Traditionally most of Africa cuisines use a combination of locally cereal grains, available fruits and vegetables, as well as meat and milk products. In some parts of the Africa, the traditional diet features a preponderance of curd, fresh and healthy vegetables, whey and products milk. In much of Tropical Africa areas, milk of cow cannot be produced locally because is rare .Depending on the region of this continent, there are also sometimes quite significant and a lot of differences in the drinking and eating habits throughout the Africa’s many populations: the Horn of Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa each have their own preparation techniques, distinctive dishes and consumption mores.
Central Africa – Central African cuisine
Central African cuisine includes cooking traditions, practices, ingredients the cuisines, and foods of the Central African Republic. Agriculture in the country includes yellow onion, sorgum, yam, spinach, millet, palm oil, banana, okra, rice and garlic. Imported ingredients and crops from American origin include sweet potato, chili peppers manioc, peanuts, maize and tomato. In this part of Africa additional foods include, chiles peanuts and onions garlic.
Although in African cuisine fish is used in different dishes, and a lot of other sources of protein include insects such as grasshoppers, crickets’ cicadas or termites. Meats in Central Africa cuisine include goat and chicken. African staple foods include such as millet, rice, starches, sorghum and sesame. Different sauces and vegetables are also consumed. Roadside all over Africa stalls sell foods such as Makara (a type of fried bread) and baked goods or barbecued meat and snacks, sandwiches etc.
Normally Muslims are prohibited from drinking or eating something that is cooked with alcohol. In Central Africa the legal drinking age is 18. In Central Africa, K-Cinq area is famous and it is known for its smaller but very beautiful restaurants serving with reasonably priced every traditional dishes served. The capital city of Bangui has hotel restaurants and western foods.
East Africa cuisine
East Africa area is home to mainly Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and Somalia and Somaliland, Rwanda and of course Uganda. Like most African foods, food in this area consists of dishes made from grains, rice, millet, yam, beans and cowpeas, flours for bread, including sorghum, maize, and stews cooked with meat and vegetables. Fresh butter and fresh milk features in many authentic foods in East Africa.
So a variety of spices curry and coconut milk. In those areas variations are plentiful, due to religious influences and ethnic, contacts of these indigenous African populations with Arabs from the Horn of Arabian and Africa world. Like the typical African food all over the Africa, preparation time for some of these kind of meals can take up one to five hours per meal. For example the Cambuulo, prepared from Azuki beans may take up to five hours to boil to attain the desired tenderness in this area. Barring different regions, a three times a day meal in East Africa will be made up of:
Breakfast cuisine – East African breakfast would consist of specially food with baked bread Ahooh, or Chapati in Kenya and Uganda, in Somali and Somaliland canjeera . Those specialties are usually served with different vegetable stew and sometimes with sour porridge for example the Kenyan uji. Food in African breakfast from ground cereals and sour milk are not uncommon for the nomadic population.
Lunch – In East African lunch is the most important food meal of the day. In African culture lunch would be served in the afternoons. Most of the time is served with a heavy meal. Same like other most African foods all over the Africa, it consists mashed starchy meals made from different tubers and gains.
Dependent upon different regions, and simply boiled white or brownish rice, eaten with a lot of vegetable fish and stews or meat to ground corn meals, mixed with potatoes such as Irio and Githeri or even Ughali in Kenya is actually common.
Dinner – in this part of Africa is often not different from what they eat as lunch. One of the best East Africans specialties is Kuku Paka, it is a delicious food with chicken coconut curry which is served with white rice, or sometimes Cambuulo which is made from cooked beans with butter and sugar and usually is served with rice or bread and is so famous in East African cuisine. There is a small difference because a meal for lunch today could be cooked but in smaller quantity and can be served as dinner for tomorrow. In east African food all these different meals are often served with a blend of vegetables, salads and fresh fruits or sweets.
Horn of Africa
The main traditional dishes in Eritrean cuisine and Ethiopian cuisine are something like all other African foods all over the Africa. Some of them are tsebhis or stews which is served with injera which is cooked with flatbread made from sorghum or teff, wheat or hilbet which is paste made with from legumes, mainly lentil, faba beans. Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine especially in the northern half of those two places are very similar. Injera is typical African food which is made out of a variation and blend of: wheat, barley, teff, sorghum and resembles slightly sour pancake and corn a spongy. The best known Eritrean cuisine involves various meat or vegetable side entrées and pots and pans, usually thick stew, or possibly a wat.
This kind connected with food is served on top of injera, a large sourdough flatbread made from teff flour. One won’t eat with utensils, but instead uses injera to scoop the entrées and side pots and pans. Tihlo prepared from roasted barley flour is incredibly popular in Amhara, Agame, in addition to Awlaelo (Tigrai). Traditional Ethiopian cuisine has no pork or shellfishof any kind, as they are forbidden inside the Islamic, Jewish, and Ethiopian Orthodox Orlando faiths. It is also very common to eat from the same dish during the table with a small grouping of people.
Somali cuisine varies through region to region and involves an exotic mixture connected with diverse culinary influences. It is the product of Somalia’s wealthy tradition of trade in addition to commerce. Despite the assortment, there remains one thing that unites different regional cuisines: all meal is served halal. You’ll find therefore no pork pots and pans, alcohol is not functioned, nothing that died without treatment is eaten, and no blood is incorporated. Qaddo or lunch is frequently elaborate. Varieties of bariis (rice), the most famous probably being basmati, usually serve since the main dish. Spices including cumin, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon andsage are utilized to aromatize these distinct rice dishes. Somalis work dinner as late since 9 pm. During Ramadan, dinner is frequently served after Tarawih prayers – from time to time as late as 11 pm hours.
