Ifrah F Ahmed’s debut cookbook celebrates Somali cuisine, history and people

Sundus AbdiSaturday April 25, 2026

Ifrah F Ahmed turned to Somali community members around the world to research her book, Soomaaliya: Food, Memory and Migration. Photograph: Khadija Farah

On a video call from Brooklyn, with a book tour stretching between cities, Ifrah F Ahmed sips ginger-root tea. The aroma pulls her back to a childhood kitchen where her mother would often bake fragrant cardamom cake.

“That’s a core childhood memory for me,” she said.

For Ahmed, food has never been only about eating. It carries memory, inheritance and, as she sees it, a kind of record-keeping: “Somali history on a plate.”

That notion anchors Soomaaliya: Food, Memory and Migration, her debut cookbook, which came out in March. Part recipe collection, part history and part portrait gallery, the book is one of only a handful of Somali cookbooks ever published. It builds on the popularity of Ahmed’s Milk and Myrrh pop-ups, which often sell out, as well as her work for New York Times Cooking and elsewhere.

Through 75 recipes, Ahmed follows Somali cuisine across trade routes, colonial rule, war and migration. Ancient Somalia served as a key stop along the Silk Road, and its spice production earned it the nickname “the land of cinnamon”. Pastoral and nomadic life elevated camel milk – sometimes called “white gold” – and meat to central status. Italian colonization from the late 1800s to the mid-20th century brought pasta into Somali kitchens. Under European rule, banana exports sent profits into colonial systems rather than local communities. Yet despite these global influences, and a growing footprint on social media, Somali food remains less familiar to many readers than the cuisine of neighboring Ethiopia, even though the two countries share some dishes.

The movement of ingredients across borders helped shape recipes such as bariis iskukaris, a one-pot combination of spiced rice, roasted meat, vegetables and a banana. But, Ahmed argues, the story is often told too narrowly. “There’s a tendency to overattribute Somali cuisine to colonial influence,” she said. “While that influence is there, what we were able to do with it gets ignored. Our pasta is not the same as Italian pasta. It’s something uniquely Somali” – usually finished with xawaash, a spice mix of cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and turmeric.

Spiced Somali tea. Photograph: Doaa Elkady

The book is as much a history of a people in motion as it is a collection of dishes. Ahmed, who was born in Mogadishu and moved with her family to Seattle in 1996 after civil war broke out, says the idea for the project first took shape a decade ago. While studying law in New York, she noticed how little had been written about Somali food. “I recognized that there was a lack of resources for people who were curious, like myself, and our generation,” she said.

That gap reflects the way recipes have long been handed down through memory, storytelling and practice rather than in print. Years of war and displacement have scattered culinary knowledge throughout the diaspora, leaving Somali heritage vulnerable to being lost. The risk has deepened as conflict and drought have displaced up to 4 million Somalis, according to the UN. In that context, there has been little chance to gather the full story in one place.

Ahmed learned to cook from her mother, who encouraged intuition over rigid instruction. “It taught me to have a really relaxed, intuitive relationship with cooking,” Ahmed shared. “Knowing when to stop measuring something, salting and flavoring from the heart.”

To build the book, Ahmed interviewed elders, consulted family cooks, combed through digital archives, watched old YouTube clips and listened to audio recordings of Somali women talking about recipes. “If I didn’t know how to make a recipe, I’d have my mum call someone over, or find someone in the community who could share that information with me,” she said.

Alongside farmers, fishers and others who shape Somali food today, Ahmed highlights Barlin Ali, whose Somali Cuisine was published in 2007 and is widely considered the last major Somali cookbook before her own. The book also features Jamal Hashi, a chef in Minneapolis; Hamda Issa-Salwe, the London-based founder of tea seasoning brand Ayeeyo’s Blends; and Liban Ibrahim, owner of Sabiib, described as London’s “best east African restaurant”.

“It’s my name on the cover,” Ahmed said, “but it was such a communal effort. I really wanted to tell other people’s stories through food.”

For Ahmed, the book is an archive, but it is also a rebuttal to the idea that Somali cuisine can be reduced to a single template. In the diaspora especially, a few dishes such as bariis iskukaris have come to represent an entire culinary culture that stretches across regions and borders. “I wanted to talk about the diversity of Somali food, to have recipes that are representative of all the regions where Somali people are.”

Somali cooks continue to adapt old dishes through new ingredients, presentations and techniques without losing their essence. Consider the sambusa, a filled pastry similar to an Indian samosa. Halimo Hussain, a London-based writer, wrote in the Vittles food newsletter that tuna sambusa remains “a point of contention for Somalis – rejected by some, wholeheartedly embraced by others”. In the Pacific north-west, salmon sambusas have become a regional specialty because fish is plentiful there. Elsewhere, tortillas stand in for traditional pastry wrappers.

“That’s another example of the way migration impacts food traditions: you’re using the ingredients that are accessible to you to make your traditional food,” Ahmed said.

Cooking and eating are communal activities, and Ahmed seeks to explore and share how Somalis preserve tradition and innovate – wherever they are in the world. Photograph: Khadija Farah

Migration is also reshaping Somali food in more practical, structural ways. Camel meat and milk – staples of Somali pastoral life then and now – are hard to source in Europe and North America, pushing diaspora communities to adjust. Ahmed points to Juba Farms in Kansas City, Missouri, which raises camels and bottles their milk, as one sign of a tradition adapting to new ground.

“Culture is always shifting,” she says. “But I also want us to have a sense of history, a sense of tradition, and a knowledge for how we ate, how we eat.”

For Ahmed, preserving those changes means preserving Somali resilience. The book arrives at a time when immigration and Somali migration have become sharply politicized in the US. Donald Trump has attacked Somali Americans, while immigration officials have targeted Somali communities in Minneapolis and elsewhere. In that climate, ordinary Somali foods have taken on a new role as tools of solidarity and resistance. A recent Guardian report described protesters at Minneapolis demonstrations handing out sambusas alongside pamphlets explaining their rights.

Ahmed says she had no way of knowing how urgent the project would feel when she first imagined it. “I’m completely aware of how timely this book is,” she said. “And aware of the misconceptions there are around Somali people.”

Even so, she is reluctant to present the book as a guide for outsiders. She said: “This book was made with the intention of being for Somali people. If people want to read it and learn more about us, they’re very much welcome to do so. I don’t really feel the pressure of needing to prove anything to anyone.”

What she hopes, above all, is that younger Somalis will find in it a firmer sense of cultural grounding, just as she once did through food. “It gave me a sense of self to know what the cuisine was in relation to our identity and where we came from,” she said.

For all its history and politics, Soomaaliya remains, at its core, a book about pleasure: fragrant rice, fried fish, spiced tea and cardamom cake. Its purpose is not only to introduce Somali food to new audiences, but to safeguard it for the people who already know it as their own.