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Culinary roots
Food helps Anchorage family maintain ties to African homeland

By KRISTA MAHR
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: September 22, 2004)
Abdoulaye Tabane is eyeing the tilapia. They sit in a bowl on a Muldoon
kitchen counter, a heap of silvery fish head halves and tail halves fried
to a golden crispness this morning.

"I want a little piece," he says, standing on tiptoe, not quite eye level
with the countertop.

"Later," says his mother, Kévé Tabane, who is spending the day making
benachin, a West African dish, for a surprise baby shower for a Gambian
friend.

Abdoulaye is not put off. He hangs around on the kitchen linoleum while his
mother pulls cabbage, eggplant, okra and yate out of the fridge and freezer.

"Abdoulaye, be a good boy." The phone rings. Cordless in hand, Tabane
juggles party logistics, the benachin and her three children.

"Can I go to the baby shower?" he asks, taking another tack.

Yes, he could go. On the stove, a 4-inch-deep, foot-wide aluminum pot
bubbles with the beginnings of benachin, a thin soup of stewed tomatoes,
water, salt and white onions sautéed in oil. Several nations in West
Africa -- Ghana, Gambia, Senegal, the Congo and Nigeria -- are known for
this dish. In English (Gambia was once an English colony), it's called
jollof rice.

Tabane ticks off benachin's ingredients in English if she knows the word
and in French if she doesn't. French is the official language of her native
Ivory Coast.

Tabane also identifies herself as Senegalese because her husband, father
and mother's father are from Senegal. And then there's Gambia, which she
says is a lot like Senegal except English, not French, is spoken. In short,
it doesn't work to try to put neat brackets around Tabane or her cooking.
Like the Spanish influence in the south of France or the Mexican influence
in California, she defies fixed national boundaries.

"In general, we eat a lot of fish and rice," Tabane says. "Every day for
lunch, we eat rice."

In Anchorage, she buys cloth bags of basmati from Asian grocers. Rice is a
staple of West African dishes. East African cooking doesn't typically use
rice as the base for its dishes.

Before frying the tilapia in vegetable oil, Tabane stuffed the fish with a
ground mixture of bay leaves, parsley, onion and salt.

"Generally, I use rockfish," she says of how she'd make the dish back home.
Fish is another central ingredient in West Africa. "My problem is (markets
here) don't always have it." She has tried making benachin with salmon. It
works.

American-style baby showers aren't a big deal in West Africa, Tabane says,
explaining why she's making only one enormous dish, not three or four. A
baby's naming -- a Muslim ceremony that takes place the week after the baby
is born -- is another story.

Senegal and Gambia are more than 90 percent Muslim. A celebration and much
food accompany a baby naming. In the United States, however, West African
families might have a small naming ceremony the week after a baby is born
and wait several months to hold a big celebration so friends and family
scattered around the United States and in Africa have time to travel.

Tabane adds eggplant, green cabbage, yucca (bought frozen from Goya
imports), carrots and fried fish to the roiling tomato broth. She will cook
this mixture until the vegetables are done, then cook the rice in the
broth, infusing it with the flavors of the vegetables and fish.

Tabane's three children spend the early afternoon in their Sunday duds,
orbiting around their mother and doing their best to keep themselves
occupied on the computer, the couch or out of sight in their rooms. Every
few minutes, one wanders in to check on her. In a corner of the living
room, a device that looks like a crock pot is plugged into the wall.
Inside, incense is kept warm, filling the living room with a distinct spicy
smell.

In Ivory Coast, Tabane worked as a secretary. She remembers being a student
and seeing pictures of people in Alaska wearing animal skins with only
their faces exposed. She thought, "That place is scary."

But just as people don't always "get" Africa, Tabane says, it's hard to get
Alaska, too.

"If you say 'I'm from Africa,' they think you're from the jungle," she
says. Tabane grew up in the city. "I never saw animals."

Alaska isn't what she thought it would be either. After a tough move to
Anchorage during the middle of winter, she and her family adjusted.

"You have to come," she says. "You can't explain it to people."

In stretch pants and a head scarf, Tabane shuttles between the kitchen and
the living room balcony. Saturday is a big cooking day, when she makes food
to sell at her Saturday Market stand, Taste of Africa. It's the only
business in Anchorage that sells exclusively African food.

On a typical Saturday, Tabane sells benachin with meat, chicken yassa, a
peanut butter beef stew, chicken curry, ginger juice and bissap, a
Senegalese tea made from sorrel, a kind of hibiscus bloom.

Community members estimate that about 100 Gambians live in Alaska. Only two
families from Senegal live in Anchorage, with roughly a dozen people
between them. As of 2003, only Montana and Wyoming had fewer African-born
residents than Alaska, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Before French and British colonization, Senegal and Gambia were not
separate countries. Gambia, a small nation of 1.4 million that skirts the
700-mile Gambia River, is nearly an island in the larger Senegal,
population 10.1 million. It shares its northern, eastern and southern
borders with Senegal and borders the Atlantic Ocean on the west.

In 1982, the two countries formed a loose confederation called Senegambia,
but it didn't last long. Their shared region of West Africa, however, is
still referred to as Senegambia. Though French is the official language of
Senegal and English is spoken widely in Gambia, reflecting their respective
former colonial rulers, the African language Wolof is used as the lingua
franca between them.

Later that afternoon, Wolof is the language of the hour in a living room in
a new South Anchorage subdivision. In a cul-de-sac of identical two-story
homes on neat parcels, neighborhood kids play street hockey and ride
scooters over plastic ramps. Parents with bottles of Budweiser watch from
an open garage, its bareness a giveaway that they have just moved in.

Inside one home, women await the arrival of the expectant mother, the
bright colors of their traditional Gambian clothing a contrast to the
immaculate and formal white living room. Pale pink and blue paper streamers
crisscross over their bright head wraps, and baby shower balloons look
lost, floating over the wall-to-wall white carpet.

In the kitchen, Tabane, in long turquoise and white pants and tunic, is the
unofficial mistress of culinary ceremonies. She flicks the end of a
renegade turquoise scarf back over her shoulder while scooping rainbow
sherbet into a bowl of punch.

"Baby shower," Tabane reminds, gesturing apologetically to the spread
taking shape. Guests are still arriving. "People don't cook a lot."

It's hard to imagine what's missing, considering that a folding table set
up in the kitchen is covered with large aluminum serving trays of benachin,
fried meat pies, seafood pasta, tuna sandwiches, chakery (a dessert of
sweetened couscous, yogurt and sour cream) and a dish the women
call "bisa."

"Pregnant people like it because it's sour," explains Mariama Njie, a guest
from Gambia.

Bisa is a green puree made from spinach and okra served at room temperature
with benachin's aromatic rice. Made spicy, bisa should spark the appetite.

Many of the vegetables used in West African cooking -- okra, onions,
eggplant, cabbage -- are available here. More specialized ingredients are
hard to find.

"It's very hard. They don't have most of the ingredients here," Njie
says. "We're getting that from the Lower 48."

Like what?

"Everything," groans Njie. Even palm oil, an elementary ingredient in West
African cooking, has to be brought to Alaska by mail, friends or family.

"Jumbo," Njie says. Perceiving the blank stare, she asks, "Do you know
Jumbo?"

Nope. Jumbo is a kind of bouillon cube used to flavor fish and meat. Alaska
also is short on smoked codfish, smoked oysters (well, not technically, but
ours are not the same) and sorrel, a red flower commonly used to make an
infused herbal drink. A small bag of dried sorrel flowers will make enough
juice for a family of four to drink for a week.

Njie recently went to Gambia and brought back sorrel seed.

"I'm going to give it a chance to see if it's going to grow over here," she
says.

When she and her aunt lived in Houston, sorrel grew well in their yards.

Sitting on one of the dining room chairs lining her friend's living room,
Njie says her family and friends from Africa get together in Anchorage a
lot. Njie works at Alaska USA Federal Credit Union and has three children
here. The last event was a welcome party for a young Gambian woman from
Atlanta who married a man who lives here.

Njie says the women have talked about trying to make their meetings a
monthly thing -- something "productive," in which they would talk
about "what we're going to do for our kids' futures" -- but so far they
have remained casual.

Within the hour, the mother-to-be, Khaddy Jobarteh, walks in the door
downstairs with her husband and two sons. Her mother and aunt are visiting
from Gambia while the family waits for Jobarteh's baby to be born any day.

Jobarteh's husband, Lamin Jobarteh, runs Senegambia, an organization in
Anchorage that has recently discussed with state Rep. Max Gruenberg a more
formal relationship between Alaska and Gambia.

"It's a country -- and continent -- that probably gets overlooked a lot
here," Gruenberg says. "It seems like we should do everything we can to
make new Alaskans feel very welcome because most of us were new at one
time."

Gruenberg suggested that Anchorage and Gambia's capital, Banjul, become
sister cities. The mayor of Banjul used to live in Alaska.

"Banjul is just like Anchorage," Lamin Jobarteh says. "The landscape is the
same. It reminds you of Gambia."

The music in the living room is turned back up, and after the stir, guests
settle back into their chairs with paper plates of food. In the corner, a
warm pot of incense gives off the same scent as the one in Tabane's living
room.

Jobarteh's aunt from Banjul, Aji Jabou Sidibeh, 72, takes a long, white
cloth, or malan, draped around ther dress and wraps it around her waist.
One of babies sitting on a lap is promptly lifted up by the armpits and
deposited neatly into the white pocket of fabric at the small of Sidibeh's
back. Leaning forward, Sidibeh ties the malan in front, securing the baby
at her waist. It's a perfect fit.

Stuffed Fish Benachin

• 1 small fish (Tabane used tilapia)

• 2 tablespoons lime juice

• salt and black pepper

• 3 small onions, sliced thinly

• 2 medium fresh tomatoes

• 1 teaspoon ground fresh peppers

• 1 cup oil

• 2 ½ pints water

• 1 eggplant

• 2 okras

• 1 bitter tomato

• 1 slice pumpkin

• 1 pound rice

• 2 sliced bell peppers

• 2 teaspoons tomato puree

• 2 slices yate (smoked sea snail)

• 2 bay leaves

Stuffing:

• parsley

• 1 bouillon cube

• green leaves of spring onions

» Clean fresh fish, add lime juice, salt and black pepper, soak for 10
minutes.

» Grind the stuffing ingredients together, keep aside.

» Clean and wash onions, scald and skin the fresh tomatoes, prepare ground
fresh peppers and put aside.

» When fresh fish is well-soaked, make an incision in the fish and put a
teaspoonful of the stuffing in the flesh of the fish.

» Heat oil and fry fish lightly. Remove and put aside.

» Fry onions until brown, add skinned, scalded and sliced tomatoes and
ground fresh pepper. Cook gently until the whole mixture turns to a thick
pulp.

» Prepare the eggplant, okra, bitter tomato and pumpkin.

» Add water to the pot and boil for 10 minutes. Add fried fish, vegetables,
maggi cubes and bay leaves, simmer gently for 20 to 25 minutes.

» Correct seasoning, remove fish and vegetables and put aside.

» Pour washed rice into the pan add water and boil rapidly. Reduce heat and
cover pot and let rice cook for 20 to 25 minutes, or until water evaporates.

» Serve rice with the fish and vegetables on top.

-- from "A Taste of Gambia," by Adele Faye Njie

Chakery

• 1 pint vanilla yogurt

• 8 ounces sour cream

• 12 ounces evaporated milk

• 1 can of crushed pineapples

• dash of nutmeg

• splash of vanilla

• couscous

» Mix all the ingredients except the couscous together to make the sauce.
Cook the couscous separately with water. Serve sauce over couscous.



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FOR YOUR NEXT TRIP TO PRODUCE MARKET:

Okra: Kanja

Eggplant: Batanesh

Bitter tomato: Jahatou

Peanut: Gerrteh

Mango: Mongoraw

Bonga fish: Kubo

Papaya: Papakaya

Baobob: Mboi MORE ABOUT WEST AFRICAN CUISINE:

www.africaguide.com/cooking.htm,
www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/africanrecipes.html



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Senegambia was established last year to offer a social safety net for the
community in Anchorage. Its 58 members pay $10 per month to provide
emergency services. If somebody dies in Anchorage, for instance, the group
will try to help with the thousands of dollars needed to fly the deceased
and a family member back to Africa for burial. It hasn't happened yet. The
organization also is trying to create a day-care cooperative for children,
as Gambian communities in the Lower 48 have. For more information, call 338-
7430.

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