Cameroon

🇨🇲Cameroon

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A pale lager brewed in Douala and sold nationwide in the 65cl bottle that is the standard unit of drinking here.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Accra Banane

Overripe plantain mashed with flour, sugar and nutmeg and fried into small dark fritters.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Achu and Yellow Soup

Achu

Pounded cocoyam served as a smooth white mound with a hole in the middle filled with yellow palm-oil soup emulsified with limestone and spiced with country onion.

🇨🇫Central African Republic

Akpakpa

Protein-rich seeds from certain cucurbits, ground into a thickening paste for soups and stews; known as akpakpa in the Central African Republic and used much like egusi across West Africa.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Banga Soup

Banga

Palm fruit pulp boiled and sieved into a red, oily broth spiced with beletientien and other Delta herbs, cooked with catfish or beef.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Beignets Haricots Bouillie

Fried dough balls eaten with a bowl of stewed beans and a cup of sweet spiced maize porridge — the standard Cameroonian breakfast, ordered as a set.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Bili-Bili

Bil-bil

Sorghum or millet beer brewed in clay pots in the north and drunk warm and cloudy from calabashes at communal gatherings.

🇨🇩DR Congo

Bobolo

Cassava fermented, pounded and packed into a long stick wrapped in leaves, then steamed until firm and slightly sour.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Bouillie

Bouillie de maïs

Maize or millet flour cooked into a thin sweet porridge with sugar, milk and sometimes nutmeg, drunk warm from a bowl.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Bush Mango

Ndo'o

The dried and ground kernel of the wild mango, used as a thickener that turns sauces glossy and slightly stretchy.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Cameroonian Doughnut Sticks

Beignets torsadés

Sweet dough twisted into ropes and fried, sold in bags at bakeries and roadside stalls.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Cameroonian Piment

Piment

Habanero-type chillies crushed raw with onion, garlic and a little oil into a fresh, fiercely hot relish put beside grilled fish and soya.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Cassava Cake

Gâteau de manioc

Grated cassava baked with coconut milk and sugar into a dense, chewy cake sold in slabs.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Chichinga

Brochettes

Beef or chicken threaded on skewers, rubbed in a spiced groundnut and chilli powder and grilled over coals.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Coconut Sweet

Croquettes de coco

Grated coconut cooked with sugar until it stiffens and set into small chewy blocks, often tinted pink.

🇨🇩DR Congo

Congolese Fufu

Fufu

The staple food of the Congo — a smooth, dense, slightly elastic dough made from cassava flour, corn flour, or sometimes plantains; rolled into golf-ball-sized balls and dipped into stews; the proper way to eat it is to pinch off a piece with the right hand, indent with the thumb, and scoop up sauce; present on all Congolese tables from north to south; the universal accompaniment.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Corn Chaff

Boiled maize kernels and beans cooked together with palm oil, onion and pepper into a heavy one-pot.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Corn Fufu

Fufu corn

Maize flour stirred into boiling water into a stiff yellow mound, the everyday starch of the North-West and West.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Country Onion

A hard, aromatic forest seed grated into achu soup and other western-highland dishes, tasting of nothing else in the pantry.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Egusi Soup

Egusi

Ground melon seeds cooked in palm oil with pepper, leafy greens and assorted meat or fish until the seed sets into soft lumps in the oil.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Ekwang

Grated cocoyam wrapped in small parcels of cocoyam leaf, packed into a pot and simmered for hours with palm oil, crayfish and smoked meat.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Eru

Shredded eru leaves cooked down with waterleaf, red palm oil, crayfish and smoked meat until dark green and glossy.

🇱🇷Liberia

Fufu

Akpu

Cassava soaked for days until it ferments, then pounded or wrapped and steamed into a soft, sour white swallow.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Ginger Juice

Jus de gingembre

Raw ginger blitzed with water, lemon and sugar and strained into a fierce, throat-burning cold drink.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Grilled Fish

Poisson braisé

Whole fish scored, packed with a garlic, ginger and pepper paste and grilled over coals, served with fried plantain and a raw onion-and-pepper salsa.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Hibiscus Juice

Bissap

Dried hibiscus calyces steeped with sugar, mint and sometimes orange-blossom water into a deep red drink served ice-cold.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Kati Kati

Chicken grilled over a wood fire until charred, then pulled apart and stewed briefly in red palm oil with njangsa and country onion.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Koki beans

Koki

Black-eyed peas soaked, skinned and ground to a paste, beaten with red palm oil until light, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Koki Corn

Fresh maize grated and beaten with palm oil, pepper and cassava leaf, then wrapped in leaves and steamed.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Kondrè

Unripe plantains stewed whole with goat meat, garlic, ginger and a heavy blend of western-highland spices until the plantain absorbs the sauce.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Kpwem

A Cameroonian dish of cassava leaves pounded and cooked with palm oil, garlic, and often fish or meat.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Kwacoco

Grated cocoyam mixed with palm oil, wrapped tightly in banana leaves and steamed into a firm loaf, sliced to eat with mbanga soup.

🇱🇷Liberia

Liberian Palm Butter Soup

Palm Butter Soup

Palm fruit pulp cooked with fish or meat, dried crayfish, onion, garlic, okra, and hot peppers into a thick red soup served with rice or fufu.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Matango

Sap tapped from raffia or oil palms and left to ferment in the bottle, drunk cloudy and sour from a calabash or a reused container.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Mbanga Soup

Palm nuts pounded and pressed for their thick red juice, then cooked with smoked fish and country spices into a soup eaten with kwacoco.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Mbongo Tchobi

Fish or meat stewed in a jet-black sauce made from burnt mbongo spice, njangsa and country onion.