down whole streets at sunset.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mint Tea

also Atay, Thé à la menthe

Green tea with spearmint and a great deal of sugar, poured from height to raise a head of foam. Refusing the second glass is possible; refusing the first is not.

Serves 4 glasses · 15 minutes

Bazin

A firm dome of barley dough boiled in the broth it is served with, eaten by hand from a communal dish. The dough is beaten with a stick called a magraf until it is stiff enough to hold its shape.

Serves 6 · 2 hours

Shorba Libiya

Lamb soup with orzo, mint and a great deal of tomato, eaten daily through Ramadan and at almost every Libyan table besides. The dried mint stirred in at the end is not optional.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mbekbka

also Libyan pasta soup

Broken pasta cooked in a spiced tomato and lamb broth until it absorbs everything, the Libyan weekday dinner and a dish of the whole Tripolitanian coast.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Mbatten

Potato slices sandwiched around spiced minced meat, battered and deep fried. Sold from Ramadan stalls in Tripoli and Benghazi and made at home in quantities that never seem to be enough.

Serves Makes 12 · 45 minutes

Couscous bil Osban

Couscous served with osban, a sausage of offal, rice, herbs and spices packed into tripe. Made for Eid from the sacrificed animal, and the dish Libyans abroad miss most.

Serves 8 · 3 hours

Ghraiba

also Chickpea flour biscuits

Crumbling biscuits of roasted chickpea flour and butter, made for Eid across Libya and gone within a day.

Serves Makes about 40 · 1 hour

Rishda

Hand-cut noodles steamed and served with a chickpea and onion sauce, from Tripolitania. A quiet, unspiced dish in a cuisine that is otherwise emphatic, and usually eaten in winter.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Asida bil Rub

A soft wheat pudding served in a pool of date syrup and olive oil, eaten for the Prophet's birthday and to celebrate a birth. Sweet, plain and eaten from the shared dish with the fingers.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

Tô

also Saghbo

Stiff millet or sorghum porridge, the daily food of most of the country, torn off in lumps and dipped in sauce. Eaten with the right hand from a shared bowl.

Serves 6 · 40 minutes

Riz Gras

Rice cooked in a rich tomato and meat broth until it absorbs everything, the West African one-pot in its Burkinabè form. The name means fat rice and is not an exaggeration.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

Brochettes

Skewers of beef or mutton grilled over charcoal and rolled in a peppery groundnut spice mix, sold from braziers on every street corner in Ouagadougou after dark.

Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating

Gonré

also Bean cake, Gonre

Black-eyed beans ground with onion and chilli, wrapped in leaf and steamed into a firm savoury cake. Burkina Faso's breakfast and market food.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking

Poulet Bicyclette

Free-range chicken, so called because it has spent its life running about, marinated and grilled whole over charcoal. Served flattened with onion sauce for guests and celebrations.

Serves 4 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating

Zamnè

also Acacia seeds, Zaamné

The small green seeds of a wild acacia, boiled long and cooked with beef and onion. A Burkinabè delicacy that is expensive, laborious and served to people you want to impress.

Serves 6 · 3 hours

Babenda

Wild leaves, rice and soumbala cooked together into a dark green one-pot, from the Mossi plateau. Soumbala is fermented néré seed and gives the dish its powerful savoury depth.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Dolo

also Millet beer, Chapalo

Sorghum beer brewed by women and sold in courtyards marked with an upturned calabash on a pole. It is drunk within a day or two, still fermenting, from a shared gourd.

Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days