The Horn · Volume 11, The Indian Ocean Kitchen
Baasto iyo suugo suqaar
Mogadishu and everywhere the diaspora went
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- Researched from 103 sources in the brief
Spaghetti with a spiced tomato and diced-meat sauce, and the dish that gets Somali cooking laughed at by people who think colonial inheritance is only allowed to be tragic. The dosage settles the argument. Hawa Hassan's published version puts three tablespoons of xawaash into one pound of beef: not a bolognese with spice added, but a Somali dish that borrowed ragù architecture and seasoned it at Somali strength. And then the banana, peeled, chopped and distributed through the pasta at the table. It is structural, because the sugars suppress the perception of chilli heat and salt, and the plate reads harsh without it.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp oil
- as listed 2 garlic cloves, 1 small green pepper, 1 small red onion, chopped
- 450 g beef mince, or fine dice
- 3 tbsp xawaash
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 800 g tinned chopped tomatoes with their juice, plus half a tin of water
- as listed spaghetti, coriander leaf, 1 ripe banana, salt
Method
- The garlic cloves, small green pepper and small red onion into the oil, 8 minutes.
- The beef mince and the xawaash in together, 15 minutes. The spice goes in with the meat, not at the end.
- Tomato paste, then the tinned chopped tomatoes with their juice and the water. Simmer 30 minutes on low.
- Over spaghetti, with coriander leaf. The banana is peeled, chopped and mixed through at the table, by the eater.
Notes
After Hawa Hassan.
The federation version puts rice and spaghetti in equal halves on one plate under the same sauce.
What a modern chef changes
A real base, a real stock, and the xawaash split
Rungs 3, 4 and 6
Method
- Take the base to eighteen to twenty two minutes, not eight, and cook the tomato paste out separately for 90 seconds until it turns brick red. That base is the entire foundation and the first thing a rushed kitchen skips.
- Use the goat or lamb braise liquid as the half tin of water. Rung 4. You are already making it, and gelatin gives this sauce a coating body no reduction on tinned tomato will produce.
- Split the xawaash across the cook. Base fraction bloomed in the fat with the vegetables, cassia and clove with the tomatoes, cardamom and turmeric in the last five minutes. Rung 3. Three tablespoons added at once and simmered for half an hour arrives medicinal; the same three sequenced arrives aromatic.
- Do not skip the banana. Rung 6. If you find it strange, cook it with and without over two servings and taste how differently the chilli reads. It is a suppression effect and it is measurable on your own palate in ten minutes.