No Somali Artifacts Were Harmed In The Making Of This Cookbook

Sirius XM Podcasts. [MUSIC] >> I feel like with garlic, garlic is just about vibes. >> How's so?

>> I never really like decide how many I'm going to do.

I just grab a handful and just throw them in there in the murder vessel. >> I went through a phase where I was just like, I'm just going to keep adding more and more garlic to every single thing I took to see if I could ever have too much garlic and something. >> Oh my God.

In terms of heartburn. >> It tastes heartburn and whatever, anything like with any negative consequences. And I haven't gotten to that point yet. >> I don't feel like that point exists. I'm going to be honest.

[LAUGH] >> God, it smells like good. >> It's, I feel like you could just put garlic and onions and people think that you're making something incredibly complex, you know. [MUSIC]

>> This is the sport ball. It's not for foodies. It's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

“One quick note before we start, are you getting ready to plant a vegetable garden?”

This brings you questions for a gardening expert.

Maybe there's a certain veggie you always struggle to grow or an issue you can't figure

out. And maybe you just want to get into it for the first time, you don't know where to start. Well, whatever it is, I want to hear from you. Send me an email or voice memo with your name, location and question. And we'll ask a pro in an upcoming episode.

Send that to me at [email protected]. All right, let's get into the show. [MUSIC] If Ra Ahmed has made her her mission to document and preserve the food of Somalia, the country where she was born.

Somalia cuisine is made up of many things. A focus on meat, including camel, the traces its roots to nomadic tradition. There's a spice mix called Hoash that comes from medieval trade across the Indian ocean between Somalia and the Middle East in India. Then there are pasta dishes that have become common in Somalia that stem from decades

of Italian colonization that ended in 1960. And often, there's a banana served on the side. More on that later. Point is, Somalia has melded these internal and external influences to create something distinct and all their own.

If Ra grew up eating Somalia food and learned it from her mother had a cook it. She's also spent years researching the cuisine. Now she's poured all that work into her new cookbook, Somalia, food, memory, and migration. Her work feels especially important right now. At a time when Somalia culture is threatened.

Somalia Americans are under attack by the U.S. government, and there's a decades long civil war still raging in Somalia, which is forced hundreds of thousands to flee to different places. That's made her harder to keep communities and traditions alive. And as if her points out in her book, Somalia culture relies heavily on oral tradition. The cuisine is no different, so if we're decided to write it all down for future generations.

That being said, her book is just meant to be a snapshot.

I understand that culture is never stagnant. It's always changing, and that's also like

a lot of what we experience, especially abroad.

“You know, I think it's very normal for food traditions to shift and to change.”

I think what I'm trying to do is just make sure that what had existed isn't forgotten. A couple of weeks ago, I went to it for his apartment in Brooklyn to cook with her, and it wasn't just any meal. It was an iftar dinner for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. People observe in Ramadan fast from sunrise to sunset every day for a month. Iftar is their breakfast meal, each evening.

I asked ifra if there are any special dishes she makes during Ramadan. This is really the time of like some boosters, you're making some boosters like in bulk. A some boost is a dumpling, dough stuffed with ground meat and deep fried. The name is related to the word Samosa. The way that I grew up eating it is you would have burf, which is kind of like a sweet

cardamom vennier, and you would cut that in half, and then you would stuff the Symbusa inside of it, and then you would eat them together as like a sandwich. So it would be kind of sweet, savory, sort of like combination. Tonight ifra is going to show me how to make some boost. So the pricing I'm going to do is make some boost filling, because that means to cool.

All right, I've got to pound some garlic here. My mortar and some salt. Once the garlic is pounded, ifra sautees it with onions and ground beef. Ground beef going in, then the most important part. This is the howash.

Oh, howash is sort of an all-purpose Samole spice mix. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So aromatic. Oh, that smells so good.

I want to candle. It smells like that. Oh my God. Using hungry all the time.

“I mean, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a savory dish that's not going to taste”

great. And the thing about howash is that whatever you add to it is usually better than next day, because like the flavor is just like enhanced, you know? The main things I'm smelling are like cumin and I think cinnamon. Yes.

So yeah, the cloves are in there. There's cardamom, cardamom pods are in there too.

Oh. So it's like just a nice little. I assume this is the kind of thing we're like every Samole household has their own. Yes, everyone has their own variation. If her chops up a bunch of cilantro and adds that next.

I don't know how I'm going to measure the cilantro. I just grab them handful and I kind of work from there. Right. So many people are very forgiving, you know? Right.

That's going to taste good at the end of the day. So we don't really work from that super specific angle. It's just about how it feels, right? The hoash has given the meat a beautiful golden hue. Once everything's cooked, if it takes it off the burner.

Okay, so that's good to go. We're going to let that cool down. And then once this cools, you know, we're going to work on folding the Sambooses together. There's quite a bit to do for that. I'm excited for that process.

Good. Well, the Samboose feeling cools, let's hear a little more about ifra. As I said, she was born in Samole. She and her family left where she was four or five because the Samole Civil War. She became refugees, moving around different countries in East Africa for a year or two.

Finally, they were able to move to Seattle.

So ifra got on her first ever flight, which is also where she tried her first ever American food. The one thing that I can remember is having cake and like spitting it out because it tasted nothing like the kind of cake that I knew. So like the frosting, like the really over the top sweetness.

I feel like Samole case are a bit more subtle and they usually don't have like frosting or things like that and asking my mom, like, what is this just, you know, kind of like weird it out. And she's like, oh, it's those show, you know, which is cake and Samole. Infra's family settled in Tukwila.

Subboros Seattle that became a hub for Samole refugees. Tukwila's first Samole restaurant was called Marwa. It opened in 1998. We used to have a tradition of going to Marwa maybe on Fridays and then going to the Blockbuster to get movie.

Yeah, and you know, and my brother and I could each pick one movie and then, you know, you would bring that home and then I lived around the corner from a McDonald's.

“Did I read that like you lived so close that you could smell it?”

Yeah, I could literally open our windows and make it smell it. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, now I think that would make you hungry all the time. Yeah.

And like I still crave that to this day because I feel like it's such a core childhood memory. There's two ways that the growing up with a smell of McDonald's fries, watching into your window every day. There's two ways that can go. Yeah, literally.

Well, one is like, get me as far away as possible from McDonald's. But the other is like McDonald's smells like home. I know.

I mean, I think as a kid, you know, it's always going to be like, oh my God, I want

McDonald's dinner. Right. Right. Did you have like sort of an understanding that they're like, they're Somali food and they're called American food or like, how how did you think about that?

Yeah. I mean, I definitely have like two separate categories in my mind.

“And I didn't realize that until I started learning how to cook, right?”

Because my mom would be teaching me Somali food specifically. And then when I was old enough to kind of be in the kitchen fully by myself, I really lean towards also learning American foods. Where's your mom's specialties? She made so much wonderful food.

I would say for me, it's like really just the classic dishes of like buddies, which is our spice, aromatic rice and then Hilib, which is just, it just means me, but usually it would be goat meat, for example, so Hilib Adi. And my mom just really making this like super tender goat, you know, she would use the broth from the meat for the rice or we would have that as like soup on the side sometimes

and then soup thrown in the meat in the oven to like roast for a long time. And then the banana and the hot sauce. So is it like the banana that we think of in like American soup markets or is different kind of banana? Yeah, regular, regular bananas, usually they're on, you know, the right per side.

So they're very sweet. You cut pieces and you eat it with like the rice and the meat is kind of like game me. And the rice is like very aromatic and then you have the banana, like sweetness that really cuts through the hot sauce.

Somali food is not spicy, but we always have the spiciness or hot sauce on the side.

It's all balanced, you know? Let's do goat with rice, which by the way, sounds incredible.

“That was if her mom star dinner dish, but equally important ifra was her mom Somali”

breakfasts. Oh man, where do I start? My mom usually made Angedo, which is like a sourdough kind of like pancake. It's pretty different from Ethiopian, every train in Jera, our Angedo typically has sorghum or corn flour and then also just like regular flour.

And it looks identical to an Indian dosa, actually. Oh, so someone has had in Jera and or dosa. It's kind of someone. Okay. Yeah, like it's not as like sour or I mean, the tanginess is there for sure, but you have

you want. Sounds really good. It's good. And I like it. You can have it both sweet and savory, you know?

This is my favorite breakfast all time, actually. So it's Angedo, like a couple stacks of Angedo and then you spread the ghee or suboge as we say on that and then you sprinkle it with a bit of sugar and then you soak all of that in the shaft, the spice black tea and then optional is to also add some of the the beef, like jerky cubes on top and to have this sweet and kind of like salty.

You know, pancakes, syrup, you know, sausage kind of very similar vibe. Yeah. But I mean, it sounds better than that. I mean, it is better. You know, growing up, if my mom made it a priority to keep the family connected to their

Somali heritage. So she was concerned with preservation, too. If her siblings went to weekend Islamic school, her mom made sure they could speak Somali. And of course, she taught if her had a cook. It started with really simple stuff, like, okay, this is how you make a chef.

That's actually the very first thing.

This is how you make tea because usually that's the first thing you're offering to guys when they come near home, you know? And then you're laying in coffee.

“Like I will, and it's like, what can you greet with your guests or have on hand?”

From there, if we're graduated to more involved dishes, like on Jerro and some boosts. But as she got older, her feelings about her mom's cooking lessons got complicated. I was kind of a very beautiful daughter and for a point of kind of did all the things. But internally it was very also, like, angsee, you know, I was listening to a lot of music, I got into feminism, I would go to a lot of house shows as a hijabby at the time,

you know, like, and I think with some of those lessons, I kind of initially was like, I don't, you know, like, why do I have to do this now? There's like, other things that I want to do, kind of in the way that you feel as like a preteen or a teenager, and I think some of the gendered aspects of it, maybe just coming into your consciousness, you know, at that time of just kind of like, I don't understand

why I have to learn this. Right. And I don't know whether your mothers had it explicitly, but they're sort of like this message of like girls need to learn this so that they can be good-wise. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's found across many cultures and, you know, I think I got to a point eventually, such as a group older, where I was like, okay, I actually see the benefit in this. Like, I'm going to like divorce it from the idea of it being meant for someone else.

And like, think about it as something that's actually a skill set for me to have. And then also my mom's way of like maintaining, you know, our connection to our culture. At the same time, she was learning to cook more Somali dishes. Ifro was also a person herself in an integral part of American culture, food network. She became obsessed with all the different shows, the celebrity chefs, and the foods they

were making.

Their first mom was on board.

“I think she found this to be really amusing and she would go out of her way to like help”

me experience some of these things. So like, I'm really into pancakes, you know, and some of my mom would take many different places to try, like, specific pancakes. And I'd learn everything I could about like pancakes. And then I'd move on to a different American dish, you know.

And then what would you also try to make Americans out of? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would also be making stuff at home. So I would be like, how can I end up?

But you were kind of like a researcher, it sounds like you had a sort of part of your personality. Not just you were interested in food and cooking, but there was this sort of like, I'm going to go on a mission to get to the bottom of this. Yeah.

I want to test, and I'm going to study, and I'm going to learn, and I'm going to get it. I'm going to figure it out. Yeah. By the time, if we're left for college, she was fluent in Somali and adept in the kitchen.

And as the years went by, her activist, street group, that led her to law school and working with Somali refugees. But in the back of her mind. I knew what I wanted to do, but I was avoiding her. I was too scared to transition careers.

Then in 2018, if we took a month off to go back to Somalia with her mom, it was

the first time she'd been there since the 90s when she left as a small child.

She didn't have many memories of the place. I knew that it would be emotional, but I didn't realize how intense it would feel. Like I literally felt like something clicking into place. Like when I got off the plane, I had a really overwhelming urge to like literally kiss the ground.

This feeling of like, I'm home, right? Like everyone around me is Somali. Like I'm not like a minority in a place, like everyone's speaking my language. I don't like stick out. What were some of the things you ate there?

I ate so much fish.

“And just like, I think for me, it was less about like individual dishes and more”

about just the ingredients and like how much more vibrant everything tasted and fresh to me. It was actually had flavor and like, you know, just things like that. How did it feel to kind of taste those dishes there? I mean, it was like, man, have I ever had this dish before?

Right. You know, but like very similar kind of vibes. And then also just trying things that like, you know, maybe I wouldn't have grown up with, right? Certain street foods.

something with Somali food, maybe hosting dinner pop-ups, maybe a cookbook. She started listening to podcasts about Somalia, going to food events, telling people about

her idea, basically everything except actually doing it.

This went on for a year. So my friends literally held an intervention. What was that and like, was it literally like you came into the room and they were all sitting there? We were together.

And they were like pulled out a calendar and they were like, we're tired of hearing you talk about this. Here's a calendar, you're going to do a pop-up. Here are these dates, pick one. And I was like, you know, they were like, you just have to like get into the practice of

it. You just have to do the thing. And then from then on, it will be a little easier each time. And so I picked a day and that was like my very first Somali gathering or dinner, whatever.

“In the lead up to that first pop-up dinner, what were you thinking and feeling?”

I was scared, you know, I was like, oh my god, like I'm actually doing this and I don't know if anyone's gonna like it. I just know that I like these dishes and just all the kind of anxiety that you have when you're entering like a new journey.

And had that first dinner go.

It was phenomenal, like it was relaxed and everyone was just so proud to be there. And I think we're happy to like see that I tried and he'd done the thing that I'd been yapping their ears all the time. And yeah, it was beautiful. From there, if her's pop-up grew, she called it milk and murk, because Somalia is sometimes

called the land of milk and murk. It started as a elaborate multi-course dinners in her apartment, drawing on Somali traditions of hospitality. And then during a short split living in LA, if her came up with a less formal version of the pop-up, or she sold and Jero breakfast burritos.

The Anjero burritos were the Anjero that I grew up eating, and food, which is, you know, probably being stewed. And then the eggs, and I would also have avocado and some bisperce, and that would be all rolled up in the Anjero, and that would be like, and then I have a vegan version which I really loved.

And that was also the Anjero, and then it was like very garlic-y, you know, braised kale, galash roasted sweet potatoes, and roasted mushrooms. But so it's interesting to me, though, that you had this, and you still have, with milk and murk, this sort of dichotomy. There's these two sides to it.

There's the traditional Somali meal, like this is, like, you were in Somalia, or this is the kind of your mother might serve the foods you grew up with. And then you have the other side of it that's sort of like bringing influences of other cuisines and American food that you grew up with. Well, it's interesting because, like, the Anjero burritos, that's actually a very traditional

in terms of, like, the filling, some solves.

“I think the only thing I really change is the presentation of, like, rolling it all together”

and calling it, like, a burrito, right? So maybe it's sort of more of a tweak around the edges. Yeah, I mean, I think, I would say, like, with both formats, like, what I really try to do is, like, work from a place of, like, okay, here are the traditional ingredients, and here is, like, the technique, but, like, maybe the presentation is different, or, I call it Somali

food reimagined, because to me, it's still rooted in, like, the traditional cuisine, but how's it impacted by where I am, or what's available? All right, so, if tar dinners not ready yet, yeah, if for about, but something exciting just happened. It's time to have some water and have some dates.

The sun went down. The sun went down.

First of water, how does it feel?

Refression. Yeah. It's customary for Muslims to break the Ramadan fast by eating dates. So should we have a date? Yeah, would you do you like some?

Sure.

“I mean, I'll just have one, because I haven't been fasting all day.”

I typically only have one, also, I mean, some people do it to read you, but, as you can see, these are massive dates. So, three of those, I'm, like, at that point, maybe I'm messing with my appetite for dinner. Right. So, it's eat these dates and they're, like, when they're soft and, like, kind of almost

juicy. I hate a dry date. Like a firm dry date. The worst. My nightmare.

And they're like, they're hard. I like when they're juicy and then, inside, but the outside is just a little bit, almost like, crackling. That's my dream date. That's a good Sunday day.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coming up, if for tells me about the time when her difficulty eating inspired her to write her cookbook, she also shares a hack for making some boosts.

Is it so simple even I can do it? We'll find out. Stick around. It's time to open up a can of advertisements. Welcome back to this forkful.

I'm Dan Pashman.

Write your tickets while you still can.

“Cookbook author Kenji Lopez Alt and comedian Judy Gold will be my guest.”

Tickets and details at sportfull.com/live. And hey, did you know that every Friday here on the sportfull we put out a special reheat episode, we pull a fan favorite show from our deep freezer and reheated just for you. This is an addition to our regular Monday episodes, it's way for you to hear past episodes you may have missed.

Rehear ones you loved and just share some of our most requested shows from the archive. This week we reheated my conversation with Hollywood legend, turned taco magnate Danny Treho. We also recently reheated a very personal one where Jayne and I talk about how pork almost came between us early in our relationship because she grew up kosher and I didn't. We got a lot of great stuff that we're reheating for you and you can also request one of your

own favorites by sending us a note at [email protected]. Thanks. Now back to cookbook author Ifra Ahmed. After a year or so, running her pop-up, milk and murder, the pandemic hit.

“Ifra was also pregnant and having a difficult time of it.”

She ended up in bed for months, barely able to eat. She wasn't cooking either. She had to find other ways to channel how creative energy, so she started writing down her recipes. Eventually, she realized she was writing a cookbook.

Ifra had wanted to write a book about Somalia cuisine for a while, but she wasn't sure what form that book should take. The purpose of the book was to really make sure that I could preserve Somalia cuisine and be able to share it with another generation, either my generation or my daughter's generation or hopefully me on that.

But I didn't even know that this would be a cookbook. When I came up with it, I was like this needs to happen, but I don't know if it's going to be a non-fiction, historical book about Somalia culinary traditions or if it's going to be a cookbook. And eventually, I realized it has to include the recipes, because as I'm doing the recipe

development work and publishing stuff, I'm seeing in real time how beautiful people are to have the blueprint to work off of. If the whole thing is that I want to help preserve Somalia culinary traditions, I can't not also provide the recipes as well. The recipes are incredibly important, they're there, but for me, it's not just a cookbook.

It's beyond that. It's really a manual for understanding what Somalia cuisine and culinary traditions are.

“Because I think also, there has been such a fundamental misunderstanding with Somalia people”

and, as of late also, a ton of animosity towards my community, and so I wanted people to understand our proud rich history and to have that context for understanding why we're reading pasta, right, or why we have bananas with our food, or why we have all these spices and things like that.

You know, I think when you first came to the U.S., the thing that most Americans knew

about Somalia was the Civil War, Mogadishu, Black Hawk down, that was all anybody knew. I do think there's hopefully more understanding than there was then, but still a lack of understanding. And now in the past few months, in particular, we see what's happened in Minnesota, where

there's also a very big Somali community, ice moving in there, has eventually influenced a lot of immigrants, but originally, the target was Somalia immigrants. What has this time been like for you? I mean, it's been, it's just been absolutely surreal. I feel like growing up, people either didn't know who Somalia people were, or if they did,

it was really limited to these Hollywood stereotypes.

And so to go from kind of not being known at all, you know, to, basically, the Big Bad

Wolf. I sometimes would like, I miss the days where nobody knew, like, we were, you know. But yeah, it's been really infuriating, you know, and most Somali's are citizens. And so, like, a lot of it has felt very, just targeted and racist and kind of, like, a collective punishment sort of thing.

It's been really intense to see the community harass at such a crazy level and to see people's lives disrupted and not just a Somalia community, but like the community and, you know, Minneapolis and general. But I've also been incredibly proud of my community and really seeing, like, the resistance and seeing, you know, the strength and, yeah, I'm, I'm so proud of my community.

I'm so proud to, like, be Somali. As I said, Somali culture has a strong oral tradition. If for us as it's common for people to memorize their patrilidinal ancestors, going back many generations just so when they meet someone, they can determine whether they're related. And in keeping with that tradition, writing down recipes is also uncommon.

If for us moms, cooking lessons, we're more like, "Pinch of this, fistful of that." All the more reason why if we wanted to create a written record. Number is another reason. As the Somali diaspora grows, if for us part of a broader trend of more Somali's sharing

I think there's a tendency of not really ever considering that, like, could things ever start from Africa?

They could Africa ever be, like, a starting point instead of, like, there's always an assumption

that Africa can only be influenced, but it's never, like, the influencer. You know what I mean? And so, like, I kind of want to, like, have people think deeply about that a bit more. And I think, like, also, there is a tendency to boil Somalia down to, like, okay, it's, like, Italian food with, like, this, with that, with that, you know, instead of, like, okay, well,

what is, like, Indigenous Somali cuisine, and so I try to also have that representation in there. The more dangerous things about preservation is that culture is always changing everywhere. So, how do you think about that sort of constant evolution of a cuisine, like, Somali cuisine, in relation to their deprivation?

My thing is, it's not, like, what we need to stay in this form and be frozen in this time, I'm very pro, like, things moving and changing and shifting. And they are in Somali, and, by the way, like, well, some of the hot new trends. And I feel like people are doing a lot of milk cakes and, you know, like, doing different types of seafood boils, like, a thing now, which, like, people were not really eating a lot

of seafood. I mean, my head had a picture, like, a crawfish boil, like a giant pot, with the--

“It's like, yeah, that's what it's called restaurant, and now that's becoming, like, a”

trendy thing. And so, like, I think that's cool. I think that's interesting. I just want to make sure what we had isn't forgotten, and so that people have access to that knowledge if they want it.

For a cookbook, if we're a lot of thought into the photography, it wasn't just about photos of the recipes. She wanted to show life in Somalia. People at the beach, the markets, people gather in together and eat it. For me, like, I couldn't write a book like this about Somali cuisine, about, like, the history

of it, and really with the intent of, like, preservation without also going to Somalia. And, you know, getting the energy, getting the people, getting the landscapes, and, like, the city, and the food. You know, you can't do this from a distance, basically. And I really wanted to show Somali food as this, like, living thing, right?

And also to connect the recipes in the book to the place. Absolutely. The photos of the finished dishes that go with the recipes were shot in New York. But those also included a special touch. I had a friend of mine who runs an archive where basically he buys back Somali artifacts,

like, vintage Somali artifacts that either were looted or, like, you know, bought by European collectors, private European collectors.

“So he came from Toronto with, like, two massive suitcases of these artifacts.”

And I was able to use it in, like, the New York shoe, which is cool, because it felt like, "Okay, this is a book that deals with history a lot as well, and to have that visual connection to the history of Somali food and some of the people." It's just, it's nice to be able to include that. I love that.

And I noticed, like, some of the sort of the serving plates and the things, and I was like, "Wow, these are so beautiful." Yeah. I noticed those. I loved, I didn't realize, though, there was this backstory.

I literally, like, some of that stuff is from the 17800's, 1800's. Like, yeah. Were you nervous putting food on them? So it looks like the food is on them, but it's not. There's, like, there, yeah.

You were like, "Wax paper runs out with your master." Yeah, we're very, very, very, very beautiful. Yeah, we're very, very beautiful. Yeah, like, what do we have here? No, I'm not ruining ancient Somali artifacts.

I would never. I would never.

“I'm really enjoying my conversation with Ifora, but we still have an Iptar dinner to put together.”

Somboose filling is cooled, now it's time to fold them. I'm going to put you on some boost, do you know? All right, I'm ready. I'm ready. Can we lose tortillas?

Okay. That's right. Ifora said tortillas, because we're making some boost the way she and many other Somali Americans do, using flower tortillas as the wrapper instead of making dough from scratch. We cut the tortillas into quarters.

Each quarter or app ones and boosts.

So this isn't that I've always wanted to get good at, is like constructing any type of

dumpling from any food culture, like stuffed dough. Yeah. I feel like I haven't done it and I want to get good at it. Yeah, I mean, some loose-up folding. Once you get the hang of it, it'll be super easy, but it's just the initial process of

learning. I feel like it takes a while. Okay. Yeah. And you have a lot to practice quick.

Sure, you know, fold it quite a few until the meat runs out of it. Okay. Ifra makes a flower and water paste, it'll be the glue to seal the pockets shut and keep the fillings inside. And then basically, we do is we make it into a cone, fill it, seal it, fry it.

Fill it, seal it, fry it. She shows me how to wrap the tortilla around the filling, tuck it in all nice and snug. Then seal it with the paste. All right. Am I turning to try?

Yeah, you're going to try. I'm feeling a lot of pressure here. You got this. I believe in you. Oh, thank you.

All right. So. I mean, all the ingredients are delicious. So even to my sandwich falls apart, it's going to taste really good. It's going to taste really good.

That's what I'm telling myself.

It's going to taste amazing.

You'll be good. I try my first one. And the results are not terrible. Can you tell which one is dance?

I mean, it's not as pretty as yours ifra, but I mean, for a first ever some boost, I think

I did okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You're pressing this.

Then I try another one. All right. Take a look. Take a look at this. Oh.

You're proud. Are you? I'm getting better, right? You're. Oh, look at that.

Why is this?

“That one's so much better than the first.”

Imagine how good the third one could be. Once we fold up a few more, it's time to fry. So it goes really fast, and you want it to get messed up, go to the brown color. So. Should I flip them?

You're going to flip it. Oh. All right. That's okay. Really.

Really nice. I love it. We fry the rest of this on boost. If there's also made a chicken stew called Soar Degat, it is onions, bell peppers, cilantro, and plenty of hoach.

She'll serve that over rice. Then she makes fresh bizbass. The Somalia hot sauce with lots of jalapeno and lime juice plus cilantro and garlic. That'll be for dipping the some boosts. At last, sit down.

All right. We have everything out here. You've got to join me here if you're hungry. You're hungry. And I am.

Mm. That is so good. And this hack of using flour tortillas to make any kind of fried pocket food is revolutionary. I mean, I mean, I didn't come up with that thing.

Well, I'll give you the credit. But I also just feel like, yeah, I love all foods like this. Yeah.

And I always want to make it, but I was intimidated by like, am I going to need to

push?

“Which kind of dough am I going to buy and kind of have, you know?”

And you don't even have to think about it. That's right. All right. I'm going. I'm going.

Mm. Wow. The Somboos with the best best. It's like, you get because the Somboos is like, it's fried. It's a little fatty.

It's got the meat inside. It's a little. So it's like rich. Right. And then when you hit it, which is a tiny bit of the jalapeno and the lime juice.

And the cilantro. It's like so bright. So acidic. Great. We're hungry.

Well, ifra, Ramadan Barak. Thank you. Ramadan cream. I appreciate you coming to hang out and, you know, break bread with me. And learning the process of some boost.

This is a lifelong skill that I've gotten from this night. Now you can make it in batches and, you know, have it all all year round. Oh my god. Yeah. Family project.

Yeah. That's ifra Ahmed, her new book is Somalia, food, memory, and migration. It comes out next week, but you can pre-order it right now. Why wait? You can also follow ifra on Instagram at IFF Ahmed.

And exciting news, we're going to give away one copy of Somalia to a lucky newsletter subscriber to enter for your chance to win. All you did is sign up for our newsletter at sportfull.com/newsletter by March 31st. If you're already subscribed, you're automatically entered into this and all of our giveaways.

So you want to be on that list. If you don't win this time, maybe I'll win next time. Again, that sportfull.com/newsletter, open to US addresses only. Next week on the show, I am heading to China.

China's dynasty has grown on an incredible pace over the past 30 years, and I've visited

two restaurants to get two very different tastes of what it's like. That's next week. Anyway, for that one, check out last week's show with London Chef, Osma Khan, owner of Dark Jillian Express, and make sure you check out all our re-heats.

“And hey, did you know you can listen to the sportfull on the Sirius XM app?”

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Right now, sportfull listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to SiriusXM.com/sportfull. This episode was produced by me along with Managed and Producer. I'm the Morgan Stern. And Senior Producer, Andreys O'Hero.

It was edited by Camille Stanley. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. And our intern is India Rice. Music help from Black Label Music. Sportfull is a production of Sirius XM podcast, our executive producer is Camille Stanley.

Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Lindsay Leslie from Faultsmore, Maryland. Reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more, better.