Botswana - Seswaa
Recipe from https://www.myburntorange.com/how-to-make-seswaa/
In a new bid for the easiest national dish to make, Botswana's seswaa (served with sadza) is slow cooked beef boiled in the oven with bay, onion and seasoning. That's it. It's a bit lacking as a full, balanced meal, but it's far from unpleasant.
Togo - Maize
Recipe from https://spicebreeze.com/blog/togolese-gboma-dessi-recipe/
Togo's maize refers, like many of the dishes on here, simply to the porridge-like mound of pap in the centre of this plate. To make this a full meal, I served it with Gboma Dessi, a stew of chicken, spinach and tomato with ground pumpkin seeds. It's interestingly spiced, with cardamom, ginger and ajowan, a spice new to me that I think tasted like a mix of cumin and caraway.
Argentina - Asado
Recipe from https://ingmar.app/blog/recipe-the-national-dish-of-argentina-asado/
Asado refers to a technique of barbecueing, and Argentina is a cuisine that loves its meat. Here I have short ribs, chorizo and steak, along with black pudding - part of the cow offal family known as chinchulines. This is all served with crusty bread and chimichurri - though I am getting conflicting information from the internet as to whether this is authentic or not - so if any Argentinians are reading, please enlighten me! For those who haven't tried chimichurri, it's a sauce made with fresh herbs, olive oil and vinegar, which pairs very nicely with well seasoned meat, particularly beef in my opinion.
Paraguay - Sopa paraguaya
Recipe from https://placeralplato.com/sopas/sopa-paraguaya
Paraguay's "Sopa Paraguay" (Paraguayan soup) is, in fact, not a soup. It bears a much more striking resemblance to cornbread. The "soup" consists of cornmeal, onion, cheese, egg, milk and and seasoning. The consistency is pretty close to a sponge cake, but a little tougher. I personally would have liked more cheese in the dish, as it adds a nice flavour, as being that it is essentially just cornmeal and onion, it hardly packs a punch. I would like to make this again, filled with ground beef or chicken, as is common.
Somalia - Bariis Iskukaris
Recipe from http://xawaash.com/?p=1996#sthash.FdIL8NPf.7BiD8UMC.dpbs
I don't believe this picture does Somalia's Bariis Iskukaris much justice, but the flavour is amazing. Bariis Iskukaris is goat meat in rice, spiced with cinnamon, clove, cardamom and xawaash, a spice mix containing all of the above spices, turmeric, cumin and coriander. Unfortunately, the rice was more than a bit overdone, and I realised that this was fully my fault - the recipe specified a particular type of "Sella basmati rice", which presumably holds up better after 20 minutes of boiling than non-sella basmati rice. To be re-done in the future!