The story of Nafy Flately.
A proper pot of mafe starts with the right kind of peanut butter, says Nafy Flatley.
But it’s different from what most Americans consider peanut butter, she says, because in her home country of Senegal, the peanut butter is made from scratch, with no sugar.
“Our neighbors had a grinder we would use to make it fresh,” says Flatley. Not only did it taste better than the storebought peanut butter she gets here the U.S., but it was much more affordable to make food from scratch. In Senegal, her family would also grind its own beef, buy live fish off the beach and drink milk warm, straight from her grandpa’s cow.
Mafe (MAH fay) is ground-nut stew, an everyday dish from West Africa and one that Flatley makes often. It’s a cheap meal with a flexible recipe, and this day she is using beef with broccoli, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower and sweet potatoes. She remembers that her mom and grandma would serve mafe with rice for lunch, their biggest meal of the day. “Everyone in Senegal comes home around noon to eat lunch together, and then returns to work or school,” she says. It’s also the last meal she made before emigrating from Senegal to the U.S. in 1998 in search of education and the American dream (which, thanks to shows like “Baywatch” and “Beverly Hills 90210,” she thought was basically beaches and teens with cars and jobs).
That emphasis on fresh foods and cooking from scratch is one of the things she misses most about Senegal.
Today, Flatley and her sister Oumou are teaching me how to make Senegalese food at Oumou’s home in Brentwood. The sisters want me to experience an important part of Senegalese culture called
teranga, which means “hospitality” in Wolof, the national language of Senegal. I show up to a friendly atmosphere with a boisterous soundtrack of kids playing (Flatley’s three sons along with her two nieces and nephew) sprinkled with a mix of Wolof, English and French words (French is the other major language in Senegal). When it comes to teranga, Flatley and her family go hard. What started as a one-dish cooking session quickly grows to an entire feast. When she hears I am pregnant, she insists on knowing any smells that might upset my stomach. They serve snacks and homemade baobab juices, all while cooking and tending to the kids. And they do it in style: Both women are dressed in traditional Senegalese clothing, beautiful form-fitting skirts with tops and head wraps in vivid shades of orange and yellow. It makes my typical cooking uniform of old clothes and an apron look sad in comparison.
Teranga Juice is the name of Flatley’s business, which is the only company in the U.S. that sells bottled baobab fruit juice. It’s available at stores throughout the Bay Area, including Rainbow Grocery and the CUESA (Cen-
ter for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) farmers’ market in San Francisco as well as Driver’s Market in Sausalito, with Berkeley Bowl in the near future.
Her path was not typical. After college, she worked as a marketing manager in Silicon Valley, but when her first son was born early in 2009, she time off to care for him and her mother, who was dealing with early dementia. Her mother suggested she bring a little bit of Senegalese culture to the U.S. by selling baobab juice. Her grandma’s homemade baobab juice was the taste of her childhood, a refreshing drink that also helped with her sickle cell anemia. (In Africa, baobab has been eaten for centuries for its medicinal qualities.)
Teranga Juice launched in January 2017. Flatley imports dried baobab fruit directly from Senegal, which she describes as a tart and sweet fruit similar to tamarind, but a bit grainy like a pear and creamy like almonds. Her juices are intensely flatook vored, made with only a few natural ingredients, and barely sweetened with maple syrup. She also partners with ice cream shop Salt & Straw, which uses her white hibiscus ginger coconut baobab juice for its vegan ice cream, and is working on packaging her mafe to sell at Rainbow Grocery.
As the two sisters cook in the home kitchen, it’s fascinating to notice the little traces of outside cultures that have influenced Senegalese cuisine. Like the Vietnamese fish sauce Flatley added to the mafe, which gave the stew a dash of umami: “A lot of Senegalese people fought for the French in Vietnam, and came home with Vietnamese spouses. It’s why Vietnamese spring rolls are a popular street food in Dakar, where I’m from.”
Her sister throws together a quick beignet dough — inspired by French beignets, as Senegal was a French colony for many years — for dessert, flavoring it with coconut and an entire orange peel, pith and all. “We make these for big occasions, like weddings, naming ceremonies or religious holidays (Muslim and Christian) that my family celebrates with other African immigrants in the Bay Area,” she says.
As the women cook, the kids wander through the kitchen, finding little ways to be involved. Flatley’s oldest son, an 8-year-old budding cook, stirs the mafe on the stove. Nearly all the kids wander past Oumou longingly when she fries up golden beignets in a skillet.
“In Senegal the women usually cook alone in the kitchen, but it’s different here. It’s more chaotic, but we make it work,” Flatley says. When her youngest son, nearly 2 years old, demands extra attention, she sets him on the counter to help mix the dough for pasteles, Senegalese empanadas.
When it is time to eat, the women create a dining area for the children with a large cloth on the ground. “In Senegal, we eat from the same dish on the floor using our hands or a spoon,” Flatley says. “Sometimes, we separate by gender and children, and sometimes we eat together.
As she sets a large platter of fluffy broken white rice covered in the sunsetcolored mafe with chunks of beef, carrots and broccoli, there is a yell of happiness from the kids quickly followed by silence as everyone sits on the floor, grabs a spoon and digs in.
One taste tells me why they are so quiet: The mafe has a complex tasting sauce, creamy and nutty, slightly sweet and sour with a hint of heat at the end. I am fed until I can’t move, and then sent home with leftovers because that’s teranga.