Ifrah F. Ahmed shares flavours of her homeland in Soomaaliya cookbook | Canada Voices

When Ifrah F. Ahmed arrived in Seattle from Somalia with her family in 1996, she was a five-year-old refugee. Growing up, she learned about the culinary traditions of her homeland from her mother, crushing cardamom and ginger with a mortar and pestle to prepare shaah (spiced tea) even at a young age. But this was not the experience of all her peers in the diaspora.

“Many members of the international Somali population cannot speak the language, do not know our histories, and cannot make our traditional foods,” she writes in Soomaaliya, which is part cookbook, part history and sociology text.

Between recipes for digaag (spiced chicken) and sambuus tuuna (fried tuna dumplings), she weaves in essays on threats to foodways in her homeland and profiles of the Somali-American entrepreneurs trying to bring camel milk and meat to the diaspora.

With Somali immigrants facing racist, xenophobic attacks by U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration, Ahmed is hoping the book can serve as an antidote to the rhetoric.

She spoke to The Globe and Mail from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

You learned to cook Somali food from your mom. Do you think that her abstract measurements helped you become a more intuitive cook? If she’s saying, “Add enough of this,” is that forcing you to use your senses more?

I think my mom really taught me the spirit of cooking. When I was growing up, I would say, “How much of this do I put in?” and she would say, “It’s something between your thumb and index finger.” It definitely made me a more intuitive cook and I’m grateful for that because I think it feels so much more natural that way.

When you returned to Somalia after more than 20 years in the U.S., what was it like eating some of your favourite dishes?

Even though I’d had these dishes before, it really felt like I was having them almost for the first time because they were being prepared with quality, local ingredients that were in season. It was such a tremendous difference in the flavour of an ingredient coming through.

It took travelling back to Somalia for you to realize that Somali restaurants in the diaspora are frozen in time. Tell me about that.

I think a lot of immigrant and refugee culture, when we form a diaspora, we’re constantly frozen in a time that our parents, or we, left our home countries. We’re aligned with this really classical, traditional form of culture and food. It wasn’t until I went back to Somalia that I saw there are really no hang-ups about experimenting, or bringing in food trends from elsewhere and having fun with it.

I feel like with Somali restaurants abroad, we cater to wanting to feel like you’re tasting home. Most restaurants tend to skew towards suqaar (sautéed meat with vegetables), which is a very classic, traditional offering.

With Milk and Myrrh, a series of pop-up dining events you’ve hosted, you’ve made things like xawaash-braised short ribs and breakfast burritos with ful and injera, but you’re resistant to people describing this as fusion food.

For me, fusion food is merging two totally different cultures to make a whole new thing. A lot of the time, there’s a sense that you’re doing that to elevate each of the original cuisines.

For me, Somali cuisine is already elevated. With the breakfast burritos, that’s traditionally what we grew up eating – all I really changed was the presentation. If I’m including ingredients that are informed by geographical location, such as using salmon instead of beef, for me, that is still speaking to the heart of Somali food.

Xawaash, a blend of seven spices, is the backbone of Somali cuisine and it’s the first recipe in your book. How does the version that you make differ from what you grew up with?

Even within a household, everyone has a different xawaash recipe, but there are core spices that are always in it. My mom would have added additional things on top, like paprika. I know some people add basil or fennel. I wanted to offer the most bare bones, basic iteration and give people the freedom and creativity to add to it as they’d like.

For someone who has no exposure to Somali cooking, what are three dishes you’d be cooking for them if they came over?

I think the canjeero (sourdough pancake) that we have for breakfast is such a traditional food with a bit of oodkac (beef jerky), a bit of cardamom and some spiced black tea. You have to have classic bariis (spiced rice pilaf) with meat and hot sauce and limes and the banana, of course. And then probably something sweet would be a good final option: a pairing of the spiced tea and doolsho, which is cardamom cake.

This interview has been condensed and edited.