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Storing culture
Recipes can hold within them a magnitude of cultural traits and values. You recognize this when you taste food made with a specific recipe, or when you try to replicate your mother’s dish or find ingredients in a new country or when a specific occasion comes around and you crave the food your grandmother used to make to celebrate this same day.
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Recipes can hold within them a magnitude of cultural traits and values. You recognize this when you taste food made with a specific recipe, or when you try to replicate your mother’s dish or find ingredients in a new country or when a specific occasion comes around and you crave the food your grandmother used to make to celebrate this same day.
What we eat, how we cook it and with whom we eat it, are all pathways to activating cultural activities with all the old crafts, knowledge, practices and rituals that are involved.
If food stores culture then where is food stored?
The answer to this question is multidimensional, because of course it is stored in cooking, in eating, in practicing and in teaching. However, a more pragmatic answer would be that it is stored in cookbooks and other archiving methods. One such method is the online space which has become a key tool for preserving and storing archives, especially relating to music and living culture, even though many platforms were not created with the intention of archiving, they now serve that purpose. This is where many Sudanese people turn with the ongoing displacement crisis and increasing difficulties in cooking the authentic recipes they grew up eating.
Other than for survival, the quality of food is important for our health, both mentally and physically. Access to food is a human right that is why community kitchens, takaya, around Sudan are now playing a significant role in providing food to war-affected communities. By offering meals through this unique method of local support and sharing this life-saving aid also bestows dignity on those who receive it.
Now, going back to the online space, there are a remarkable number of food bloggers who specialize in cooking Sudanese food and also in showing variations and alternatives to ingredients so that recipes can be cooked abroad or to match dietary restrictions. One prime example is Simsimia’s kitchen, one of the first of its kind which gained a lot of popularity, especially the rice flour and yogurt asida, which was a quick and accessible method of making the staple dish. Simsimia established her food blog in 2008 after she was encouraged on various forums that were popular at the time, to create a platform to recreate recipes by her late mother and help younger women access these recipes.
Another change to the online culture was the advent of social media, especially Facebook groups which still remains the most popular platform for Sudanese users. One of the largest groups is The Sudan Contemporary and Traditional Kitchen, a group that was started in May 2015 by Sudanese chefs and which gained popularity among mothers and now has over 1.5 million members. The platform is considered the largest Sudanese cookery platform, as members are encouraged to share recipes with details of all the steps and ingredients. The platform has a positive, supportive culture and all comments deemed degrading to skill or culture is prohibited. Even for my own work on this blog theme, this platform has been one of the key resources that I have used to learn about recipes but much importantly about culture. The discussion format allows many members to explain the cultural norms associated with the dish, the name they use for a specific dish and many aspects that spark discussion between the different members of the group about the recipe or dish.
Recently, even more social media influencers have started sharing food videos and content online using various platforms and in differing formats. For example, the account Habi Makes on Instagram, where the focus is on food photography which the owner started posting in 2017 and which developed into content showing recipes presented in an artistic way. Other content creators on TickTok or YouTube have also gained popularity for sharing short and easy to follow recipes, such as Ahmed Abdin, who has over 250k followers on TickTok alone. His short format videos of food content, which he started posting in early 2020, gained popularity very fast. In terms of the cultural aspect of food, platforms such as the Sudanese Kitchen page and website, have also started to appear and in terms of Sudanese Kitchen the owner is in the process of collecting all his materials in order to produce a book.
Finally an other resource is Mazaq khas magazine, a food focused online magazine.
Header picture: Yousif Alshikh, Khartoum 2022
Recipes can hold within them a magnitude of cultural traits and values. You recognize this when you taste food made with a specific recipe, or when you try to replicate your mother’s dish or find ingredients in a new country or when a specific occasion comes around and you crave the food your grandmother used to make to celebrate this same day.
What we eat, how we cook it and with whom we eat it, are all pathways to activating cultural activities with all the old crafts, knowledge, practices and rituals that are involved.
If food stores culture then where is food stored?
The answer to this question is multidimensional, because of course it is stored in cooking, in eating, in practicing and in teaching. However, a more pragmatic answer would be that it is stored in cookbooks and other archiving methods. One such method is the online space which has become a key tool for preserving and storing archives, especially relating to music and living culture, even though many platforms were not created with the intention of archiving, they now serve that purpose. This is where many Sudanese people turn with the ongoing displacement crisis and increasing difficulties in cooking the authentic recipes they grew up eating.
Other than for survival, the quality of food is important for our health, both mentally and physically. Access to food is a human right that is why community kitchens, takaya, around Sudan are now playing a significant role in providing food to war-affected communities. By offering meals through this unique method of local support and sharing this life-saving aid also bestows dignity on those who receive it.
Now, going back to the online space, there are a remarkable number of food bloggers who specialize in cooking Sudanese food and also in showing variations and alternatives to ingredients so that recipes can be cooked abroad or to match dietary restrictions. One prime example is Simsimia’s kitchen, one of the first of its kind which gained a lot of popularity, especially the rice flour and yogurt asida, which was a quick and accessible method of making the staple dish. Simsimia established her food blog in 2008 after she was encouraged on various forums that were popular at the time, to create a platform to recreate recipes by her late mother and help younger women access these recipes.
Another change to the online culture was the advent of social media, especially Facebook groups which still remains the most popular platform for Sudanese users. One of the largest groups is The Sudan Contemporary and Traditional Kitchen, a group that was started in May 2015 by Sudanese chefs and which gained popularity among mothers and now has over 1.5 million members. The platform is considered the largest Sudanese cookery platform, as members are encouraged to share recipes with details of all the steps and ingredients. The platform has a positive, supportive culture and all comments deemed degrading to skill or culture is prohibited. Even for my own work on this blog theme, this platform has been one of the key resources that I have used to learn about recipes but much importantly about culture. The discussion format allows many members to explain the cultural norms associated with the dish, the name they use for a specific dish and many aspects that spark discussion between the different members of the group about the recipe or dish.
Recently, even more social media influencers have started sharing food videos and content online using various platforms and in differing formats. For example, the account Habi Makes on Instagram, where the focus is on food photography which the owner started posting in 2017 and which developed into content showing recipes presented in an artistic way. Other content creators on TickTok or YouTube have also gained popularity for sharing short and easy to follow recipes, such as Ahmed Abdin, who has over 250k followers on TickTok alone. His short format videos of food content, which he started posting in early 2020, gained popularity very fast. In terms of the cultural aspect of food, platforms such as the Sudanese Kitchen page and website, have also started to appear and in terms of Sudanese Kitchen the owner is in the process of collecting all his materials in order to produce a book.
Finally an other resource is Mazaq khas magazine, a food focused online magazine.
Header picture: Yousif Alshikh, Khartoum 2022
