NYTable

New York sits down to dinner

May 1st, 2015  |  Published in Uncategorized

Cabbie preserves homemade Sunday supper

Papa Khouma, 27, prepares his favorite dish, Mafe. Photo by: Nardos Mesmer

Papa Khouma, 27, prepares his favorite dish, Mafe. Photo: Nardos Mesmer.

 

Papa Khouma’s Sunday starts when he wakes up, at around 2 p.m., and goes to the grocery store in Weehawken, New Jersey. He and his roommate walk six blocks to get what they need at Path Mark –  the ingredients for Mafe, a Senegalese classic that Khouma makes twice a month, so there was no need for a grocery list.

Khouma picked up two pounds of lamb, two jars of Smucker’s creamy organic peanut butter,  diced garlic, yucca, two sweet potatoes, tomato paste, Maggi seasoning salt, a bag of okra, extra virgin olive oil, an onion, baby carrots and passion fruit juice. The rest of the ingredients to make Mafe were at home: crushed red pepper, black pepper, salt, lemon juice and spicy brown mustard.

“I’m a very picky eater when it comes to food,” Khouma said. “I like to know what I’m eating. You feel more comfortable when you know how your food is made.”

Every Sunday the young Senegalese cab driver goes grocery shopping for his only big homemade dinner of the week, because his work as a cabbie limit his meals on the other days. Khouma, 27, is a night-shift cab driver who works between eight and 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday, with the occasional Saturday shift. He works in New York City but lives in Weehawken with his 20-year-old roommate, Hussein Ba, who works for a caterer.

While Ba cut and peeled the sweet potatoes, Khouma chopped the lamb into thin strips and covered it in spicy mustard to marinate for at least 30 minutes. Then he coated the bottom of a big cast iron pot with extra virgin olive oil, browned the lamb, and let to cook it for a while before he added the rest of the ingredients: big chunks of sweet potatoes and yucca, lemon juice, diced garlic and onions, Maggi, tomato paste, okra, crushed red pepper, black pepper, salt, and hot water. The peanut butter balanced the spicy flavors and made the sauce very rich and thick.

On weekday mornings, Khouma will eat bread with butter or peanut butter and an omelet with coffee. Sometimes breakfast is the only meal he has for the rest of the day, because of his busy schedule. If he wants a quick meal mid-day, he’ll stop at a Senegalese restaurant in Harlem to satisfy his hunger pains. For dinner, if he can muster up the energy to cook, Khouma may have something like spaghetti with asparagus, a quick and simple meal, but often he doesn’t eat when he gets home at midnight, or he settles for leftovers.

Khouma learned how to cook Senegalese food from his mother, who lives with his father in the Bronx.

“When I first got here, I felt like I was in prison,” said Khouma, who got his green card eight years ago. “This was a whole new life. I managed.”

To Khouma, the United States was a difficult place to live because he did not know how to speak English and had to learn new customs— like looking at people directly in the eye to signify that you are honest. In his culture, it is considered rude to do that. 

Mafe has lamb and a variety of vegetables, including okra.  It looks like stew before the peanut butter is added last to balance the spicy flavors and make the sauce very rich and thick. Photo by: Nardos Mesmer

Mafe has lamb and a variety of vegetables, including okra. It looks like stew before the peanut butter is added, to balance the spicy flavors and thicken the sauce. Photo: Nardos Mesmer.

 

He said he is happier living in New Jersey.

“The main reason why I moved to New Jersey is because of my school and I liked it so much that I don’t want to go back to New York,” said Khouma. “I like the quietness. It’s a peaceful environment and also it’s very safe. It’s actually a lot safer than the Bronx. It’s a sacred spot that not many people know about and that’s why I like it.”

The neighborhood in which he lives in is very quiet, family-oriented and slow-paced. Across the street from Khouma’s apartment is Hamilton Park, clear blue water and Manhattan’s skyline. This is a life opposite that of a cab driver, which he finds stressful because everything is fast-paced. And it is a convenient refuge: The bus stop is right across the street. This is his mode of transportation unless he is late, in which case he usually catches the ferry. Khouma drives someone else’s cab and pays $1,000 per week to use it because he does not have enough money to pay for his own medallion.

“I am a cab driver because I like the convenience of living in a quiet neighborhood that is only 15-minutes away from work,” Khouma said. “I like the freedom of being my own boss and making my own schedule. I feel free.”

Although he no longer lives in the Bronx with his parents, he visits them on Saturday afternoons.

Papa Khouma serves himself Mafe, a Senegalese classic that he makes twice a month. Photo by: Nardos Mesmer

Papa Khouma serves himself Mafe, a Senegalese classic that he makes twice a month. Photo: Nardos Mesmer.

 

The two roommates normally eat on trays in the living room, and on this night they discussed politics while they ate. They had turned CNN on, but they did not watch it.  Khouma says that he is shy, but when he voices his opinions about foreign policy or current events, he is knowledgeable and speaks with passion.

After dinner, the two rested for 10 minutes and then headed out to soccer, another stress-reliever. Khouma tucked the leftover Mafe away in the refrigerator, to be eaten again as a midnight snack.

Currently he is a student at New Jersey City University, studying to be an electrical engineer. He started in 2012 and anticipates that he will graduate in 2017 – taking classes when he has the money, taking a break to save up more when he runs out.

 

Your Comments