Characteristic products

As in the rest of West Africa, Ivorian cuisine makes generous use of many starchy foods. One example is cassava. It is used to make tapioca and attiéké, a kind of cassava semolina, lighter than couscous and particularly appreciated in the country. Cassava is first fermented in water for several days, then dried in the sun, crushed, sieved and finally steamed. Attiéké is traditionally eaten as an accompaniment to meat or fish. The foufou or foutou is a kind of soft ball with a slightly granular surface obtained from boiled cassava, plantain banana or yam.

Yam is a root with a texture and taste similar to that of a potato. The tuber can weigh up to twenty-five kilograms and those found on the market generally range from one to three kilograms. It is prepared as a stew, fries or foutou. Plantain bananas are inedible raw because of their high starch content. But on the other hand, it is a delicacy eaten fried, boiled or mashed (damn banana). The tôh (or kabato) is mainly eaten in the north. This preparation based on corn flour is presented in the form of small balls. Placali is a variant of tôh

made from manioc.

The palm nut or fruit of the oil palm is characterized by a very oily bright orange pulp. Far removed from our dietary and environmental considerations, palm oil is a major component of West African cuisine. Although it is decried by nutritionists when refined, pure red palm oil is extremely rich in beta-carotene, vitamins and minerals.

There are, of course, a multitude of vegetables: tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage, squash, potatoes, and so on. Some are less familiar to us, such as okra, a vegetable that resembles a green chilli pepper in appearance and therefore the slightly viscous juice is much appreciated for thickening sauces. Saka-saka or sweet potato leaf is often crushed in sauces. It can be replaced by spinach.

On the condiment side, Ivorian cuisine makes good use of chilli, ginger, cumin or turmeric, not forgetting soumbara. Made by fermenting the seeds of the baby tree, it comes in the form of a dumpling that is added directly to culinary preparations. A less authentic yet widely used ingredient, Maggi cubes are essential in West African kitchens.

Among the meats eaten in Côte d'Ivoire, chicken is the most popular and accessible, although beef, mutton, lamb and goat's cheese are very popular. The country's coasts and rivers are also teeming with fish and seafood, not forgetting the giant African snail, a mollusc that can weigh more than 500 g and is usually cooked as a stew. The term " bushmeat " refers to a variety of game that is usually poached on the savannah or in the forest. These include agouti (a large rodent), doe (actually various species of antelope) and several other animals: warthog, porcupine, snake, monkey, bat, etc. Although a change of scenery may seem tempting, bushmeat can be a vector for the transmission of serious diseases such as the Ebola virus or coronavirus, not to mention the ecological threat posed by the consumption of this type of meat. As a tourist, it is preferable to opt for more traditional meats and avoid some disappointments.

Great classics of Ivorian cuisine

In Côte d'Ivoire many snacks are often available directly in the markets, such as the famous alloco, slices of fried plantains, orakpessi, which consists of large pieces of yam or plantain, poached, served with a thick, spicy tomato sauce. Finally,attoukpou is a type of small, very crunchy cassava cake topped with shrimp and raw vegetables.

The main dishes are usually accompanied by rice, attiéké, plantain, yam or cassava, sometimes all four at the same time. Rice is very popular and some recipes include the famous fatty rice - sometimes called jollof rice in other parts of Africa - which is flavored with tomato and chili pepper, usually served with chicken.

Many Ivorian recipes are frequently combinations of starchy foods, grilled or boiled meats and various sauces and condiments. The best known is the sauce graine, made from oil palm seeds, or the sauce claire, made from eggplant, tomato and onions. The okra sauce is prepared with fresh okra while the djoumgblé is obtained from the powder of dried okra. The peanut sauce is mainly made with peanut butter, which is reminiscent of the mafé eaten in Mali and Senegal. The kwlala is prepared from the leaves of the vegetable cortete, a plant widely consumed in Africa and the Middle East. The n'tro sauce is prepared with several meats and vegetables and seasoned with red palm oil and akpi powder, a berry native to West Africa. Finally, gnangnan sauce is cooked with solanum torvum berries - sometimes dried - known for their very bitter taste, while biékosseu is a similar preparation made with African eggplant and other vegetables.

Garba, the national dish

Garba is a popular dish in Côte d'Ivoire, considered the national dish, quick and cheap (around 700 CFA francs), and is one of the symbols of the country. It is sold in small street stalls and consists of an assortment of attiéké (cassava semolina) and fried red tuna, and a garnish of onions and fresh chili.) It is also called zéguen, attiéké-poisson, guéro, foin, ganguatte, béton or zeh. It is sold mainly by Nigeriens of Hausa ethnicity, to whom it owes its name since garba means boy in Hausa. It is mostly young people who devour it, and garbadromes were the first to develop in the vicinity of universities in the 1990s.
Another emblematic dish is fish with claire sauce, which is eaten in exceptional situations, for example to celebrate an important event. The sauce known as "claire claire" is made with a spice that is very popular in Africa but unknown here: Akpi, an almond from a fruit tree growing in the heart of the tropical forests.

There are also more elaborate dishes such as kédjénou (a stew of poultry, sometimes of giant snail, simmered with vegetables and spices), beef sokossoko (a kind of beef bourguignon from Côte d'Ivoire) or choukouya (a very spicy barbecue of mutton or beef, from Niger)

Desserts and drinks

With its largely tropical climate, Côte d'Ivoire has no difficulty in offering travellers a magnificent variety of delicious fruits. The papaya, for its part, is eaten green or ripe and is renowned for its many medicinal virtues. The same goes for pineapple, which is no longer presented, but whose flesh is particularly tender and sweet in Côte d'Ivoire, where it is widely cultivated. The mango season in Côte d'Ivoire runs from February to June and the country is renowned for its mangoes, which are among the best in the world. Native to South Asia, this fruit, like the papaya, can be eaten green with salt, or ripe, prepared "hedgehog-style", cut into a checkerboard pattern.

Several desserts such as gnomi, small millet flour fritters resembling mini-pancakes, or tratras similar, but thicker, to wheat flour are added to this. Gbofloto is another variety in the form of small balls of fried dough. The groto is a type of yoghurt to drink. The coconut flavors many kinds of cakes.

Although the country was for a long time - before the civil war in the 2000s - one of the largest producers of coffee and cocoa in the world, both products are mainly destined for export. Ivorians enjoy many fruit juices: pineapple, passion fruit, ginger, baobab or even côcôta, a local fruit with a tangy taste. Bissap is a drink common to several West African countries (Senegal, Mali, etc.), prepared from roselle, a flower better known as hibiscus sabdariffa

. It is prepared by bringing a few handfuls of flowers to the boil until a kind of thick pink syrup is obtained, which is then diluted in very cool water, with more or less sugar according to preference. Another classic, bandji, or palm wine, is a traditional drink obtained from the fermentation of the sap of oil palms, raffia and rônier. Drawn early in the morning from the trunk, the sap produces a white, milky wine with a sweet, mild taste. As the fermentation progresses, this wine becomes slightly sparkling, more bitter and alcoholic. Its degree of alcohol varies between 7.5 and 11.5°, and it has the same effects as beer, which is tending to replace it more and more. Quite similar, the koutoukou or gbêlê is a macerated palm liqueur. If in the rest of Africa, the tchapalo est a beer made from millet, in Ivory Coast, it is made with maize.