Meal 59: Ethiopia
What makes Ethiopian food so delicious and rich? For sure, the classic berbere mix, that blend of chilies and roughly half your spice cabinet, lends a complexity of flavor uncommon in most cuisines. And there’s something to be said for eating with your hands, grabbing bite-sized morsels with strands of the tangy injera flatbread. But what I learned from this meal is that it’s an ingredient common to virtually every cuisine, cooked in a simple but rare way, that provides ...
Meal 56: Equatorial Guinea
Despite its name, none of the country lies on the Equator. Most of its land mass is on the African mainland, but the capital’s on an island. Its colonial language is Spanish, but French and Portuguese are official languages too. It’s the richest country per capita in the continent, thanks to a recent oil discovery, but most of the population lives in poverty. That’s a lot of contradiction for a very small country — its population is barely 700,000. But ...
Meal 55: Eritrea
This wedge-shaped country on the Red Sea has seen a tumultuous history, especially in the past decade and a half: colonization by Italy after the opening of the Suez Canal, being stapled to its larger neighbor Ethiopia in the 1930s when the Italians invaded there too; a thirty-year war for independence that finally ended in 1991; and since then a highly autocratic government that is intolerant of any dissent. (Oh, and a border war with Ethiopia for good measure in ...
Meal 53: Egypt
For 12 millennia, people in what’s now Egypt have successfully built civilizations around agriculture in a virtually rain-free desert environment. While there’s plenty of evidence that they grew fruits and vegetables, the annual cycle of the Nile’s flooding made it much easier to grow plants that could thrive on their own in properly inundated soil — which means grains and legumes were much easier than relatively more fickle fruits and vegetables. So, it should be no surprise that our meal was ...
Meal 49: Djibouti
Last week was Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. To commemorate the moment when Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command, Muslims sacrifice an animal and turn it into dinner. In Djibouti, this would almost certainly be a goat, so that’s what we ate! Now, not too many people have heard of Djibouti, barely the size of the NYC metro area. During the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics a few months ago, all Matt Lauer ...
Meal 47: Democratic Republic of the Congo
What a special night! 75 guests, most of whom had never been to a Nosh before, gathered in the beautiful ballroom at Hostelling International on the Upper West Side, for a meal of classic Congolese dishes. The idea came from Ari, the community engagement manager at the hostel, who saw our email on The Listserve and reached out to see if we might want to do a Nosh with them. With a big venue and kitchen, we decided to align ...
Meal 41: Côte D’Ivoire
Am I getting better at cooking African food, or is Ivorian cuisine just that good? Probably more the latter, but still, this was probably our best sub-Saharan meal yet. The flavors were so well-balanced, the spice delightful and not overwhelming, and the textures pleasant. What’s more, with the exception of a few ingredients that you could probably cleverly work your way around, you can find these ingredients in a standard Western supermarket, so if you’ve been looking to try cooking ...
Meal 40: Congo
The larger better-known of the two countries named after the Congo River is the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Zaire and previously a Belgian colony, but that shows up in the D’s. This meal is from the north side of the river, the Republic of Congo, the former French colony, sometimes known as Congo-Brazzaville after its capital. Anyway, as you might imagine, it’s a bit tricky to find what’s distinctively from this country as opposed to its cross-river sibling, ...
Meal 38: Comoros
As a small cluster of islands between Madagascar and Mozambique, Comoros offers a cuisine that’s about as exotic as you’d imagine. It’s situated off of Africa, but heavily influenced by the Arab, Indian, and more recently French culinary histories. This means seafood, stews, coconuts, and lots of spices in combinations that are totally trippy to Western tastebuds! Huge thanks to Evin, Zoe, and Kayla for hosting us at their beautiful home (and well equipped kitchen!) in Oakland, CA. We had ...
Meal 34: Chad
Chad spans the three S’s of the heart of Africa: the Sahara desert in the north, the arid Sahel in the middle, and the wetter savanna to the south. Or put into culinary terms, this extent is why we see both dates and peanuts factor into this meal. However, on the heels of the generically-named Central African Republic, Chad’s another country that poses some online searching problems, at least in English. To wit, I was looking for advice on cooking ...