Vegetarian recipes from Ivory Coast

Ivorian cooking without meat starts from locally grown starches rather than grain: cassava, plantain and yam, with rice and maize alongside them. The main fat is red palm oil, backed by groundnut paste, which acts both as a thickener and as a protein source. The aromatics are few, mostly onion, fresh chilli, tomato and ginger. Alloco shows what ripe plantain does, fried until the sugars caramelise, while attieke with vegetables rests on fermented cassava semolina, a staple across the south of the country.

A meal is built on a steady pair: a neutral starch and a sauce that carries the flavour. Foutou banane with groundnut sauce is the clearest form, a pounded dough served with a thick sauce that can be made with no meat or fish. Cassava returns in other shapes depending on the handling: attoukpou as cakes cooked from the same semolina, claclo as fritters of mashed overripe plantain. These dishes are often eaten by hand, bought from street stalls and served with ground fresh chilli.