Chef Ifrah F. Ahmed’s Grub Street Diet

Chef and food writer Ifrah F. Ahmed hates to hurry through a meal. Slowness and intentionality, she says, are a key part of Somali food culture. “My approach to food is really just a way to showcase the generosity and hospitality I experienced growing up,” she adds. After immigrating to Seattle from Somalia as a child, Ahmed never dreamed of becoming a chef; she was, for many years, on track to become a lawyer, but her devotion and appreciation of food came further into focus after a trip back home in 2018. She soon launched her Somali pop-up restaurant Milk & Myrrh across New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, and later became a recipe developer and regular contributor to New York Times’ “Cooking.” Now, after a two-month-long, international book tour for her debut cookbook, Soomaaliya, Ahmed is relishing some days off. “I’ve had a lot of nice time with my daughter and husband,” she says, “which makes me happy.”

Saturday, August 15
There’s something deeply ironic about being a chef with a sensitive stomach. My stomach rules my life and sometimes feels like an entirely separate part of my body that I need to specifically cater to. As a result, I eat a variation of the same things every single morning. I’m afraid if I don’t ease into the day that I’ll be paying for it all day, and so I’m militant with my breakfasts. They’re not always eaten early in the day, but whatever I begin with needs to be light and easy — like I am presenting my stomach with a peace offering.

I wake up around 9:30 a.m. First, I have a glass of water, followed by a glass of lactose-free whole-milk kefir that has a kiss of dark maple syrup because I don’t believe in suffering. I switch off with my husband, Benjamin, and hang out with our 5-year-old daughter as he works on his projects for the day, since they both get up earlier than me on weekends. My husband is an early riser, and I am a night owl from a long lineage of night owls, so it always works out well.

I take out ginger root from the fridge. I like to get the big two-pound bag of organic ginger from Costco because it’s always fresh and the bag lasts a while. I tear off a small knob of ginger, rinse it, and plop it into my mortar and begin smashing it with a pestle. I have several different mortar-and-pestle tools that I got on a visit back home to Somalia. There’s something about smashing the ginger each morning that reminds me of my hooyo — Somali for “mother” — making tea when I was growing up. I add the ginger to a pot with water and bring it to a boil for several minutes. I wait for it to hit that light-brown color — any darker and it feels like lava burning its way down my throat. I strain the tea and add a bag of raspberry leaf tea. Ginger root is always my base tea, but on most days, I add an additional tea bag, which varies depending on my needs: raspberry leaf, spearmint, dandelion, or nettle.

After my tea, I stretch for a while and then fix a bowl of overnight oats. This is the heart of my breakfasts. I soak oats and chia seeds every two days and make a bowl each morning. I’ve been deep into fiber-maxxing this year. I add in ground flaxseed and homemade ground pumpkin seed. I also add in oat milk, collagen powder, Greek yogurt, a little maple syrup, and then top it all off with fresh fruit (usually some variation of mango, kiwi, and berries or whatever is in season). I started eating this breakfast nearly six years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I never stopped. In the winter, I switch to hot oatmeal and fruits like stewed apples. Now, everyone in my family eats it too because I am a fiber evangelist, apparently. I make my daughter a baby bowl of oats since she’s a new fan. I’m feeling pleased about this development.

Later in the morning, my daughter and I make our way to our local coffee shop. An oat vanilla iced matcha for me and a “coffee” (steamed vanilla milk) for her. We also each get a King David breakfast taco from the coffee shop with egg, cheese, and potato (mine also has beans). We walk through the tree-lined streets of our neighborhood and make our way to the Fort Greene farmers’ market around 11:45 a.m. This is our usual Saturday routine. My favorite thing to do with her is to try a lot of different samples because I’m trying to introduce new foods into her diet. We’re just coming out of the “plain pasta with butter and Parmesan” phase that she spent the last few months in. Being a professional chef and having your child only want plain pasta is hilarious, actually.

As we walk by the apple stand, we split an apple-cider doughnut. I love these doughnuts. They taste like the promise of a soon-arriving autumn.
We also share a yellow plum, and my daughter decides to try a bite of radish kimchee despite not being a fan of spice yet. We head over to the side street where the unofficial vendors go and end up running into several of my friends and chatting for a bit. I also try a sample of gazpacho from a new company called Pacho. I head over to the last booth, where Dirty Buns is set up, but my friend just ran out of his baked goods and promises to save us some next week. I like that part of the farmers’ market even more than the actual farmers’ market because I never know who will be there. It’s a little more whimsical.

After several hours of walking about, we are both exhausted by the time we make it back home. I make everyone a smoothie as a refresher. I’m so serious about fiber-maxxing that I add cannellini beans to our smoothies. They’re undetectable and make the berry-mango smoothie so creamy.

Later, we take a long walk as a family and make our way to Sawa in Park Slope, which is a wonderful Lebanese restaurant. We arrive at 7:45, just in time for our reservation, and have a lovely good-bye dinner for my husband, who is leaving for a work trip this week. We order velvety hummus topped with Wagyu-beef cheek, extra pita still hot from the oven, olives, and various pickles and batata hara with toum. By the time our main comes, we’re all a little full but nonetheless feast on a delicious fattoush salad with sumac-dusted nectarines and a delicious whole dorade with tahini, walnut, and cilantro. We end the night with mango-sticky-rice ice cream from Van Leeuwen and walk back home. Mango sticky rice has been my favorite dessert of the summer.

Sunday, August 16
My husband leaves super-early for his flight, so today marks the start of my solo parenting week. My daughter and I sleep in until around 9:30 a.m. and slowly make our way downstairs. I start with a glass of water and a glass of kefir as always, soon followed by my ritual of making ginger-root tea.

Sunday is my reset day for the week, so that means laundry, cleaning, etc. Later in the morning, my daughter and I share oats and then I make myself a hot matcha and a “coffee” for her. I love the process of making matcha for myself because the color is always a nice vibrant green, but I have to be in the mood for it. I hate making matchas in a rush. I actually hate being rushed, period. I always make myself a salted maple oat-milk matcha with a little bit of collagen powder. If flaky salt has no fans, then I’m dead.

The next few hours go by in a blur of lazing around the house and video calls with my family, who are all spread out right now. We have an especially long call with my mom, who is currently on vacation in Somalia.

Later, my daughter and I go out to a playspace. It’s like kid heaven, and it’s also amazingly convenient because they have a café area where a lot of parents get to do work. While I appreciate the option, I actually do just end up following her from floor to floor in this mental space of half-working but mostly making sure I’m there if she needs me.

Back home, I make us canjeero burritos around 2:30 p.m. This was my most popular dish during my more casual Milk & Myrrh pop-ups: Somali anjero (sourdough pancake) filled with fuul (spiced fava-bean stew), cheesy eggs, avocado, and basbaas (hot sauce) for me. I’ll be bringing these back again soon, but it’s really nice to make them in a non-service environment, which means I actually get to eat and enjoy them.

We go back out to run errands before dinner. My daughter gets a very specific craving for lasagna, but it’s too late to start on one, so we walk over to the Italian restaurant that’s a few streets over and I order lasagna to go. I’m genuinely surprised when they say there’s no pork — we don’t eat pork — in the meat because of how often lasagna has a pork and beef mix. I typically don’t order things like lasagna out because usually I prefer to make Somali lasagna (or literally any Somali pasta), but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you gotta do. I make us a Caesar roasted-broccoli salad at home to pair with the lasagna. I have my emotional support La Croix with dinner. Once my daughter is in bed, I end the night with ginger-mint tea.

Monday, August 17
I wake up to my second alarm at 7:15 a.m. I do not set an alarm on weekends, but my alarm rules me Monday through Friday. And by alarm, I mean alarms (I set four because I am a heavy sleeper).

It’s my daughter’s last week at camp. We get dressed, I drink a glass of water and feed her breakfast and make her lunch, and then we head to Dumbo. I don’t like to eat in a rush, so I save my own breakfast for when I return from dropping her off.

On the way back, I stop by Otway bakery and grab a blueberry corn muffin. It’s really hard living so close to a good bakery. I set the muffin aside for later and begin with my kefir. I do a quick workout and have my ginger-raspberry tea and oats as usual. It’s so nice having one meal that I don’t have to think about or really plan too deeply.

Then I have matcha and half of the blueberry corn muffin. I save the other half for my daughter because she’ll love it and I shouldn’t really be eating gluten anyways. I work until around noon before heading out to the G train for a doctor’s appointment in Greenpoint. On the way back, I grab a salmon bento box from Acre to have for dinner later on because I know my daughter loves it and I’m never in Greenpoint. Back home, I make myself my New York Times furikake egg-salad recipe and eat it standing up at the counter with matchsticks of crunchy Persian cucumber.

I work for a few more hours. Monday is always my admin day, so it’s mostly emails and planning. I have some chef jobs coming up and a second book tour in the fall, so there’s a lot of coordination that needs to happen. The one thing about having a creative job, though, is that you’re also always working in random bursts of time.

After picking up my daughter, we’re back home around 6 p.m. I make us a smoothie, and I clear the rest of my evening to hang out with her. For dinner, we share the salmon bento box. I love Acre; the food is always good. The bento box has salmon, salad, pickles, rice, and Brussels sprouts. Do I even need to mention the nightly La Croix? It’s … medicinal. Much like my oat habit, my dedication to La Croix began during pregnancy, when I had to switch from my daily ginger beer to something with significantly less sugar. I’ve never looked back.

I put my daughter to bed, drink some ginger tea, and do a bit more work before going to bed around 1 a.m. Unfortunately, I am the most focused at night, but I’m trying to learn how to go to bed earlier — something I’ve been working on my entire life with little luck.

Tuesday, August 18
This time I wake up to my first alarm, which is surprising. I take my daughter to camp and then make my way back home to Clinton Hill. Today is a call-heavy day for me, so I have my kefir-oats with fruit-matcha between the calls that I take while on my walking pad. I yearn to go for a run as a runner of nearly 15 years, but I’ve been recovering from a series of back-to-back foot and leg injuries for the last year, so I just have to stick with my walking pad for the foreseeable future.

I also make a big pot of Asian-pear and ginger-root tea to sip on throughout the day, because I feel a little tickle in my throat. I love making this tea when I start feeling a little under the weather. I usually add cinnamon bark and cloves as well because it makes the tea super-aromatic. Growing up, my mom would always make this kind of tea for any ailments, so I feel a bit like her when I carry on the tradition.

In the early afternoon, I start making hilib geel (camel meat) that I found sitting in my freezer and thawed in the fridge overnight. I haven’t had camel meat since we did the photo shoot for my debut cookbook, Soomaaliya — it’s not an easy ingredient to find in New York. I grew up in Seattle, where there is a large Somali community and it’s so much easier to find specialty cultural foods there. Luckily, I live in a time when I can order camel meat online from Somali purveyors like Juba Farms in Kansas. I wonder what the nomadic herders of my grandparent’s generation would think about this.

The meat is already cut into small pieces, but I prep the garlic, cilantro, and onions and cook it slowly together with the meat until the onions get jammy and the meat is tender. While that’s cooking, I mix together the dough for sabaayad and let it rest. Sabaayad is a flatbread that is like a cousin of Kenyan chapati and an Indian paratha. Once the meat is close to being done, I start rolling out my sabaayad and pan-frying it. I shouldn’t be eating dishes like sabaayad or lasagna because I do have a gluten sensitivity, but I make occasional exceptions for delicious things and just deal with the outcome. Camel meat is highly regarded in my culture, so it does feel a little luxurious to be having it for lunch on a random Tuesday.

I pick up my daughter from camp, and we share some ripe fruits and cut up veggies as a snack. For dinner, I make us a spicy tuna bowl with rice, avocado, cucumber, and seaweed and I finish my meal with a La Croix. After she’s in bed, I make myself a cacao oat-milk hot chocolate with maple syrup, sea salt, and collagen powder and read a little. It’s a perfect drink for just before bed.

Wednesday August 19
After camp drop-off, I get home around 9:15 a.m. and have a glass of kefir as I make another pot of Asian-pear and ginger-root tea. It was so good yesterday that I’m craving it again today.

Today is an intense writing day for me, so I bust out my walking pad again and put together my walking desk. When I was writing my book, I accidentally figured out that I focused best while working on a walking desk with a several-hours-long “Binaural Beats” YouTube playlist blasting in the background. I guess you could say I finished my book thanks to a walking pad, a “40 Hz” YouTube playlist, and a dream in my heart.

Before hopping on my walking pad, I eat my overnight oats and fruit and make myself a matcha. I largely gave up coffee about five years ago because it oddly made me very tired, and I have since preferred matcha.

I work continuously for several hours and then realize I’m starving and make myself a quick egg scramble and eat it with feta, heirloom-tomato slices with black pepper, and salted Persian cucumbers for lunch. I grill some Ajwa dates and have them with sea salt as a sweet treat. I first tried Ajwa dates last March, when I worked on a dinner with my friend and fellow chef Danny Garcia for the James Beard Foundation. He made these, and I was hooked.

Before I head out to grab my daughter, I clean and soak basmati rice in cold water for the hour that I am gone. My best friend, Asiya Gaildon, is joining us for dinner tonight, and I am making a traditional Somali meal.

We get home around six, and I make us a quick smoothie and then get started on making the aromatic spiced bariis (rice), tender hilib ari (goat meat), potatoes, and salad. I serve our dinner a little while after Asiya arrives with a side of sweet banana and basbaas (hot sauce). Somalis love to pair bananas with our rice and other main dishes. The aromatic rice and fork-tender goat pair really nicely with the sweet creaminess of the banana and heat of the basbaas. I also love to add a squeeze of lime.

After dinner, I put my daughter to bed. Once she’s asleep, I make Asiya and I shaah (spiced black tea). My friend Hamda runs a Somali tea company in London called Ayeeyo’s Blends, and I love her tea mix. Asiya and I catch up and talk about my book tour and the work she’s been doing on her upcoming debut novel. We’ve been friends for a decade and first met as aspiring writers, so it’s been amazing to be on this journey together.

Asiya heads out, and I read a little before getting ready for bed.

Thursday August 20
I wake up at 6:45 a.m. because my daughter really wants malawax. Malawax is this delicious, paper-thin, cardamom-studded crêpe that is cooked in ghee until it has lacy edges and is then topped with sugar. I opt out of the sugar and make our malawax maple flavored. I’m down to my last container of subag (or ghee) that I got in Somalia on my last trip. I’m dreaming of the day I can bring back more and smoky Somali honey but in the meantime have asked my mom to bring back some in September. My daughter eats several malawax, and I set the batter aside for myself when I return from drop-off.

After my own breakfast, I have recipe testing and development work to do so I get lost in that for most of the day. I end up eating testing leftovers and malawax for lunch.

Around noon, I soak Rancho Gordo heirloom beans that Dylan Rupert, one of my closest and oldest friends, brought me when she stayed with us a few weeks prior, during her visit from L.A. She’s a thoughtful gift giver, and I always appreciate when my friends bring me food gifts — they all have great taste.

I bring my daughter home and put the beans in the pot to cook for a bit. My daughter and I split a smoothie (bean-maxxing). For dinner, I cook the beans in Somali spices and serve them with rice, sautéed greens, and sea bass.

After my La Croix, I end the night with ginger tea.

Friday August 21
Today is a shoot day for me. After I get back from drop-off, I stop by Hungry Ghost for a dark-chocolate croissant. I bring it back home, where I save half for my daughter and have my usual breakfast assortment, followed by the croissant.

Later, I start filming. I have to pause around 3 p.m. to go meet my old friend Kirby Calvin for coffee at Canyon Coffee in Prospect Heights. Luckily the walk isn’t too far, and we end up sitting outside, where I randomly run into my friend Nate Kinsella. I’m surprised to see him because I thought he was on tour; the last time we saw him was this past month, when my husband and I went to see his band American Football at Brooklyn Paramount. It’s a nice two-for-one catch-up. The matcha is pretty good, and Kirby gives me a bite of his gluten-free gigante bean-and-miso-herb toast — which I really like.

I run home around 4:30 p.m. to get ready to pick up my daughter. Once I get to Dumbo, we decide to go out and celebrate since it’s the end of her last day of camp. We end up eating a margherita pizza on a rooftop overlooking the Manhattan skyline. I have a slice of her pizza, but she eats most of it.

By the time we get home, I’m starving. I’m really in the mood for Persian food, and I wistfully look up the menu from Berenjak because I found out they’re doing a New York residency. I had an amazing meal at Berenjak when I was in London, and I’m already planning on going back this fall. I see that the residency is only open to Soho House members, which annoys me, so I order myself my favorite Thai takeout — pad see ew with steak — from Ler Lers. It arrives just as I’m putting my daughter to bed. The steak is tender and smoky, and the noodles are truly perfect.

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