SOMALIA: THE FOOD

We made it through another election. There were some disappointments, but there were some surprises. Quite a few women, people of color, and LGBTQ candidates won their office – not to mention that Ilhan Omar became the first Somali-American to win a Congressional seat.

This will make a good breakfast tomorrow.

It seem fitting that it fell in line with cooking food from Somalia today. The first thing I made was Malawah, or a Somali crepes. In a bowl, I mixed all the ingredients together: 2 c flour, 2 ½ c milk, 2 eggs, 1 Tbsp sugar, ½ tsp cardamom, ½ tsp ginger, and a pinch of salt. Once everything was mixed together, I heated up my skillet and poured a little oil in it to heat. I ladled some batter onto the skillet and swirled the skillet to spread out the batter to thin it out. I apparently didn’t mix things well enough because my batter was still a little lumpy. Once it started to brown on one side, I flipped it to brown the other side. When they were all done, I served this with butter and honey on top. I thought these were fantastic. I was initially a little worried about the cardamom/ginger flavor being too much, but it was just right and blended well with the honey.

I was a little leery about crab and tomato together, but it was actually pretty good.

The main dish today is Somalian Crabmeat Stew. I started this with sautéing some diced onions, curry powder (I just used some leftover xawaash spice mix that I had prepared for the nafaqo below), ginger, salt, and crushed red pepper, letting this simmer for a few minutes before pouring in about 20 oz of diced tomatoes (I used the kind that had green chilies in it). Once that had cooked down for about 10 minutes, I added in my chunked crabmeat and let it cook down for another 10 minutes. I served this over rice. Even though I cut my spices down, it was still a little spicy because of the crushed red pepper. I thought it was excellent.

I love Scotch eggs, and this vegetarian version was fire!

To go with this, I made Nafaqo, a Somali vegetarian version of Scottish eggs. The first thing I did was peel some potatoes and boil them, mashing them slightly when they were cool. Then I added a little xawaash spice mix (a Somali blend of cumin, coriander, sage, black pepper, fenugreek, turmeric, ginger, cardamom, coves, nutmeg, cinnamon), black pepper, turmeric powder, and flour. I mixed everything together again so that it was well combined. In the meantime, I hardboiled 5 eggs and peeled them when they were cool. To put this together, I put a little flour in one hand, spread out some of the potato mix, placed a cooled and peeled egg on top and wrapped the potato around the egg. Then I rolled it in a little flour before frying it in vegetable oil until it turned golden brown. After they drained and cooled on paper towels, they were ready to eat. I really liked these, but my daughter had a differing opinion. I would definitely make these again.

Overall, this was amazing!

I thought this was a good meal. But my son would hardly touch it, and my daughter only ate half. I guess I’ll have some leftovers for tomorrow. For a country that has been in the news for a myriad of negative things, it’s good to read positive things from Somalia and Somalis around the world. True, there’s a lot of instability still, but as Fred Rogers said, “Always look for the helpers.”

 Up next: South Africa