Nigeria

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ekuru

A Yoruba steamed savoury bean cake, similar to moin moin but without oil and seasoning, served with pepper sauce or ewedu.

🇨🇲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.

🇳🇬Lagos, Nigeria

Ewa Aganyin

Ẹ̀wà aganyin

A Yoruba street food of soft mashed beans served with a spicy, oily pepper and tomato sauce, eaten with agege bread or agidi, a Lagos staple.

🇳🇬Lagos, Nigeria

Ewa Agoyin

Ẹ̀wà agoyin

Beans cooked until they collapse to a paste, served under a near-black sauce of fried pepper, onion and palm oil.

🇳🇬Ibadan, Nigeria

Ewedu

Jute leaves boiled and beaten with a broom-like whisk into a smooth green, slippery soup with locust bean and no pepper.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Fisherman Soup

A Nigerian coastal seafood soup with fresh fish, prawns, crab and sometimes snails in a spicy tomato and pepper broth, a Niger Delta specialty.

🇱🇷Liberia

Fufu

Akpu

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

🇳🇬Nigeria

Funkaso

A Hausa savoury fritter made from fermented grain batter and served with pepper or sauce.

🇳🇪Niger

Fura da Nono

Balls of spiced millet dough crumbled into fermented cow's milk and drunk thick from a calabash — the Fulani herder's staple.

🇳🇬Lagos, Nigeria

Gala

Sausage roll in a red wrapper sold at every traffic jam in Lagos, usually bought through a car window with a bottle of soft drink.

🇬🇭Ghana

Garden Egg Stew

Small white and green African aubergines boiled, mashed and cooked with palm oil, onion, pepper and smoked fish.

🇳🇬Ibadan, Nigeria

Gbegiri

Brown beans cooked to collapse and sieved into a smooth, pale yellow soup finished with palm oil.

🇬🇲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.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ikokore

An Ijebu Yoruba pottage of grated water yam simmered in a rich pepper and palm oil sauce with fish, meat and locust beans, a rustic one-pot meal.

🇳🇪Niger

Iru

Ìrú

African locust beans fermented until they turn black and pungent, pressed into cakes and used a pinch at a time in soups.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Isi Ewu

Goat head — including the brain, tongue and eye — cooked and dressed in the same palm oil and potash emulsion as nkwobi.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Kilishi

Beef sliced paper-thin, sun-dried, coated in a groundnut and spice paste, dried again and briefly roasted — northern jerky that keeps for months.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Kokoro

A Nigerian snack of fried cornmeal sticks, savory, crunchy, and often seasoned with pepper or ginger.

🇬🇭Ghana

Kuli Kuli

Groundnut paste with the oil pressed out, spiced and deep-fried into hard rings or sticks, eaten alone or crumbled over other food.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Kunun Zaki

Millet or sorghum soaked, ground and fermented with ginger and cloves into a pale, faintly sour drink served cold.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Lafun

A Nigerian white swallow made from fermented cassava flour, smoother and lighter than fufu, served with soups like gbegiri, ewedu or obe ata.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Maltina

Non-alcoholic malt drink, dark, sweet and heavy, drunk cold and served to children and drivers at every occasion.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Masa

Waina

Fermented rice batter cooked in a dimpled iron pan into small, spongy, faintly sour cakes, eaten with pepper sauce or honey.

🇳🇪Niger

Miyan Geda

Northern Nigerian groundnut soup cooked with aromatics and meat or fish.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Miyan Kubewa

Northern Nigerian dried-okra soup, thickened with okra and served with a swallow.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Miyan Kuka

Powdered baobab leaf cooked into a dark, slippery northern soup with dried meat, dawadawa and pepper.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Miyan Taushe

Pumpkin cooked down with groundnut paste, spinach and meat into a thick orange northern soup, mildly sweet.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Miyan Yakuwa

Hausa sorrel-leaf soup cooked with aromatics and meat or fish for a tangy northern Nigerian bowl.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Moin Moin

Mọ́ín mọ́ín

The same ground bean batter steamed rather than fried, in leaves or tins, with egg, fish or corned beef set inside.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Nigerian Fried Rice

Fried rice

Rice fried with curry powder and thyme until it turns yellow-green, with diced liver, prawns, carrot and green beans through it.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Nigerian Jollof Rice

Jollof rice

Long-grain rice cooked down in a blended base of red pepper, tomato, onion and scotch bonnet until the grain absorbs it all and the bottom of the pot catches.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Nigerian Meat Pie

Meat pie

Short pastry turnover filled with minced beef, diced potato and carrot in a thick gravy, baked and sold from warmers.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Nkwobi

Cow foot cooked soft and tossed in an emulsion of palm oil and potash with uziza leaf and ground crayfish, served warm in a wooden bowl.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Obe Eyin

A Yoruba palm-oil stew with eggs, pepper and aromatics, served with rice or a swallow.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofada Rice and Ayamase

Ofada rice

Unpolished short-grain local rice with a strong fermented aroma, served in banana leaf with ayamase — a green pepper stew bleached in palm oil with assorted meats.