Meat and Potatoes
Try this inside-out shepherd’s pie from Sudan.
By Lindsay Sterling
Headed to the home of Ekhlas
Ahmed for a Sudanese cooking lesson, I felt the thrill of heading into the
unknown. We’d only met once, briefly, at the Marriot Sable Oaks conference
center where I’d watched her and the rest of the Pihcintu Multicultural
Children’s Chorus sing harmony and dance with joy. Many of the girls in the
Pihcintu chorus are refugees from the world’s most dangerous countries. After the
show, I asked the first chorus member I saw if she would teach me how to cook
her favorite food from home. Ekhlas Ahmed, a beautiful 22-year-old from
Khartoum, Republic of Sudan, said with wide smile, “Yes. Sure.”
When
I arrived at her condo in Portland’s East End, she had already peeled and cut six
potatoes into half-inch cubes and deep-fried them on medium heat, making
essentially a bowl of cubed French fries. It was hard not to snack on them. She says that before I came, her
brother kept coming in and eating them so she had to keep making more.
A metal mortar and pestle,
which she calls a foondook, rings out
repetitively as she muddles garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh cilantro. In a
large pan she sautés the garlic mash in oil and then adds some tomato paste.
“It gives the oil a nice color right from the beginning,” she says. “You want
to make sure your food is red.” She stirs in ground beef. Once it’s browned, she
adds water until the meat is almost all the way covered. “You don’t want to eat
something dry. The water makes it come together.” Into the pan goes lemon
pepper, bouillon cube and salt. Once most of the water has cooked off and the
meat looks juicy and moist, she adds two piri piri chili peppers, more fresh
chopped cilantro, and a mound of cooked corn, peas, and carrot cubes. After
about five more minutes stirring on medium heat, she gently folds in the fried
potatoes and then transfers the mixture to a serving platter, garnishing the
dish with green stems of cilantro.
This Sudanese dish, called gheema, is at once surprising and
familiar, a kind of inside-out shepherd’s pie with the zing of chili pepper. You
can taste each component individually — fried potatoes, ground beef, vegetables
— but they combine into a unified flavor.
When she’s not cooking,
Ekhlas is earning her bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of
Southern Maine, translating for the city of Portland, or helping her parents sell clothes at
their new international clothing store on St. John Street across from Save A
Lot. (There’s no sign outside yet, but they’re open.) While Ekhlas is upbeat
and friendly socially, she is deeply saddened by the ongoing genocide in
Darfur, where, she says, “Part of our family is dying. Houses are burning
down.” It is a great challenge navigating feelings of helplessness about her
homeland and feelings of promise being here in what she calls, “the land of
opportunity.” Here in Maine, she says, “I have found a voice. In Sudan, women
and girls don’t have a voice. If they have something to say, they are afraid to
say it. Here, I have a voice people will listen to.”
I look forward to hearing
more from Ekhlas Ahmed, including her life story, called The Bridge Between, which she began writing at Casco Bay High
School and continues working on to this day.
Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2013
Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2013
