Getting started with African and Caribbean cooking can feel intimidating at first, between the less common ingredients and sometimes long cooking times. This challenge offers a different approach: four weeks, four regions, one recipe already published on our blog to make each week, along with the dry ingredients to keep in your pantry so you are not caught out mid-preparation.
Week 1: West Africa, with beef mafé
Mafé was born in Mali, among the Mandinka and Bambara peoples, who also call it tigadegena. This beef stew simmered in a peanut paste and tomato paste sauce then spread across all of West Africa, notably to Senegal. Follow our beef mafé recipe step by step, with TANTIE peanut paste and DIEG BOU DIAR tomato paste.
Week 2: the Maghreb, with chicken couscous
Couscous, steamed durum wheat semolina, has been inscribed since 16 December 2020 on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, following a joint nomination filed by Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia. Its chicken and vegetable version, flavored with ras el hanout, is traditionally prepared on Fridays. Follow our chicken couscous recipe, with SAMIA ras el hanout.
Week 3: East Africa, with Ethiopian doro wat
In Amharic, doro means chicken and wat means stew. This dish, considered the national dish of Ethiopia, slowly simmers pieces of chicken and hard-boiled eggs in an onion sauce with berbere, a spice blend, and niter kibbeh, a spiced clarified butter. Follow our doro wat recipe: NKOSI does not yet sell berbere or niter kibbeh, but SAMIA garlic powder, SAMIA ginger powder and KHANUM ghee butter let you come close to the recipe in the absence of niter kibbeh.
Week 4: the Caribbean, with Jamaican jerk chicken
Jerk chicken owes its technique to the Taíno, the first inhabitants of Jamaica, then to the Maroons who transformed it to cook while concealing the smoke. Chicken marinated with Scotch bonnet pepper and Jamaican allspice is today associated with the Independence Day celebrations of 6 August. Follow our jerk chicken recipe, with LE GALION cane sugar, SAMIA ground cinnamon and SAMIA ground cloves: NKOSI does not sell Scotch bonnet pepper or Jamaican allspice, two ingredients that still need to be found elsewhere.
The dry ingredients to keep in stock for this challenge
Before starting, a well-stocked pantry avoids back-and-forth trips mid-recipe. For the four weeks of this challenge:
- peanut paste, for the mafé
- tomato paste, for the mafé and many other sauces
- ras el hanout, for the couscous and other Maghreb dishes
- garlic and ginger powder, for the doro wat as for most of the dishes in this challenge
- ghee butter, in the absence of niter kibbeh for the doro wat
- cane sugar, ground cinnamon and ground cloves, for the jerk chicken marinade
How to organize this challenge at home
Choose a fixed day of the week to cook the scheduled recipe, reading the recipe in full before starting: marinating times (jerk chicken) or long cooking times (doro wat, mafé) sometimes require starting the day before. Dry ingredients bought in larger quantities, such as peanut paste, ras el hanout or cane sugar, keep well for other recipes once the challenge is over.
To go further
For faster weekday meal ideas, our article five African and Caribbean meal ideas for the week offers five shorter recipes, one for each day from Monday to Friday. Our article 5 tips for varying your African and Caribbean cooking rounds out these ideas with more general principles.
