ARLINGTON - The words come out in an excited blur when Yar Ayueltalks about her Sudanese cooking. She tells of molakia, a slightlybitter green from the jute plant, which she buys in a shop inHaymarket and cooks with bouillon, onion, garlic, cumin, andjalapeno. 'Sometimes I make it real hot,' she says, smilingdelightedly.
It goes with beef or goat stew, says Ayuel, a young mother who isstudying biology at Pine Manor College. As her son, 14-month-oldDeng, sleeps in another room, she talks about foods she remembersfrom her childhood in southern Sudan. In her apartment here, shebakes a thin, flat bread made with cornmeal and wheat flour, cooks iton a griddle, and serves the bread with carrots, collards, and othervegetables. It 'brings memories of my country back alive,' saysAyuel, who spent years as a refugee after civil wars split her familyand her father was killed.
Native foods remind people like Ayuel of home. Dishes from thevast African continent may sound exotic, but many ingredients andeven cooking methods have influenced our cuisines - from the use ofchilies to peanut sauces to the ubiquitous pita bread and itsspinoffs. Africans living in the Boston area go to great lengths tofind them.
Customers at the African Cuisine restaurant in Hyde Park can orderdishes from their West African homelands. Some come for the foods oftheir individual tribes, says owner Roy Ude. 'Certain West Africansonly come here for `draw' soup,' says the Nigerian-born Ude. 'Draw'means the soups are served with fufu, a dumpling of pounded yams orcassava. When the dumpling is dipped into the soup, he explains, theliquid in the bowl is drawn up by the starchy dumpling, hence the'draw.' Fufu has to be made to order, says the restaurateur, or itwon't taste right. Draw soups include euguzi, a melon seed andspinach soup, and ogbonno, made with dried shrimp and plenty of hotred pepper. They're all listed on a card over the restaurant's bar.
Another favorite dish is a stew called pepper soup, which combinesgoat meat and plenty of chilies and other spices. It's reputed toward off colds. The little restaurant specializes in Nigeriancuisine, but also serves Liberian and Sierra Leone dishes onweekends, when Ude has cooks in the kitchen from those regions.
Rice is the staple all across Africa, says Ude, a consultingengineer who opened the restaurant three years ago with his late wifeand his daughter, Nnenna, who juggles restaurant work with graduatestudies in biology at Harvard. His cooks make jollof, a well-knownWest African rice dish, with a tomato-based sauce, curry, and sweetred peppers. 'It looks by appearance like Chinese rice,' says Ude.
The menu boasts some unusual ingredients, such as cow's feet andCongo meat (snails). The 'must-have,' says Ude, is stockfish, whichis salted white fish imported from Iceland or Norway. The craze fordried cod, also called salt cod, swept Nigeria in the middle of thelast century, when African businessmen began importing stockfishafter eating it in Scandinavia. Ude brings the salted fish in by thebale - about 100 pounds each - using the fish at the restaurant andselling some. 'A typical Nigerian family cannot do without it,' Udesays. On a weekend night, customers who line the bar are eatingseasoned and braised stockfish and drinking favorite African beersfrom their own region.
When they open their Ugandan restaurant in Waltham in January,business partners Hassan Sekabira and Hassan Lubega are counting onloyal East African customers to fill their tables. Sekabira says thatthe 50-seat spot, called Karibu, which now only offers catering, willfeature the 'grandma' recipes from his partner's mother-in-law. Hersambusas - fried meat pies similar to Indian samosas - are alreadyfamous, he says, for their 'secret' spice mixtures. Also on the menuwill be plantain dishes spiced with curry; a fried rice dish calledpilawo with lamb, beef, or goat; and chapatis that are 'grilled likea pizza.' Karibu tea, similar to a spiced chai brew, already hasfans. 'My landlord says he can't do without it,' says Sekabira.
Translating African food to America takes some doing, beyondlocating special ingredients, says Rose Ake, who has a master's inpublic health and works in women and infants' care at Brigham &Women's Hospital. The Brighton resident, who is from Cameroon, makestraditional African food for celebrations. On ordinary days, she hasfound she has to cut back on starches, and is careful to limit fryingthe plantains she loves. At home, she says, Africans don't eat butteror cheese and 'they're always moving around.' She says that walking24 hours to get to another village isn't unusual.
Ake makes a stew of meat, tomatoes, and peanuts, called groundnutsin West Africa. Although peanut butter can be used, she prefers totoast the nuts and then boil them before pulverizing them into apaste to thicken the stew. Some flavors are difficult to reproducehere, she says, because in Africa everyone has bitter herbs in theiryards to use in cooking. Although a powdered form is available inshops, it's not quite the same.
Still, when Ake brings her fried plantains and saucy beans togatherings, she says, they're very popular. She and her sister, MaryAnn Fomunyoh, who lives in Washington, D.C., make their West Africandishes to mix with other fare at parties here.
'All the Americans want to eat the African food,' says Ake. Withthe continent's array of flavors and tastes, Americans have a lot ofcatching up to do.
