Shooku blai & the Krio table.

Sierra Leonean cooking — and Krio cooking in particular — sits at a beautiful crossroads. Yoruba pepper-and-palm-oil traditions meet the rice-cookery of the upper Guinea coast, the West Indian carryovers of the returnees, and a Victorian-era love of stews and puddings that found its way into Freetown family recipes.

Some dishes you’ll meet at the chapter

• Jollof rice — the West African classic; the chapter’s version uses chicken stock and dried pepper.
• Foofoo — fermented cassava dough, eaten by hand and dipped in soup.
• Plassas — leafy greens stewed long with palm oil, fish, and pepper.
• Cassava leaf — pounded cassava leaves stewed with palm oil and meat; a chapter favourite.
• Groundnut stew — peanut-based, served over rice.
• Pepper soup — clear, hot, restorative.
• Shooku blai — sweet rice flour cakes, fried golden.
• Akara — black-eyed-pea fritters.
• Palm wine — when there’s palm wine, there’s a wanpot somewhere.

The chapter’s annual wanpot — the communal cookout where everyone brings what they can — is the best introduction to all of these.