There are days when you want to avoid spicy dishes or tomato-based stews, and you want just a simple and flavourful dish. This dish is perfect for those days. In Brava, Somalia, this is what is normally served with grits for the midday meal. It is accompanied by yoghurt or buttermilk, maankale (a type…
Hareesa is one of those dishes that remind us of Eid. No Eid is complete without a piping hot dish of Hareesa served with sugar and browned butter. Hareesa originated in Yemen and it is made of barley and meat (usually lamb) that are cooked until the fibres break down and it becomes almost like…
When my mother’s maternal grandfather moved to Mogadishu, he stayed at his daughter’s house. All his life he was a pastoralist but as he became old and feeble, he decided to settle down. City life was new to him and he had to learn a few things the hard way. One of the problems he…
If you go to a Somali restaurant, you’ll probably be welcomed with a small bowl of hot broth. Sometimes it is chicken broth but more often than not it is lamb broth. It won’t be the cheese-laden, cream-filled variety; the traditional Somali soup is simple and very aromatic. Somalis usually don’t prepare this soup as…
If there is a food that represents Somalia, it is Cad iyo Caano. It is the closest thing to a national dish. Cad iyo Caano is Somali for “A Chunk of Meat and Camel Milk,” or simply “Meat and Milk.” You can argue that some regions of Somalia have their own representative dishes, but the…
Somalis love their meat. With the country predominantly nomadic, and with livestock as one of its main exports, it’s only natural that meat is an important component of the Somali diet. Yet Somalis (in Somalia) are generally known to be quite lean. The main reason was moderation in consumption and a lifestyle that demanded physical…
