Marcus Samuelsson on Thanks Giving

(NPR) – Marcus Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden and now is a world-renowned chef in New York City. His cooking style is as international as his life story.

He sat down with NPR’s Steve Inskeep to discuss his multicultural Thanksgiving traditions.

“Like most immigrants, we roast turkey — we have turkey on the table,” said Samuelsson. “But our table is filled with people from all over the world that are Americans like us, new Americans … [So] there’s also the dishes from our [home] country.”

“I have Swedish potatoes au gratin,” said Samuelsson. “I have gravlax on the table. Then my wife makes a mean doro wat, which is this chicken stew from Ethiopia. She will always have some injera bread there.

“I think Thanksgiving is this incredible, great example where we as immigrants, we as Americans, bring in the culture or the history of where we come from,” said Samuelsson. “And then we serve it to our family, and I just think it’s a perfect marriage where you can show your identity, and you’re really proud to be an American.”

“Cooking for me is also a way of looking back,” said Samuelsson. “When I make the apple cake, I see my mother.

“So much of cooking and eating is about, ‘Where do we want to go in our memories?’ ” said Samuelsson. “We want to revisit the vacation. We want to revisit our college years. We want to revisit our childhood years.”

Growing up, he’d help his mother make her classic apple cake. “My job was always to sort of make the clock,” Samuelsson said, in describing the way the apples were arranged on top of the dessert. “My mom always cut 12 pieces.

“I always wanted to mess it up — I wanted to put apples all over,” he said. But his mother made sure the apples were adorned properly, because each person should get a slice of apple on their slice of cake.

Samuelsson feels everyone has a food story like his apple cake one.

“We all have food stories,” he said. “We all come from incredible backgrounds. And we can … share those memories … through food. And that’s the reason I love living in this country.”

Marcus Samuelsson’s Apple Cake Recipe

“I always joke about how bad my mom’s cooking was, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that a lot of what I know about cooking came from her. I can’t even count how many times she made this honest, simple apple cake — it seems as if we always had one in the refrigerator and another in the freezer, just in case we had unexpected company. Even now, when we are all out of the house, she always has apples on hand, just in case she needs to whip up a quick dessert for visitors.”

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unseasoned bread crumbs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

2 Granny Smith apples

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan

1 large egg

1-1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2/3 cup half-and-half

2 teaspoons confectioners’ sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and coat with the bread crumbs.

2. Toss together the granulated sugar and brown sugar. Set aside.

3. Peel and core the apples, then slice one apple into 16 wedges. Combine the cinnamon and 1/3 cup of the sugar mixture in a medium bowl. Add the apple wedges and toss to coat. Roughly dice the remaining apple.

4. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and the remaining sugar mixture on medium speed until light, fluffy, and lemon colored, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and mix until combined. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour and baking powder. Slowly add the half-and-half, and mix until combined. Fold the diced apple into the batter.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Arrange 14 of the apple wedges fanned along the outer edge of the pan and place the 2 remaining wedges in the center. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the center is golden brown.

6. Remove from the oven to a wire rack to cool completely. Run a small offset spatula around the edges to release the cake from the pan and remove the springform. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar, then cut into 12 wedges.

Famous Ethiopian singer Manalemosh Dibo passed away

One of Ethiopia’s most popular singers, Manalemosh Dibo, passed away today from natural causes, according to news sources in Ethiopia.

Manalemosh died in South Africa where she went to receive medical treatment after suffering from intestinal cancer for over a year.

Before going to South Africa Manalemosh was receiving treatment at Tikur Anbessa (Black Lion) Hospital in Addis Ababa. When her condition deteriorated, Tikur Anbessa doctors recommended that she gets treatment abroad. Ethiopian billionaire Al Amoudi covered her expenses to travel to South Africa.

Manalemosh was a young singer who's popularity grew with each song she released. She is particularly well-known for her traditional songs such as Asabelew, Awdamet, and Minjar.

Liya Kebede on challenges facing mothers in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, 94 percent of women deliver their babies at home, without the aid of a trained birth attendant.

Follow Liya Kebede, the World Health Organization’s Global Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health and a native of Ethiopia, as she learns firsthand the challenges facing mothers and newborns and how new U.S.-funded programs are helping to shift the odds in their favor. Watch the video below:

Fashion designer Gelila Assefa to build computer lab in Ethiopia

Ethiopian-born international fashion designer and philanthropist Gelila Assefa Puck (gelilastyle.com) has announced a partnership with the Orphaned Starfish Foundation to fund a new computer lab for a school run by the Ethiopian Children's Fund (ECF) in rural Aleltu, Ethiopia.

The Orphaned Starfish Foundation grant will support the Gelila Assefa Puck Skill Training Center, the newest addition to the celebrated ECF children's village in Aleltu. The grant will provide hardware, software, materials and trainers for ECF's first computer skills training lab. ECF plans to offer other vocational skills as additional funds are raised and the new Center expands.

More than a decade ago, Ms. Puck, who was born and raised in Addis Ababa, joined the board of ECF. There were then only 21 children in the program but today this pioneering set of children's boarding schools serves more than 400 orphaned and disadvantaged children in Ethiopia.

Said Ms. Puck: "The partnership with ECF is the first entry of the Orphaned Starfish Foundation into Africa and it will provide disadvantaged Ethiopian children with critically-needed skills. This vocational training is absolutely vital to preparing the children for the jobs they will need to support themselves and to raise healthy, independent families – which has always been the ultimate goal of the Ethiopian Children's Fund."

Added Ms. Puck: "I am delighted at this new development and will be excited to watch how the new computers and this new program will transform the lives of these incredible children."

Gelila Assefa Puck is an internationally known designer of fine couture gowns and handbags, and philanthropist who was born and schooled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Gelila's couture fashion brand, Gelila Style, is rooted in her East African heritage and today is principally focused on a distinctive handbag line, which includes simple, classic clutches and bags made from crocodile, ostrich and African springbok.

Gelila and her husband, superchef Wolfgang Puck, support numerous other charities worldwide, and were both honored in March of 2009 by the Children's Institute in Southern California with the prestigious Champion of Children Award.

Teddy Donates $87,107 to Elshadai Relief & Development Association

Addis Ababa (November 2, 2009) – Ethiopian singer/songwriter Tewodros Kassahun, a.k.a Teddy Afro, donated 1.1 million Br ($87,107) to a local NGO, Elshadai Relief & Development Association this past Friday. The money was raised from the singer’s concert at Addis Ababa Stadium on October 11, 2009 to help people with a life of begging.

In his first performance after being released early from his two-year sentence for good behavior, the 31-year-old singer performed 25 songs for his fans who packed the stadium. The association’s Executive Director, Yemane Woldemariam, received the check at a brief press conference held at the Intercontinental Addis Hotel.

Saba Anglana, Ethiopian-Italian actress & singer

November 1, 2009 -She was raised in Italy by her Italian father and Ethiopian mother. But the actress and musician Saba Anglana, who records under the name Saba, sings in Somali.

Saba was born in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, to an Ethiopian mother (born in Somalia) and Italian father during the years of General Muhammad Siyad Barre’s corrupt and repressive regime. The perennially suspicious attitude towards Italians ,and the conflict with Ethiopia over the Ogaden region, forced her family to leave the country when she was just 5 years old. Saba recalls, ‘We were a mixed-marriage family: inconvenient, perhaps a threat. I still remember nights at Bolimog (Cape Guardafui, near Alula — the extreme east point of Africa, where my father was working) when policemen came to interrogate my father, as they thought he was a US spy. In reality, he was there because he loved Africa, and my sister and I were born there.’

Saba’s father originally went to Africa to forget the extreme suffering he experienced during World War II, when he was a colonel of the Italian Forces. As a prisoner during the colonial battles in Ethiopia, Saba’s grandfather had been deported to Mogadishu, and it was there that her mother was born.. When Saba’s parents married, their close friends and family considered their union as a symbol of reconciliation and peace — finally forgetting the past conflict of Ethiopia, Somalia and Italy.

At the height of the crisis for Saba and her family, the Somali government gave them forty-eight hours to leave the country, forcing them to migrate to Italy. Since that time, a deep homesickness has always been present. ‘I wanted to learn as much of the Somali language from my mother as possible, particularly the dialect of Xamar Weyne — the quarter were she was born with my uncles and aunts.’

After doing much of her growing up in Italy, Saba studied to become a mosaicist, completing a degree in Art History at the University of Rome La Sapienza, and also became known throughout Italy for her acting roles in some well—known television programmes (La Squadra in particular, in which she played a half-Italian, half-Somali policewoman). However, music was by far her greatest and most constant passion. She recalls, ‘at the age of 8, in Addis Ababa — where we went sometimes to visit my grandmother — I remember my sister and I performing songs and dances to entertain the neighbours’. Growing up, music became her main expression and African music allowed her to mend the broken thread with her homeland.

Her Album – Jidka (The Line)

On Jidka (The Line), her musical debut, she explores the divide between Somalia and Italy with a rare sensitivity and gentle humour; mixing acoustic guitars and koras with traditional African beats and contemporary percussion. The result reflects both one woman’s search for her identity and what it means to be alive in the 21 st century, when so many people live in more than one culture.

Jidka is Saba’s way of telling her story. The word ‘Jidka’, which is the title track, means line – the line that runs on her belly and divides it into two parts – a darker side and a lighter one. This for her represents the union of diversities and the harmony that her parents found when they fell in love. Her story focuses on her identity as multilayered and with many different influences. She sings in her mother tongue – a type of Somali that is spoken in Reer Xamar, a quarter of Mogadishu, and has real expression and rhythm in itself. The result is an album which is a real mix of contemporary and traditional.

Many of the songs on the album describe the struggles of life in Somalia. ‘I Sogni’ is the story of a woman who leaves her village for the big city in search of a better life; ‘Melissa’, sung partly in English, is about the plight of many women who escaped the civil war and crossed the desert in search of freedom. ‘Je Suis Petite’ is dedicated to Africa – a continent full of suffering (’The world is cruel, and I am so little’). Other songs are more romantic, describing love and the importance of living in the moment (’Manta’). ‘Hanfarkaan’ describes how the wind is linked to the spirit – when it blows strongly it brings us into contact with the spirit of someone we have lost.

Saba is joined on djembe, guitar and percussion by long-term friend and collaborator, Taté Nsongan, from Cameroon, on kora Senegalese Lao Kouyate and on vocals Felix Moungara. The album is produced by well-known musician/composer Fabio Barovero, founder of Mau Mau and the Banda Ionica project. As Saba says, ‘we worked to realise a sound which combines past and present, tradition and modernity, with our minds open to a future of increasing cultural mixes.’