Senegal

🇬🇼Guinea-Bissau

Accara

Black-eyed peas peeled, ground and whipped with onion and chilli, then dropped into hot oil and served in bread with pepper sauce.

🇨🇮Côte d'Ivoire

Alligator Pepper

A pungent West African spice sold as whole scaly pods and seeds, used sparingly to perfume Liberian soups, stews, rice, and ceremonial food.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Attaya

Ataya

Chinese gunpowder tea brewed three times in succession, each round stronger, sweeter and more mint-heavy, and poured from height to build foam.

🇸🇳Senegal

Avocat aux Crevettes

Halved avocado filled with small prawns in a light mayonnaise and lemon dressing.

🇸🇳Senegal

Banane Glacée

Banana purée frozen with sugar and milk in a small plastic sachet, bitten open at the corner and eaten frozen.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Baobab Leaf Powder

Lalo

Powdered dried baobab leaves used as a thickening agent in Mauritanian and Senegalese sauces; gives ngomou and other couscous dishes their characteristic dark green colour and slightly mucilaginous texture; a staple ingredient in Pulaar cooking.

🇸🇳Senegal

Bassi Salté

Basi salte

Steamed millet couscous served under a lamb and vegetable stew with raisins and chickpeas.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Bouye

Buy

Baobab fruit pulp soaked, strained and blended with milk and sugar into a thick, tart white drink.

🇸🇳Senegal

Café Touba

Coffee roasted with Guinea pepper and cloves, ground and brewed through a cloth, served very sweet in small cups.

🇸🇳Senegal

Caldou

Caldo

Fish poached in a light broth of onion, lemon and okra or hot pepper, served with plain white rice.

🇸🇳Saint-Louis, Senegal

Capitaine à la Saint-Louisienne

Nile perch stuffed with a paste of its own flesh, herbs, garlic and chilli, then baked and served with a lemon and onion sauce.

🇸🇳Senegal

Cinq Centimes

Small dense peanut biscuits sold loose in markets, named for the coin they once cost.

🇸🇳Senegal

Dakhar

Daxar

Tamarind pulp soaked and strained into a brown, sour drink sweetened with sugar and served over ice.

🇸🇳Senegal

Dakhni

A named Senegalese sweet prepared for celebrations and served as a small, dense confection.

🇲🇱Mali

Dibi

Lamb cut on the bone and grilled over wood in a dedicated dibiterie, then served on paper with raw onion, mustard and chilli.

🇸🇳Senegal

Ditakh

Ditax

Green fruit of the ditakh tree soaked and pressed into a sharply sour, deep green juice, then sweetened.

🇸🇳Senegal

Fataya

Thin dough parcels filled with spiced fish or minced meat, folded into half-moons and deep-fried.

🇸🇳Senegal

Firire

Whole fish scored, marinated and deep-fried until the skin blisters, served with onion sauce and fried plantain.

🇸🇳Senegal

Fish Yassa

Yassa Poisson

Senegalese yassa made with marinated fish and a mountain of softened lemon-mustard onions.

🇸🇳Senegal

Fondé

Small millet balls rolled by hand and cooked in sweetened curdled milk with vanilla, eaten warm or cold.

🇸🇳Dakar, Senegal

Gazelle

Pale lager brewed in Dakar, the standard beer of the country and sold in large returnable bottles.

🇨🇮Côte d'Ivoire

Ginger Juice

Gnamakoudji

Pounded ginger squeezed through cloth and sweetened, sometimes with pineapple and vanilla, sold frozen in plastic sachets.

🇸🇳Nouadhibou, Senegal

Guedj

Gejj

Fish salted and left to ferment and dry in the sun until hard, then broken into stews for depth.

🇬🇲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.

🇸🇳Senegal

Kaani

Hot chilli pounded with garlic, onion and lime into a rough green or red sauce spooned onto sandwiches and grilled meat.

🇬🇭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.

🇸🇳Nouadhibou, Senegal

Kéthiakh

Ketax

Sardinella salted, smoked and dried into stiff, oily fillets used in rice dishes and bean stews.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Lakh

Laax

Coarse millet porridge cooked thick and served cold under sour milk and sugar, sometimes with a peanut and baobab sauce.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Maafe

Sauce d'arachide

Beef, lamb or chicken stewed in a groundnut paste and tomato sauce with cassava, carrot and sweet potato, served over rice.

🇸🇳Senegal

Mbakhal

Mbaxal

Rice cooked with groundnut paste, dried fish and vegetables into a thick, savoury one-pot.

🇸🇳Senegal

Ndambé

Ndambe

Black-eyed peas stewed with tomato, onion and oil and served in a length of baguette as a breakfast sandwich.

🇸🇳Senegal

Ngalakh

Ngalax

Millet couscous mixed with baobab fruit pulp and groundnut paste, sweetened and eaten cold.

🇨🇲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.

🇲🇱Mali

Nététou

Dawa Dawa

African locust bean seeds fermented for days and pressed into dark balls with a pungent, savoury smell.

🇬🇲Guinée Forestière (Nzérékoré / Forest), The Gambia

Palm Wine

Emu

Sap tapped from a palm tree and fermenting from the moment it is collected — milky, sweet in the morning, sour and stronger by evening.

🇸🇳Dakar, Senegal

Salade Côte Cap Verte

Potato, tuna, green bean, egg and olive dressed with a mustard vinaigrette — a Dakar restaurant salad from the colonial era.