Mozambique

Mozambique has the strongest claim to piri-piri, the chili-and-garlic marinade that flavors its famous grilled prawns and chicken: the name comes from the Ronga and Swahili word for pepper, and the African bird's eye chili was bred here from a pepper the Portuguese carried from the Americas. Angola claims the sauce too, and it spread worldwide through Portugal and South Africa. Portuguese and Swahili influences meet over coconut, cashew, and seafood.

For much of the twentieth century Mozambique was the world's leading producer of cashews, responsible at its height for around half of global output, and Africa's first industrial cashew processing plant opened here in 1960. War, nationalisation and structural adjustment collapsed the industry, and the country now grows a small fraction of the world's crop, though the nut still turns up in the cooking.

Matapa is the dish that shows what the Indian Ocean did to this coast. Young cassava leaves are pounded in a wooden mortar, then cooked slowly with ground peanuts, garlic, onion and coconut milk, often with crab or prawns folded in, and served over rice. It is a cousin of Cameroon's ndole and of Brazilian vatapa.

Crisp Mozambican chickpea-flour fritters flecked with onion and served with fiery piri-piri.