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Alkaline Treatment
Using alkalinity deliberately, including mucilage work
13 rungs across 13 volumes
Dishes
Weeknight
Chikwangue, or kwanga
Muriwo une dovi
Soda Farls
Agashe with shata dakwa
Boxty
Ifisashi
Mullah rob
Swala, or mula kombo ta bamia
Daraba
Koko na nyama
Mullah sharmout
Siga
Mullah kawal
Ngai ngai na tomson
Weekend
Bamia
Kajaik, or mullah kajek
Mullah ahmar, the red mullah, also called tagalia
Nkui
Tô with sauce gombo
Amiwo
Eru with waterleaf
Molokhia
Poulet nyembwe
Bacon and Cabbage
Caldo de chabéu
Chibwabwa
Burek, Sirnica and Zeljanica
Calulu de peixe
Fakoye
Pondu, or saka-saka
Project
Gozo
Aseeda, and asida jeer
Leskovački Ćevapi
Dambou
Capitaine grillé
Ntaba, the nganda grill
Akoumé with sauce adémè
Babenda
Liboke ya malangwa
Poulet à la moambe
Laugenbrezel
Ngunza
Waterford Blaa
Achu with yellow soup
Mici
Makayabu
Untimed
ChikandaAfrica
Côte d'Ivoire, Togo & Benin
Alkali and mucilage discipline in the draw sauces
Okra's draw is a water-soluble, highly branched acidic polysaccharide, a rhamnogalacturonan, which forms a shear-thinning, weakly cross-linked network.
Mali, Burkina Faso & Niger
Alkali and acid are one lever, and you choose which end to pull
British cooks treat alkali as an oddity and acid as a garnish.
Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau & São Tomé
Layer, do not stir, and treat mucilage as a dial
Why it works. Calulu is built in layers and left alone: smoked fish down first, then fresh fish, then okra, greens, aubergine, onion, tomato and garlic, then...
Gabon, Congo & the Congo Basin
Run acid and alkalinity as deliberate opposing forces
Nobody outside the region is using this, and it is the most distinctive thing in the volume.
Chad, CAR & the Sahel Margin
Treat mucilage as a hydrocolloid, and decide when the acid goes in
This region has two named sauce categories answering the same question: how do you get a dry starch ball down without a drink?
Sudan & South Sudan
Separate the thickener from the flavour base
The most useful structural sentence in the volume comes from inside the tradition: whole or hard ingredients are sieved out of the finished mullah.
Egypt
Mucilage discipline: chop, do not blend; simmer, never boil
The mucilage is a polymer. Sustained boiling and high mechanical shear both degrade the chains and drop the viscosity. And prolonged heat in the presence of...
Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi & Mozambique
Alkalinity is a lever here, and it has to be pulled on purpose
What raising the pH of a cooking liquid does.
Europe
Bavaria, the Alps and German Switzerland
Lye-dipping is chemistry, and the chemistry is what makes safety and flavour the same fact
Pretzel lye is a food-grade solution of at most 4% sodium hydroxide in water.
The Western Balkans
Bind with chemistry, not with filler, and know that this is a genuine argument, not a settled fact
Serbian sourcing describes bicarbonate of soda, at roughly half to one per cent of the meat's weight, dissolved in a little water before mixing in, as the...
Bulgaria and Romania
Rest a bicarbonate-treated mince overnight, because mici hold their shape through chemistry, not casing
Mici and mititei are grilled with no casing at all, and what actually holds them together on the grill is baking soda, traditionally slaked first in lemon...
Ireland
Time the chemistry, not the clock
Bicarbonate of soda begins reacting with buttermilk's lactic acid the moment the two are combined, releasing carbon dioxide that a slow yeast dough would...