Before I get side tracked as I always do, I thought I would share some great news with you over here at Africa On The Blog. Some of you have, over the years, watched me talk my mouth off on hot topics which get me into trouble, and you have also watched me mellow down and just focus on one of my passions: food writing.
I am so pleased to share with you that it is paying off. A few months ago, About.com reached out to me in search of an African cuisine expert. ME? What? Meeeeee? Yes, me. And so I have been busy for the past 2 months, tinkering away on developing a brand new site for them and creating content. Together we give you a new African cuisine site on the About.com platform…..
Africancuisine.about.com
OMG I have another client!!!!!!!!! Africa On The Blog was of course my first! (wink!) But I digress.
A few years ago when I started blogging about food, there was barely any information out there about where to go or what one could learn about African cuisine. In fact, to be able to search for food of any kind, one would have had to be an expert in the cuisine of a particular country, or at least have a working knowledge of the local language. There are just no English names for African dishes, unless you are willing to describe the dish as a sentence. Perhaps you had come across a dish at a wedding or during travels and remembered what it tasted like and looked like, and not what it was called. At that time, what could you have done?
For instance, one could not have gone to Google and, for lack of knowing the name of a particular cuisine in a particular language, searched for “that red rice from West Africa.” This may have been true 4 years ago, but for the record, I searched today and what came up was none other than jollof rice. Well done! Whilst I love it that the popularity of African food is spreading, I think we need to keep going strong and step up our game as African writers on food and beyond.
Over the next coming weeks, I will be introducing my food column. I am looking forward to sharing with you on things such as my favourite cooks, what I am reading, food writers and celebrity chefs. I will also be doing a couple of book reviews as well as food reviews in “Freede’s taste test” where I will actually put a packaged African inspired or African product and taste it. It looks like things are going to get pretty busy around here, but a bit of sweat never hurt anybody especially when it is a passion to share the food culture of Africa. I hope you enjoy it. And please do check out the new African cuisine site, I hope you enjoy it too.
By the way, try the search for “that red rice from West Africa” and the top 5 sites which come up on Google are Food.com, Wikipedia, The Congo Cookbook, Chefinyou and Whats4Eats. I actually cannot wait for the day that a Google search will return, at least from my view, the most recognised and popular African cuisine sites. Let’s wait and see.
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