In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries that Touch the Indian Ocean

"This is such a lovely book and it’s definitely different from any of the other ones that we have on our list this year. Bibi is the Swahili word for grandmother and the authors have interviewed and got recipes from grandmothers, so it’s not really the type of cookbook we’re used to. It’s not chef-y, it’s not from a blogger. These are everyday home cooks. Some of them have immigrated to the US or other places. Some of them are still in Africa . Some of them have immigrated within Africa. It’s just a beautiful book and it feels very relevant to today in terms of the political climate, especially in the United States (and elsewhere), with the current focus on Black Lives Matter and the immigrant experience. In food media there’s been this movement in the right direction to make sure that people discuss the origins of ingredients and give credit to cultures where it’s due. These are the people who are at the origin-level of recipes, the people cooking in their home kitchens. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the countries in the book and starts out with interviews with a couple of the bibis. And it just lets them speak for themselves. This isn’t about a cookbook author swooping in and speaking for someone else. It’s literally a transcript of their view and it’s very approachable. These are women who are cooking for their families every day, or almost every day. For the people who are still in Africa, or who had these recipes from their family, these are people who don’t have access to sophisticated, fancy equipment or expensive ingredients. So again, especially important now, it’s very pantry-friendly. You get a lot of flavor without a huge investment in ingredients. One of the recipes that we’re running is this chicken with ginger and garlic. There are five ingredients and it just blew one of my colleagues away. She made it for her family and everyone was like, ‘Wow!’ It’s so packed with flavour. The book has these simple dumplings with cardamom—one of my personal favorite spices. It’s very accessible. There are not a lot of Africa-oriented cookbooks out there, and even fewer that treat each country as a unique culinary culture, as this one does. Africa tends to get lumped together. It’s a bit of a blind spot for a lot of people in food media and by having each chapter feature a specific country, with an introduction to the country’s history, its economy and resources, the language and religion, this book really is making a very concerted effort to explain the very wide breadth of food culture in Africa. It shouldn’t be treated in a uniform way. It’s a continent—people don’t talk about ‘European food’! Exactly. Right. It’s Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Comoros. One of the things that’s mentioned in the book is that a lot of these places were integral to the spice route. So, spices play a big role in a good number of the recipes. They’re a really nice way to add flavor to otherwise humble ingredients. Yes. One of the things the women talk about is that meat, for a lot of people in Africa, is a luxury. It’s expensive and maybe they get it once a week, if they have access to it at all. So there are a lot of vegetarian and even vegan dishes—a lot of greens."