Koki (food)

Koki, also called cowpea cake or black-eyed pea cake, is a Cameroonian dish that the source traces to the Mbo people of the Moungo department and to the Bazou, Bafang, Makaa, Bassa and Banen peoples. The best known version is a golden cake of black-eyed peas or cowpeas flavored with palm oil and traditionally eaten with plantains. The paste can also be made from tubers such as cassava or potato, other legumes and corn, seasoned with palm oil and sometimes stuffed with leafy vegetables such as taro, then wrapped in a banana or cocoyam leaf and steamed; it can also be made into fritters. It was once eaten with the hands and is now often eaten with forks or spoons, and paper or foil sometimes replaces the leaf. The name comes from a Duala word for pounding, so it means that which is crushed, or culinary paste. Cameroon recorded it among 111 elements of its national intangible cultural heritage in a decree of 2021, and the source notes a very similar Nigerian dish among the Efik and Yoruba peoples that is made from fresh corn.