World gets a taste for Africa
THERE was a time when we read about African cuisine from food publications and glossy travel magazines, it was about food from North Africa. They would wax lyrical about the tagines of Morocco, the falafel and shawarma that famous in Egypt, the flatbread and couscous of Libya and the lablabi and shakshuka that is enjoyed in Tunisia.
Rarely has attention been paid to other parts of the continent, until recent years.
We have seen food writers, chefs and cooks highlight cuisine from West, East and Southern Africa. Yewande Komolafe had a major spread on the New York Times, where she spoke and shared West African recipes.
For the past two years, West African cuisine has been touted as the region the food world will be focusing on in various trend reports. We have seen an explosion of
African chefs on social media, readily sharing African cuisine, even more so during the lockdown.
We have extensively reported on how restaurants around the world are already capitalising on this trend by including more African-inspired dishes alongside their fine dining European-style offerings. Our cuisine is finally being given the spotlight it deserves.
Film-maker Tuleka Prah is also at the forefront of documenting African cuisine for her website, My African Food Map.
She goes to different countries on the continent, speaking to chefs, and most importantly, taking pictures of African cuisine and making it aesthetically pleasing. She said that she hoped to show the care and skill that goes into African dishes.
“The idea, at its most basic, is to present the food how people who love it would prepare it. It’s like a database or a digital vault where people can open the drawer, see recipes, see some ingredients.”
Watching the second episode of Netflix’s Cooked with Cannabis, one of the chefs chooses to cook West African-inspired food during the challenge.
The episode was highlighting the cuisines of the world. The competing chefs could choose which country they were going to highlight. Harold Sims chose West Africa and cooked food inspired by the region and infused it with cannabis. He won the challenge.
Interestingly, Thabo Phake, a South African chef based in Abuja, Nigeria, said it was bound to happen, thanks to the world looking at Africa for inspiration in music, beauty and fashion.
“With musicians and fashion designers getting more attention and so forth, the African culinary space was then privileged enough to benefit from it. I think it has to do with the trickling-down effect.”
The 21-year-old, who worked at Joburg’s Urbanologi before moving to Abuja, said it also has to do with Africans being more willing to sample food from other parts of the continent. Even chefs.
“More and more chefs are now prone to appreciating their culture and past rather than before when the majority of African chefs were less receptive of it. There are ingredients that have taught me on how broad African food is.
“For instance, there’s an ingredient made from tiger nut milk called ‘Kunu’ and it’s more or less like what we have back home as ‘Mageu’. It makes me sad how the new generation is not grasping our roots when it comes to appreciating our cuisine. We see chefs investing in fancy European-cultured restaurants, but none would go to collaborate with women who sell food at “Mai Mai” in Joburg and bring them to cook traditional African food on a better well-organised platform. I loved it when chef Jan Hendrik took a lady called Tannie Poppie to France to work in his Michelin-starred establishment, Jan, because he saw the importance of bringing her to authentically train the chefs there on how to make roosterbrood.” Award-winning writer and cookbook author, Ishay Govender-ypma, said that there has increasingly been conversations about the absence of African cuisine from parts of Western media for a few years.
“It’s important to note that African food has always been here, prepared and consumed by Africans, written, spoken about and celebrated locally. With the recent recognition of chefs and food writers of African heritage in the
US, such as Kwame Onwuachi, Michael W Twitty, Selassie Atadika and Nneka Okona, there has been a corresponding growing mainstream interest in the food they write about and prepare.
“We’ve seen a greater interest in West African cuisine, whereas in the past, Africa has been viewed either as a continent, or as a purveyor of North African food and all else was a mystery to Western media.”
Atadika is also one of the champions of African cuisine.
Last year she was named a Basque
Culinary World Prize finalist and was also listed as one of the Top 50 Plantforward chefs by Eat Foundation and Culinary Institute of America.
She was one of the speakers at Design Indaba this year, where she spoke in detail about what she calls “new African cuisine”.
Attendees were taken on a tasting journey, where they were presented with various flavours and taste profiles that can be used to flavour dishes. She used sugar cane (sweet), smoked water (smoked), dune spinach (salt) and injera (sour).
The chef founded Midunu, which is a nomadic restaurant in Dakar, Senegal, and is the first of its kind. She is also a chocolatier. With new African cuisine she aims to encourage the use of native ingredients and to bring African cuisine to the wider market.
“I think the number of outspoken African advocates for African cuisine, from Ghanaian-born Atadika to Dieuveil Malonga from Rwanda and South Africa’s Nompumelelo Mqwebu have been given more space of late – I emphasise this, because we have always had passionate ambassadors like Cass Abrahams and Dorah Sitole whose efforts are still appreciated,” says Govender-ypma.
What is positive to see, is the number of social media accounts dedicated to showing the beauty of African cuisine. Instagram is filled with such accounts, and if you were truly interested in trying recipes from different parts of the continent, they are readily available.
Besides, as Phake says, there are many similarities than differences in the way we cook.
“What I’ve learned about African food is that the flavour palates are more or less the same, and there’s certain techniques such as braising and grilling over open fires that resonate with every African culture.”