Page 32 - AT

A32 FEATURE
Wednesday 9 January 2019
Food bloggers bring Africa’s rich cuisines to the world

By AMELIA NIERENBERG more professional. “And
Associated Press our grandmas, they think
NGAPAROU, Senegal (AP) that taking time with the
— In the quiet hours before food gives it more flavor. So
lunch, two women worked I take time, too.”
side by side in an airy kitch- She said she became a
en. One, a chef, cleaned chef after money ran out to
fresh red snapper filets with pursue her dream of being
a sharp knife. The other, a doctor.
a filmmaker, pointed her “There are a lot of similari-
camera into a large pot of ties between cooking and
simmering vegetables. medicine,” she said, skin-
“What would you say this is, ning onions. “The feeling
low heat or medium?” Tu- of being full after you have
leka Prah asked, setting the eaten is the same sensation
camera aside. as getting better after be-
Her pen poised over a ing sick. It’s something that
lime green notebook, the gives me a lot of pride.”
37-year-old Prah waited for She dropped garlic into siz-
the next step in the recipe zling oil, then stepped back
for thiebou dieune, a tra- as Prah moved close to the
ditional Senegalese dish pot to film. The two women
of spiced rice, tender veg- orbited each other, artists
etables and fish. She came In this Nov. 24, 2018, photo, a platter of thiebou dieune, a traditional Senegalese dish of spiced collaborating over the pot
to this West African nation rice, is serve by Chef Touty Sarr, in Ngaparou, Senegal. burbling on the stove.
to document its four most Associated Press Sarr said she cooks by smell,
popular dishes as part of like a database or a digital department at Boston Uni- ing sponsors but intends to by sound and by taste, but
My African Food Map, a vault where people can versity and a specialist in keep trying. Prah wrote her steps down
blog and film archive. open the drawer, see reci- African environmental his- “The best outcome is when in order, recording a recipe
“Low heat,” said 38-year- pes, see some ingredients.” tory and cuisine. “It’s an people say, ‘That is our for others without the guid-
old Touty Sarr, who runs the Born in England to a Gha- area of the world that has food, that is our dish,’” she ance of grandmothers and
kitchen of a popular cafe naian father and a South not been covered by the said, remembering her work mothers at their side.
in Dakar. She turned to her African mother, she lived food craze.” in Kenya. “I was extremely After two hours of chop-
daughter, who was watch- in six African countries dur- Other culinary historians, happy when the first com- ping and pounding, scrap-
ing her cook. “This one, if ing her childhood including chefs, and foodies are ments I got on YouTube ing and whipping, boiling
you put it on high, it would Namibia, Kenya and what fighting such stereotypes. were, ‘Oh, this reminds me and simmering, Sarr spread
all get dry. That’s one of the is now South Sudan. After Some, like author and pro- of home.’” red-tinted rice across a
secrets.” finding no reliable recipes fessor Jessica Harris, have To find authentic recipes platter almost two feet
Senegal was Prah’s fifth online for Ghanaian dish- studied African and dias- and skilled chefs, Prah asks wide. She flattened it and
destination since her proj- es — and no photos that pora cuisine, exploring the everyone she meets in a carefully arranged the veg-
ect began in 2012. She made the beloved food roots of foods taken far country - hosts, cab drivers, etables and fish in a circle
hopes to show the care look appetizing — she start- from home by slavery. Oth- shop keepers and strangers for a communal meal, with
and skill that goes into Af- ed My African Food Map. ers, like Fran Osseo-Asare - about their favorite foods. some family members eat-
rican dishes, such as South She celebrates the cuisines and her Ghanaian-focused She met Sarr this way, ing with spoons and others
Africa’s fried dough amag- of a continent often marred project Betumi, investi- through friends of friends. with their hands.
winya and Kenya’s ka- by negative stereotypes. gate the foods of a single “I learned from my grand- Prah snapped a picture,
chumbari, an onion and “Africa is often associated country. “The internet was ma. I used to follow her and then another, before
tomato salad. with poverty, with hunger, the democratization of Af- everywhere,” said Sarr, putting her camera aside
“The idea, at its most basic, with failures of food in a rican food writing,” said who wears her stiff white to try the dish. “It’s really
is to present the food how political and nutritional Osseo-Asare, who said she chef’s uniform every time good,” she said, her mouth
people who love it would sense,” said James C. Mc- has blogged about Afri- she cooks, even at home, full, smiling at Sarr. “Really,
prepare it,” Prah said. “It’s Cann, chair of the history can food since the 1980s. because it makes her feel really good.”q
“When the internet came,
you didn’t have publishers
as gatekeepers that could
stop you from getting your
work out.”
Unique among prominent
bloggers, Prah takes an
almost pan-African ap-
proach.
“I always feel like I am from
the whole continent,” she
said. “I can find myself in
different aspects of differ-
ent countries I visit.”
Her videos often have tens
of thousands of views, and
In this Nov. 24, 2018, photo, Filmmaker Tuleka Prah, right, films she dreams of doing her
chef Touty Sarr , as she prepares a plate of thiebou dieune, a project full-time like Antho- In this Nov. 20, 2018, photo, filmmaker Tuleka Prah, the founder
traditional Senegalese dish of spiced rice, inside a kitchen in ny Bourdain did. She said of My African Food Map, poses for a photograph in Ngaparou,
Ngaparou, Senegal. Senegal.
Associated Press she has had no luck find- Associated Press