No matter how up-to-date, no book on African food can ever be complete. Just as the sprawling continent is itself a work in progress, so too is its cuisine in a process of flux and evolution.
The second-largest land mass on earth and home to hundreds of tribes, ethnic and social groups, Africa’s diversity is reflected in its cuisine; in the use of inexpensive, basic, locally-available ingredients, as well as in the widely-differing cooking techniques and styles of preparation. Given the sheer size of the continent, the current vogue for African food means that no dish can ever be generic.
Common to many parts of the continent are meals with little meat, plenty of whole grains and beans, and fresh fruits and vegetables. In an increasingly health-conscious society, African cuisine may well become the new healthy way of cooking.
African cooking varies widely from one part of the continent to another. North, Southern, Central, East and West Africa all have their trademark dishes. This is fusion food — easily-prepared, readily-available foods that people eat now, subtly influenced by traditional African dishes. In this book you will realise how easily you can have an authentic, African-themed dinner party at home, using modern foods we eat every day, but given an easy and intriguing African slant.
While there have been many books dealing with the traditional cuisine of individual African countries, often following the fickle whims of culinary fashion, in bringing you this book Justice Kamanga reaches beyond the single-country approach to the broad essence of African cooking and takes you on a beguiling epicurean journey through the continent to the soul of its cuisine.
Just as Africa is often an enigma to the traveller, so its cuisine — paradoxically, perhaps — is deceptively simple, yet at the same time complex and unknowable in the antiquity of its ingredients, origins and preparation methods that have remained unchanged for more than a thousand years.
The tastes and flavours of Africa evoke the continent itself, relatively unknown to those who haven’t visited it, or who have only done so on a hectic in-and-out business or holiday trip that never leaves the time to dig beneath the ersatz safari ethos to the roots of its culture and traditions.
You will discover the origins of many favourite dishes, united both by a disarming honesty and ease of preparation, and find that each fascinating flavour and intriguing new texture comes subtly through the taste of the whole, from the most caustic of curries to soothing cucumber- and yoghurt-based antidotes designed to put out the fire!
Rural sea and lakeshore folk in Africa, accustomed to eating some fairly alarming-looking things from time to time, drew the line at having a beady eye ogling them from the aromatic, saffron-hued depths of their soup. When the fishermen returned from their labours at the end of the day, locals waiting on the shore to buy their catch usually asked for the heads to be taken off. This left the vendors with a cargo of fish-heads looking up at them accusingly from the bottom of the boat. Since this is a practical land where nothing is wasted, the heads ended up in the soup, although they are always removed before serving. A few imaginative, locally-available bits of this and that were added to the fish-heads simmering in the communal stockpot, and the eventual result was a piscatorial potage of majestic quality. Traditionally, when available, shellfish also found their way into the soup pot, and there’s a sublime crayfish soup included with the recipes that’s ideal for serving as a starter before a main meat or curry dish.
A quick word on the subject of fish, though — to support conservation initiatives, before buying any fish or seafood, it is always best to check that what you’re buying is on the approved ‘green’ list (best choice), or at least on the ‘orange’ list (caution) of SASSI (the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative — see http://www.wwfsassi.co.za).
Central Africa, the region whose cuisine has perhaps been least influenced by the outside world, stretches from the Tibetsi mountains in the North to the basin of the Congo River, the second-largest river in Africa. Apart from the cassava, peanut and chillipepper plants, which arrived there via the slave trade in the early 1500s, historically the relatively inaccessible region’s cooking has resisted outside influences. Like other parts of Africa, however, the cuisine of Central Africa still relies heavily on dishes containing cassava or plantains.
The determinedly stodgy fufu, for example, is probably the best-known Central African staple, particularly in Cameroon, where it is sometimes called Couscous de Cameroon (although it bears no resemblance at all to the exalted Moroccan product of the same name). Similar to pap in South Africa, sadza in Zimbabwe and ugali in Kenya, it’s a sort of stiff porridge, made out of starchy root vegetables. Normally beaten with a mortar and pestle until the desired consistency is reached, fufu is often eaten with okra, dried fish or tomato, and goes well with palm-nut or groundnut (peanut) soup. Central African countries are hot on their soups; among the best are those made with either smoked or unsmoked meat or fish. The eater breaks off a piece of fufu and makes a depression or an indentation in it with his or her thumb. A little of the soup is scooped up, and the fufu folded over the soup into a crude ball, which is then eaten.
Fufu-like starchy foods accompany grilled meat and sauces. A variety of local ingredients is used, and one particular favourite is bambara, a porridge of rice, peanut butter and sugar. Beef and chicken are much-loved meat dishes, but the locals in that part of the world are into bush meat in a big way — and it is not unusual to find dishes containing monkey, crocodile, warthog and antelope on the menu.
Although fishing is carried on extensively in the region’s numerous rivers, and people are hungry, the parlous state of the economies of many central African countries is such that whatever is caught is almost always bartered or sold from the fishermen’s boats to Democratic Republic of the Congo buyers on that side of the Ubangi River before the boat even hits land for the first time.
In many parts of East Africa, on the other hand, cattle, sheep and goats are not generally seen as food, but are viewed instead as a form of currency and an indicator of wealth. East African cooking varies sharply from area to area. In the inland savannah area, for example, meat products are generally absent from the diets of the cattle-keeping population. Particularly at the coast, the influence of Arabic invaders around one thousand years ago and subsequent Portuguese settlers brought about changes in the cuisine with cinnamon, cloves, costly saffron and other spices coming to the forefront of the area’s cooking, as well as a preference for spiced steamed rice and pomegranate juice. A later wave of Portuguese arrivals brought exotic marinades and a move towards stewing and roasting, rather than grilling. The British and Indians followed centuries afterwards, and while the Indians bequeathed subtle and complex curries and delicacies such as chapattis, lentils and pickles, quite what the uK contributed is open to conjecture!
Oysters, which feature very little in African cooking, became a favourite of Kenyan colonial society when an old recipe, included in this book, found its way to British expatriates in that country via the Kenyan port of Mombasa on the east coast. Plump, subtle and succulent, Kenyan oysters are still prized today.
As far as North Africa is concerned, Morocco is one of the few countries in Africa that’s self-sufficient from a food point of view. Larger than California, the nomads and Berbers who crossed it two thousand and more years ago used readily-available local ingredients such as figs, olives and dates to prepare traditional lamb, goat and poultry stews. Generally enjoyed with the stews, couscous was unknown until some time in the seventh century, when the influence of Arab invaders also saw a wider use of various grains.
Spiced with olives (highly characteristic of North African-Mediterranean cuisine), turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, pine nuts and coriander leaves, lamb tagine, for example, is a poetic, slow-cooked concoction of mutton or lamb braised at a low temperature to ensure tenderness. Tagines are semi-glazed earthenware dishes with pointed, conical lids, used particularly in Moroccan cooking. Although they create aromatic and tasty dishes, don’t despair if you don’t have one — you can just as easily use an ovenproof casserole dish instead.
In north-east Africa, sweet potatoes are a vitamin-rich, fat-free source of fibre. Baked and sprinkled lightly with sea salt, they make a tasty snack. Ethiopian women still sit cross-legged on the jostling market pavements of Addis Ababa as they have done for centuries, with tiny scales on which they measure out spices with millimetric accuracy for the traditional wot (stew cooked in the home). With it, there’s sure to be injera — a traditional unleavened bread that’s still made exactly as it was more than one thousand years ago.
The Turkish invasions of Egypt brought new vitality to Egyptian cooking, and the Egyptians, whose food until then had really been seen as rather bland, were at least able to thank the invaders after the dust had settled for bringing with them a host of tempting delicacies, not least a magnificent dish of garlic prawns with a rhapsodic toasted pine nut couscous.
Hummus — a dip made with crushed chickpeas, tahini, garlic and olive oil, originated from that region over seven thousand years ago. Harissa is a fearsome chilli sauce often used in the preparation of vegetable and meat tagines. Regularly served with couscous, harissa is particularly associated with Tunisia, although it is also enjoyed in Algeria and Morocco.
West African cuisine will be enjoyed by those who like strong sensations, as it is one of volcanic spices, seasonings and bold, assertive flavours. Chillies and tomatoes are staples of the region’s culinary repertoire, and the flavours are offset by starchy foods such as cocoyams, yams, root vegetables, cassava, plantains, millet and sorghum.
Staple grains and starches tend to vary from one ethnic group to another. For the purposes of this book, we have adapted a traditional fish recipe to use kingklip in an enticing West African marinade. Served with yam patties and a Chickpea Salad, it’s bound to be a winner at any African-themed dinner party. Also hailing from West Africa, easy-to-prepare chicken jolof, a rice-based dish that’s often served on special occasions, can’t fail to be a sure-fire hit, and has the added advantage that its ingredients make it a complete meal on its own.
Today’s West African diet is much heavier in meat (mostly goat), fats and salt than was the case in earlier times, when palm oils and shea butter were used for cooking, and local green vegetables were the dietary staple. Eggs, chicken and guinea fowl are still preferred in the region, and today many dishes combine both fish and meat, usually flaked in the case of fish and heavily spiced.
Unlike North Africa, countries such as Ghana, The Gambia, Nigeria, Togo, Mali, Sierra Leone, Benin, Senegal, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire — which make up the amorphous region that’s generally lumped together as ‘West Africa’ — didn’t absorb nearly as much culinary tradition from their inevitable European settlers as other areas did. In terms of food, this region is better known for its exports rather than the inward influences on its domestic cuisine. Unhappily, when the slave trade was at its height, it was largely these countries whose populations found themselves ignominiously and cruelly shipped all over the world as slaves, principally to the southern states of the United States of America. To this day, anyone who has grown up in the southern US enjoys dishes such as gumbo (a spicy stew), which has its origins in West Africa.
Southern Africa, with its multiple colonial influences and periodic avalanches of indentured labourers and other hopeful immigrants to the area, has a rich and diverse gastronomic heritage. Given such a history, the region could hardly fail to offer an exciting culinary range, but there’s no doubt that across all cultures the favourite is meat, and the preferred meat is beef. The Indian and Malay influences, just as they did in parts of East Africa, added spicy curries of varying degrees of ferocity (some of them are not for the faint-hearted; there are explosive blends of curry powder with names like ‘razor blade’, ‘hell-fire’ and ‘mother-in-law’, which will ream the inexperienced from end to end), intriguing sambals (chutneys and other traditional accompaniments served with curry), pickled fish and marvellously subtle and flavoursome stews, known locally as bredies.
Predictably, perhaps, it is in the Southern African region that the influence of western commercialism is most strongly felt, and the diet of many populations of the south, especially in the cities, is a Western one.
Historically, milk was one of the most important components of the Southern African diet, where cattle were, and in some areas still are, considered a man’s most important possession. The old tradition of lobola still exists here — an appropriate bride-price, or dowry, that a young man bent on marriage must pay to the father of his would-be bride. Before the advent of refrigeration, however, most milk quickly soured into a kind of yoghurt. Today, many black South Africans enjoy commercial sour milk products, comparable to buttermilk, yoghurt and sour cream.
Invariably served with saffron rice, traditional South African bobotie reputedly found its savoury and aromatic way to the southern tip of the continent by courtesy of the Dutch East India Company, which picked up the recipe in Batavia. Known in the Cape since the seventeenth century, the original recipe called for a blend of mutton and pork, whereas today the preferred ingredients are lamb or beef. Quick and easy to make, bobotie is a super-subtle, gently spiced culinary symphony of lightly curried mincemeat with a savoury custard topping. Since 1994, Southern African – and South African in particular – cuisine has enjoyed a global resurgence of interest.
To reinforce the simplicity with which everyday foods can be given a uniquely ethnic twist, African pot-roast chicken with vegetables, in the poultry section of this book, would be little more than an everyday Irish stew using chicken instead of lamb or mutton — if it were not for the simple addition of sliced banana.
The versatile plantain is a staple of African cooking. Resembling a banana, the rubbery leaves of the plantain tree are used in rural cookery for steaming meat, fish and poultry. Although they can be eaten either when they are green and bland, or when they are a little overripe and hence sweeter, plantains are firmer and lower in sugar content than ordinary dessert bananas, and therefore ideal for a subtly-spiced beef, plantain and vegetable soup. Deep-fried plantain chips have become popular in recent years.
Peri-peri means ‘very hot’ in Swahili and Lingana. The widely-loved, nuclear-strength sauce made its eye-watering way into the African culinary repertoire hundreds of years ago when the first European explorers, on their way from the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope, came ashore in Mozambique in search of food and brought with them a fiery chilli of reputed Brazilian parentage. They passed the secrets of its use and the art of blending it with other spices on to the local people. The plant flourished in Africa, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Washed, chopped, steamed or boiled, vitamin-rich and drought-resistant maize, cassava, beans, yams and millet are probably the five most plentiful traditional vegetables on the continent and are usually eaten as an accompaniment to a meat stew. Beans also provide a secondary source of protein.
Tastes of Africa seeks to counter a perception that African cooking is merely a meat-and-two-veg deal, perhaps accompanied by some sort of arbitrary soup and eaten with an uninspiring gravy. Certainly meat, fish and poultry are staples; however in many parts of rural Africa these commodities are relatively easy to obtain and as such have been responsible for the tasty simplicity of its varied traditional dishes.
Spiced with easy-to-make recipes, Tastes of Africa is more than just another African cookbook — it’s a richly-illustrated hymn to the cuisine, culture and traditions of a continent whose variety, natural hospitality and generosity of spirit are as high, wide and handsome as the sun that travels the hot, timeless and hammered blue-chrome sky that arches overhead.