I was watching a Nigerian recipe for jollof and struck by how there are so many similarities between Asian and African cooking cultures.
The auntie I was watching did this thing where she made a spice paste and 'fried' it in copious amounts of oil until 'the spices and oil separate'. Almost exactly the same as what we call 'pecah minyak' (oil breaking) in Malay.
@skinnylatte that is absolutely required in Bengali cooking, too, we only consider the spices done well when "moshla theke tel chhare" (the spices release oil). I've also been looking at the popular North African spice mixes like Ras El-Hanout and Berbere, and I made my go-to gorom moshla spice mix by emulating the African spice mixes. It all comes back to Old World spice trading.
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