Canjeelo (Mogadishan Injera)

Canjeelo (Mogadishan Injera)

We have seen how the cuisines of the Swahili, the Arab, and Asian, as well as the European, have all influenced the Somali.  Somalis will readily admit to all those, but not to the influences of our neighbors and especially to the Ethiopian influence. This is perhaps after we turned from the Europeans and the Arabs, and gained our independence, our governments went to war with Ethiopia, over the Ogadenia region-- so named for the Ogaden tribe that mostly inhabits there and who are Somali. 

I grew up in a period in the 1980s where the anti-Ethiopian mentality became such an ingrained part of the culture, where songs took stage on the national radio as part of the propaganda to distant us from our neighbors and where you would hear lyrics that warned “Enemy doormat don’t sleep, your grave is nearby so don’t sleep, stay awake and be greatly aware!” (“Nin lagu socdoow ha seexan, iil baad sidaa ha seexan, so jeed oo si weyn u feejignoow”). 

Yes, the Ethiopian cuisine has influenced us too. The injera is the national dish of the Ethiopian people. In all corners of the country, it’s served as the very base of the food on which literally all the other items are placed upon.  In Ethiopia, this flatbread is made of teff, a grain that growly only in the Ethiopian Highlands, which makes it expensive even for the average Ethiopians elsewhere. 

Of course, the Somali injera is different. The Somalis have Somalized it as they have Somalized the halva and the chai. Not only that, we have transformed it and then have shared it forward to our friends in Yemen where, just like in northern Somali communities such as Somaliland and Djibouti, it’s known as laxoox. 

The injera in the south is again different. First of all, we divide the work. The first portion of the recipe, the khamiir, is professionally handled at the neighborhoods by the makiinada cajiinta (literally: the batter machine), which is generally a family-run small joint where the first batter of cornmeal and all-purpose flour is mechanically mixed. 

“Aren’t you glad we don’t have to mix that by hand anymore,” one of my aunts once said, ash she made the famous sound of beating the canjeelo batter. “We thank the modern times for giving us tireless machines to help us prepare these things,” she laughed, making sure she doesn’t splash it all over the rest of us. “Oh, God, we thank you.”

It was certainly my first introduction to the world of convenience. 

As the middle child, I was always the one sent out to these kinds of errands. I wasn’t allowed to cook it, but getting the cajiin was definitely in the job description for a Somali boy. You always got the batter in the evening, so that it could be mixed with the self-rising flour that would make sure to get the canjeelo fermented by morning, and no Somali mother who had a son would ever send her daughter to fetch errands after dark.

“No, that is your job,” my mother would say whenever I tried to get out of it. I soon realized there was no point in fighting it, so I decided to make the best of it by befriending the kids of the batter store.  Eventually, I met the parents and it was the mother who really got me interested in the world of flatbreads.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered to me one evening, after telling me the history of this flatbread and how it went back to the Ethiopians. “We all like to think it belongs to us,” she chucked, “I know it doesn’t. Anyone who has ever been to Ethiopia realizes that sad fact much sooner than they would like.” 

I wasn’t sad, I delighted at the history of it.  Canjeelo has always been one of my favorite food items, especially when served with goat liver for breakfast.  It was the breakfast served to me on the morning of my circumcision, at the age of seven and without anesthesia, and I must say it did help a lot to have had that breakfast beforehand. 

But even in its plain way, when we eat it sweet immersed in black tea and sesame oil, I still thought the canjeelo to be a great dish. The mix of sweet, starch and hot liquid was certainly the best way to beat the blues after the dugsi, the Qur’anic School, especially on mid-mornings after having been whipped for not memorizing the verses right. 

Thank you, Ethiopia.

INGREDIENTS: 

2 cups of self-rising flour

1/2 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 cup of white corn flour

3 cup of water

1/2 tbsp of active yeast

METHOD:

First, we are going to do the cajiin the old school way. In a small bowl, mix the all-purpose flour, the corn flour, the yeast, and one of the cups of the water. If you are going to use the canjeelo for lunch and plan to use it with sauces, then you can add a half teaspoon of salt.  If you plan to use the canjeelo for breakfast and with sweet tea, then you can add a tablespoon of brown sugar. Let that mix together nicely and then put it aside for about a good hour. The longer you leave it, the more the canjiin will ferment.

After the hour is up, it’s time to make the main batter. You need a bigger bowl, and then you a the cajiin mix with all the other ingredients except the water. You need to add the water as you go, slowly mixing the water in the batter until seventy-five percent of the water is out. Now you have to beat the crap about of it. Place your hand into the batter, and slap… always making sure your pull your hand to you, with the bowl a little tilted away from you. If you beat it around fifteen times, it should be good. Then you put the batter aside for at least two hours. You don't want to ferment it for more than eight hours, though. That is because the more you ferment, the more "fermented" it will tase.

The best way of cooking the canjeelo is by using a cast iron comal, a stainless steel ladle, and a skinny stainless steel turner. A normal comal is too thin, and a cast iron skillet is too limiting. You need an open surface that can handle lots of heat. However, you can use a regular comal with low-medium heat. That takes nearly twice the 30-45 second it would normally take with a cast iron comal. 

Regardless of what you’re using, you don’t need a cover. Grab about a half of a cup of a batter into the ladle and place it in the middle of the comal. Then swirl it clockwise, almost not touching the bottom of the comal, until all the batter is spread out. Leave it on the heat until all the batter disappears from sight and you begin to see little brown spots coming through. No need to turn it over, it's time to take it off the heat. Then place each canjeelo on top of the other, face up. 

Enjoy! 

Shaax (Somali Chai)

Shaax (Somali Chai)

March to September, each single year, the Indian Ocean kicks itself into gear as the monsoon season begins in various parts of the East. Months and months of irregular wind, which might or might not bring tons of rain, forces the dhow culture out of work. Boats are parked on the shores, and folks just wait for God to lighten up their atmosphere.  And, of course, fish is a bit more expensive during that time.

In Mogadishu, the monsoon manifests itself through the rainiest months of May, June, and July.  To celebrate the beginning of the dhow season, the land that had just become ripe for planting, and surviving the storms, the Somali celebrate with the dabshid, which normally takes place at the end of July.  The dabshid, which is a festival of mock fighting and jumping over fires, is very similar to the one that takes place in Zanzibar. In their Mwaka Kogwa, the Zanzibars also have their mock fights and make a fire. 

Of course, I have had the Somali chai many times before. But it was during one of the dabshid celebrations that I realized all of its history. We had just finished the mock fights in late afternoon, had become tired and hungry, and were about to leave when we saw an old lady making the tea. Folks surrounded her, listening to her as she traced every part of its ingredients to its historical place. 

“This heyl, you see,” she said, holding up a bag of cardamom, “it originally comes to us from southern India,” she smiled, as she grabbed a bag of cloves. “This dhagayare,” she noted, holding out one piece. “Look at it, that is why we call it small-eared,” caressing the ends of the flower buds, the crowd laughing. “Indonesia, that is who we have to thank for this one.”

You could see the crowd didn’t know that about the cloves, because as far as we knew this was a Zanzibari plant. Of course, Zanzibar is the largest producer of cloves in Africa but she was right that it was from Indonesia. But that wasn’t really what shocked the crowd the most about the cloves, it was actually when she pulled out a cigarette.

“No, no,” she dismissed them with a hand wave, “I will not smoke it, I’m just here to educate. This is a kretek, a kind of cigarette that is highly popular in Indonesia. Looking at it one would never know it was made of cloves,” she sneaked in, leaving the attentive crowd rattled up, half laughing while others were left with their mouths open. “Yeah, it’s true. Strange things.”

She also discussed the nutmeg and sugar having their roots in Indonesia, how the cinnamon reached us from China, and the ginger coming to us from India. She discussed how the marriage between the dhow and caravan industries created various chais around the monsoon nations, as they pretty much were dealt with the same fate. When you couldn’t venture into the sea, you couldn’t deliver goods on the camels either-- the same wind affected both; you could be buried in water or sand, your choice.

That afternoon, the shaax became much more than tea. It suddenly interested me, my curios soul, and I began to pay attention whenever anyone was making it. Of course, I always noted how different it was from black tea, the bigeys, of which its plain reddish color I thought was boring next to the colorful chai. Now I had all the reasons in the world to learn how to make it.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup of reduced-fat cow milk

1 cup of water

1 tbsp of loose black tea

3 tbsp of brown sugar

1/4 tsp of cardamom

1/4 tsp of nutmeg

1/4 tsp of cloves

1/4 tsp of cinnamon

1/4 tsp of ginger

METHOD: 

As colorful as it is, it really is one of the easiest things to make-- but only once you master the ingredient portions. Then it’s simple: add everything together and bring it to boil. Be very careful because the chai will overflow if you don’t remove it from the fire right away when it comes to boil. If you want it to have a “burn” taste, you can keep putting it back. Each time you put back, it will have a noticeable different taste. If you put it back more than five times, your chai might become a bit too different from the Somali Shaax! 

Bataato Talyaani iyo Malaay Quddi (Gnocchi with Cod)

Bataato Talyaani iyo Malaay Quddi (Gnocchi with Cod)

In the first couple of recipes, we discussed how the neighboring Africans and Arabs have influenced the Somali cuisine. Now we are getting into southern Somalia’s favorite colonizer, the Italians. The truth is Somali people all have close relationships with their colonizers, like all of the colonized peoples of the world. For example, you will find that most Somalis in France are of Djibouti background, while the majority of the Somalis in the United Kingdom are from Somaliland. Likewise, most of the Somalis in Italy are from the south, especially Mogadishu area.

That is exactly how I came across this dish. One of my uncles had married a divorcee, a woman in her late thirties. This was really unheard of in our family, because one was expected to marry a virgin-- or at least one who could pass off as such. She was put under scrutiny, and the majority of my relatives didn’t like the new woman in our family. 

But I liked Caasho. 

“She makes the best food,” I would defend her in the family. 

I thought that was enough to make someone become acceptable, or even liked. Knowing this about me, she would make me the most exotic dishes and would help me learn a lot of them. She was the daughter of a woman who was raised in an Italian family, because Caasho’s grandmother was working in the market, selling vegetables and meat, and the nice Italian family who lived a few doors away were totally in love with the young girl.

“She worried they would steal her daughter,” Caasho would laugh. “My grandmother was always suspicious of everyone, and I remember best that about her.”

It was no wonder when she graduated from high school that a young Caasho would go to Italy.  She had hoped to go to college but was sidetracked with well paying gigs as a caregiver to aging Italians whose children were too busy to take care of them. One thing led to another and Caasho would never attend college, end up in a bad marriage with an alcoholic, and would divorce him to go back home.

“You were meant to teach me these dishes,” I would say. 

Overtime, Caasho became one of the favorites in the family. They would all eventually see what I saw in her all those years ago. Bit by bit, one person at a time, Caasho won their hearts with delicious recipes that were passed on from mother to daughter, recipes that tell our history as much as they delight our tastebuds. Today, her house is one those places where people go and they feel right at home. Whenever there are gatherings, folks will raise up their hands and vote that we meet up at her house.

I learned, slowly, that I wasn’t all that wrong about food.

INGREDIENTS:

2 Pieces of Cod

1 Cup of Tomatoes Sauce

3 Potatoes, Medium 

2 Cups of Flour

2 Eggs, Medium

1 Medium Onion, Sliced

1/3 Cup of Green Peppers, Diced

1/2 tbsp of Parsley, Minced

1/2 tsp of Cumin

1/2 tsp of Spicy Red Pepper

1/2 Cup of Olive Oil

Pinch of salt

METHOD:

This is a three-item dish: First, we are going to make the gnocchi. You get pot of water and boil it, then add the peeled potatoes, salt to taste, and let that boil for about 20 minutes. By that time the potatoes are not “done” but they are cooked enough. Let that cool down. Then get rid off the water, and break down or mash down the potatoes in a bowl. Then add the flower, eggs, and work that into a nice dough.  As you knead, you will see it will come together nicely. Then you just want to make strings out of that, and cut the strings into pieces.  Put that away.

On a large skillet, put the cod in a  half of the oil and cover it over a medium heat. Let that cod cook for at least five minutes on each side. Some people like the cod to be well done, because they believe it will taste better with the potatoes, but it’s really up to your own taste. 

In the meantime, you will start a new skillet and throw in the rest of the olive oil. When that gets hot, add the sliced onions. Let that brown, and then add the diced peppers. Cook that into a nice simmer, and then add all of the rest of the spices, salt, and all of the tomato sauce. You will also had 1/2 cup of water into it when it comes to simmer the first time, and let it all cook together for another good five to ten minutes. While that is cooking away, bring water to boil for a second time. Add the  the gnocchi into the hot water, and let that cook for about ten minutes or when you see all the gnocchi have come to the top of the water. 

Serve with banana!

Jeeni Idaad Foornaati (Roasted Lamb Fore Shank)

Jeeni Idaad Foornaati (Roasted Lamb Fore Shank) 

I knew someone important was coming, the entire house smelled of lamb. I had just woken up, mid morning as I did on Fridays. Thursdays evenings often led to careless late nights, as we normally spent the night dancing and singing into the wee hours-- all in honor of Sheikh Abdul-Qadir Geilani-- at the local Sufi mosque. 

I don’t remember ever been officially initiated, in fact most Somalis would laugh at the very thought, but we grew up in the Sufi Tradition.  The tradition was so localized that most of us even thought “Shiik Cabdulqaadir Jeylaani” was a Somali saint.  This was all before Wahabbism had taken fashion, back in the day when we used to innocently throw stones at the very few ladies who sported the Saudi-style hijab.  

“May Sheikh Geilani curse her!” we would yell, feeling so passionate in his sacred name.

The Sheikh was our Sheikh, he was so part of our lives that the idea he was Persian, or that he was buried in Iraq, would never cross our minds. You can imagine my surprise when decades later I went to Iran and Iraq and ran into his descendants.

“Who's coming?” I asked my younger sister, who was clueless about it all. My aunt, who was cooking, wouldn’t tell us who was coming. But I was curious, I always wanted to know things. I knew if I dug deep enough I would find out who it was. It had to be an important person. We didn’t have lamb everyday. 

Normally, I would already be hitting the streets. By noon you would find me in the warm waters of Lido Beach. And, if you were lucky, I would come to shore to talk to you, because I spent most of my Fridays in the water. 

But not that day. 

I was curious.

That was the day I really decided to learn how to cook this dish. If it was such a mystery-inducing dish I had to learn it. I asked her to teach me how that day, but it was impossible. She was so busy with it, and we know by lunch why. It was her secret boyfriend. None of us were allowed to acknowledge he was her boyfriend, oh no. Instead, we called him uncle and he always pretended he was family. 

But weeks later, when I used my wit to black mail her after I caught them having romantic moments, my aunt decided to teach me. She was reluctant, but she knew I wasn’t playing. That was the first of many things I would learn from her because of our little secret. 

INGREDIENTS:

Lamb Shoulder Fore Shank, 1.5 lbs

8 cups of water

1 medium onion, sliced

2 medium mushrooms, sliced

1/2 medium zucchini, sliced

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 tablespoon of salt

1/2 tablespoon of cumin

1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

METHOD:

Don’t cut up the lamb. In a large pot, add the meat, water, 1/2 of the onions, 1/3 of the cumin, 1/3 of the salt, the black pepper and cover over high heat. Once that comes to boil, bring it down to medium and let it be for about fifteen minutes. 

Preheat the over to 400 degrees. Place the meat in the center of a bake-safe dish and surround it with the vegetables. Sprinkle the olive oil over it, and add salt to your taste. Let that cook up for ten minutes. Turn the meat over, stir your vegetables, and let that cook for another time minutes. Done. 

Xalwad Reer Xamar (Mogadishan Halva)

Xalwad Reer Xamar (Mogadishan Halva)

The phrase “Xalwad Reer Xamar” shows how tribal the Somali people really are, as it literally means “Halva of the Clan of Hamar.” The word “hamar” is the Arabic word for redden (حمرْ), but it’s also the name (unofficially) used by Somalis for Mogadishu. “Reer Xamar,” who by the way belong to the larger ethnic group known as the Benadiri people and whose skin color can range from very fair to blue black, are linked to the original history of Mogadishu, its recent background with the Middle East, and its continued connection to diverse cultures as far away as India. Further, the word “mogadishu” comes from the Arabic phrase “muqd el shah” (مُقدِ الشاه) or the introduction to the shah, which is still very close to the Somali way of pronouncing the name as in “Muqdisho”. 

Enough about the history of Mogadishu, lets get back to my favorite dish, the halva. There really isn’t any other dish that I would prefer to this one. If I was stuck on a Somali island somewhere, I would want to have that. There isn’t a time where I remember halva not being part of my life. There’s a joke in my family that once I was crying so much as a baby that my mother shut me up with halva.  I have always loved this dish. Always.

I may not remember how it came into my life, but there is a day that I clearly remember I decided to learn how to cook it. It was noon, at the wedding of one of my uncles, and I was already fidgeting. Everyone was happy, and they were all looking forward to the “alle barri” (sacrifice), which was preceding the wedding reception of that evening. They would enjoy a wonderful lunch of Persian rice with all of its flavors, accompanied by the most tender goat meats, freshest juices and lots of prayers for the young couple. For me, however, it was all about the halva, which would not be cooked for a few more hours and would not be served until later that evening. 

“There she is,” I whispered to my cousin. “Do you see her?”

She was as beautiful as ever, and sat so elegantly. She seemed so confident in herself, in her worth, and in her skills. One look at her, and you would wonder about who she was. Her name was Batuulo, and she was a Mogadishan lady in our neighborhood who was always invited to cook the halva for all of the celebratory occasions. 

That day, I stalked her after lunch, watched her cook this dish, and was truly amazed by the amount of sugar that goes into it. I was probably eight or so and hadn’t understood yet the negative effects of sugar on our health, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have changed my mind even if I did. I was just so awe struck by her craft. It was like a dance. She was cooking it in a restaurant-sized pot, using a wooden spatula that was taller than she was. When it was time to stir it, she would hold onto the upper middle part of the spatula and literally fly over to the other side of the pot; leaving everyone gasping. They were all worried she would fall into the hot sugar, and be burned alive. They asked to help her, but she didn’t need any help. 

“You will only be in my way!” she would yell them off. 

She was like a soldier, and I was totally sold. 

“I want to do that,” I told my cousin.  

The following days, I visited Batuulo often and I would charm her with my wit and she would find me irresistible. She would laugh, and wonder why such a young boy was so interested in her world. She wouldn’t understand my deep desires, because for her this was just what she did for a living, but I would continue to poke at her until she finally let me learn how to do it.

“It all starts with the purest of starches,” she would say, as she tasted the started with her pinkie. “If the starch is not pure, your halva will be paunchy. These women are vultures, and they will not blink twice about lying to you.  So, don’t trust them. Trust your tongue.”

The ladies at the Bakaare Market probably wondered why she was talking to this skinny little boy about such things, but Batuulo would go on and take me to the sugar lanes and we would buy the whitest and brownest of sugars. When we ended up at the butter lanes, she would sit and nearly sink her nose into the subag. She would only buy the kind that made her feel dizzy, she said. 

She taught me to make the dish bit by bit. Each afternoon, for nearly a month, I would stop by at her house on my way from school. After shopping, she would sit me down and tell me stories about how she had learned it from her grandmother, a woman who was a maid for a rich family in the 1930s, and how she groomed the young Batuulo to one day work for the same family. After the family moved to Egypt in the late 1950s, when the Somalis were on the brink of independence, Batuulo began offering her expertise in different kinds of foods to the locals. The halva stuck.

Those afternoons slowly became much more than learning how to make the halva, they become a chance for a young boy to learn from a living history in a way that wasn’t really possible in our schools at the time. Her classroom became my favorite classroom because I realized it was changing the way I saw myself, my neighborhood, and Somali community at large.

Today, I think about those afternoons whenever I set out to make this dish. I’m still not at the point of flipping myself over the big pots, but I delight in my halvas. 

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/2 of corn starch

2 cups of water 

1/4 of stick butter

1/4 cup of veggie oil

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon of cardamom

1/4 teaspoon of cloves

Dash of orange and red food colorings.

METHOD:

Put the butter, oil, and the spices in a pot and let them come to a nice mix over medium heat. Take it off the heat, and put that aside. Mix the starch, 1/2 a cup of the water, and the food colorings. Put that aside. Then put together the sugar (both types) and the rest of the water into another pot, and let that come to a boil over high heat. Then add the starch, and cover. The halva will start to get sticky quickly, but let that come together for at least thirty seconds. While still over high heat, stir the halva using a wooden spoon. Keep adding the butter mix as you stir until you have used up half of it, which will be about a full minute, and then turn the heat down to medium and cover the halva for another full minute.  Add slowly the rest of the butter pix and keep stirring the halva until it becomes almost one batch, lumping together as you stir, which should be about another six or seven minutes. Take a foil roaster pan and place the halva into it. Let the halva cool for at least thirty minutes or so before you begin to cut it up. Enjoy!

Aargoosato Sawaaxili (Lobster in Coconut Milk)

Aargoosato Sawaaxili (Lobster in Coconut Milk)

Literally, “Aargoosato Sawaaxili” means “Swahili Lobster.” This dish definitely goes back with the history of Mogadishu, which was part of the Swahili culture until 1907 when it was officially sold to the Italians by the Omani Kingdom. It’s no surprise that the city’s oldest neighborhood, Shangaani, is directly related to this culture. Imagine my surprise when I found out there was such a people in northern Mozambique that are actually called the Shangaan people! One wonders if these people had occupied this neighborhood in its hey day?

I was nine years old the first time I clearly remember eating this dish. It was March, when the city is the hottest and driest, and I remember how the spices broke a sweat out of me. I remember the relief I felt, the breeze.  On hot summer days, the Somalis flee to the ocean, especially in the late afternoon. As the sun sets, all sorts of vendors would do their seafood in and around the beaches. 

One early evening, right before it was getting dark, my friends and I were walking back on Corso Somalia, near Piazza 4 Novembre, and there we met a vendor who was making some fast meals. He was clearly Baajuun, which is a tribe that still speaks Swahili, and he made this dish for us. I remember being impressed. I couldn’t believe how fast he made that, not more than ten minutes. 

“Here,” he handed me my plate. “You will love this.”

His name was Hajji Abdallah, and he won me over that evening as a long time customer. It became a tradition to stop by his little restaurant on wheels, and it was delight to listen to the stories of a man whom I would grow to respect.  He had told me so many stories, and somehow they always revolved around the Hajj. He had gone to the pilgrimage in Mecca at age 22, accompanying his old father, and was proud to have gotten the “Hajji” title at a young age.

Before becoming a pilgrim, his mother had taught him how to make the majority of the dishes she knew-- in case he failed to find a wife. She had done this with all of her sons, Hajji Abdallah would tell me. Fortunately for his mother, the Hajji did find a young woman at age 20, and had made his mother a grandmother by the time he had returned from the pilgrimage.

“I cook these dishes with love,” he would say. “Love for my mother, for my people, and for my country.” 

Once, he told me how the woman he had married didn’t really know how to cook. He would say she knew how to make a great tea, but nothing beyond that. By the time they had their sons, he had taught her everything he had learned from his mother.

“A great husband teaches,” he would smile. “A great husband teaches.”

I was fascinated by all of that. I loved to cook, but the women in my family believed a man should not cook. I would have had to protest and make a scandal in order to be allowed to even mix things, or stir the pot. 

But Hajji Abdallah inspired me.

After months and months, having failed over and over with the right amounts to use because he never measured in his cooking, I finally was able to make this dish exactly like the Hajji made it. It was such a glorious afternoon, a moment I will never forget. Oh, I was so proud of myself. 

INGREDIENTS:

2 lobster tails

1/2 cup of coconut milk

1/2 medium onion

1 medium tomato

1/2 medium jalapeño pepper 

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 teaspoon of cumin

1/2 teaspoon of paprika

1/2 teaspoon of salt

METHOD:

On a medium-high heat, place the oil and sliced onions in a sauce pan. Cover that and let the onion cook just a little. Then place the unshelled tails in the pan, and surround them with the sliced tomatoes. Then add the spices and salt, as well as the jalapeños and cover.  Let that cook for about five minutes. By now, the lobster tails are curling up. Then add the coconut milk. Turn off the heat, and let that continue cooking for another five minutes. That’s it.

about this blog...

so, why this blog? i love food. that's really why :) seriously, this blog is away to tell the many stories i attach to food. i began this process when i decided to become a vegetarian, a process that confronted me with all the attachments i placed on food. for me, like many of you out there, food is a pleasure. it's not just something that takes care of a physical need, it's also something that can leave me feeling satisfied emotionally.

my life has been enriched by food, by somali food. i'm very lucky in the sense that i grew up in the somali capital, at perhaps its most diverse period in the early 1980s. as a child, i was part of a multi-tribal family, and whose extended family and friends had literally covered most of the somali tribes and regions. as such, and because i'm a foodie, i have a large number of recipes that i had collected over the years from various people whose lives had somehow affected mine.

because i grew up in mogadishu, and in a diverse family, i'm not a tribal person. therefore, you will note that i will share information as a matter of fact. i'm just telling my stories, and i'm not going to bad mouth any particular group of people. you will see that i'm a passionate person, and will make some judgments about some of the people... but only as individuals.

i hope you enjoy these recipes, and stories.

thank you.