Nubian Cuisine

Egypt’s Nubians are experts in pairing nature with taste. Agricul¬ture along the narrow strip of the Nile valley provided them with the necessary food supply. Barley, sorghum and wheat were the most commonly cultivated crops and, accordingly, bread is perhaps the most widely produced food item as best attested in the bakeries and ovens of Kerma, one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nu-bia.
Start with corn flour, mix it with water and plop it into a casserole dish before the paste is spread on a mud hearth. The dough is baked until the edges crisp, the top turns golden and the centre collapses into a molten mass to create what is commonly known among Nubians as kabed, a refined and extremely delicious bread.
The ancient recipe, passed on through generations of Nubians, can be upgraded by adding yeast before baking. The tasty bread is widely eaten by Nubians, either as a dessert with milk and honey or with main courses of vegetables and meat.

This cuisine is part of the Nubi¬ans’ seemingly dying culture. The mouth-watering dishes are cooked today only in the homes of the few Nubians who live in southernmost Egypt or in New Nubia, an artificial amalgam of houses and villages also in southern Egypt, where Nu-bians were resettled after being evacuated from what is now the site of Egypt’s High Dam in the ear¬ly 1960s.
Most “Nubians in the diaspora”, as some describe the people who were forced to leave their homes and settle in other parts of Egypt, no longer cook the traditional dish¬es.

However, in their own communi¬ties, Nubians dig deep flavours out of plants they grow on the banks of the Nile or in the backyard of their homes. They use okra, courgettes, spinach, peas, beans and carrots to create the most magnificent of dishes.
Although most of these veg¬etables are used in other Egyptian cooking,

One of Nubians’ most interesting dishes is made of camel liver.
Raw camel liver is chopped into small pieces to which slivered onions marinated in vinegar are added. The ingredients are then blended with chili sauce, cumin and coriander. The mixture is eaten raw. The dish is widespread among Nubians who say it has nutritious and beneficial effects.
Nubians also use meat, chicken and fish — usually salty fish — to cook dishes passed from one gen¬eration to another to preserve their culinary culture.
In making their aromatic dishes, Nubians use simple and primitive tools, ones commensurate with their austere surroundings and the few resources the local environ¬ment offers.
Most Nubian kitchens are equipped with a traditional mud hearth for cooking, trays, bow¬els and dishes, some of which are made of mud and others of glass and, above all, clay water coolers.
With the help of Nubian intellec¬tuals, Saleh has been trying to doc-ument Nubian cuisine and culinary culture by collecting information about the different dishes and the ways they are cooked.

Nubian cuisine and some of its recipes date back 5,000 years and archaeologists have found the use of food as a means of payment dur¬ing ancient times. Of course, there have been adjustments to the dish¬es over the years, mainly with the addition of ingredients and styles from other cultures