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Thursday, February 22, 2001 By Marlene Parrish, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Pittsburgh is home to many African immigrants. Roberta Patricia Rashid of Highland Park is a native of Liberia, a country on the west coast of Africa that was established by United States philanthropic societies as a homeland for former slaves.
Carnegie Museum of Natural History is featuring "Africa: One Continent, Many Worlds," a traveling exhibition representing the many facets of Africa. The exhibit runs through May 13.
At the museum cafe, executive chef Donald Sedivy has offered an African-style food special every day in February. Watch for doro wat, a chicken stew from Ethiopia, Marrakesh couscous, Nigerian mango salad and matata, a clam and peanut stew from Mozambique, among others.
Rashid honored our visit by preparing a buffet of African dishes. She wore a Liberian lappa suit, a two-piece dress with a wrap-around skirt and a heavily embroidered top usually worn for church and celebrations.
"My great-great-great grandfather was the son of a free slave who immigrated to Liberia," says Rashid. "All of my family lived there. Then my grandmother fell in love with an American soldier stationed at a military base. They married, and he returned to the States. A daughter [Rashid's mother] was born and was left in Liberia to be raised by relatives after the bride left for America. The young couple settled in Boston before eventually moving to Pittsburgh.
"When I was ready to finish high school in Liberia, my grandmother, whom I'd never met, invited me to come to Pittsburgh to live for a year. That day in 1975, when I came to this country, was the first day I saw her. But since she looked just like all the rest of my relatives, I felt right at home and we got along great. I finished my senior year at Peabody High School."
Rashid stayed in Pittsburgh to go on to college and various jobs, and now works in the human resources department at IBM Pittsburgh Laboratory. Along the way, she met her husband, Ouse Rashid, a native of Gambia in West Africa. He works for US Airways.
The couple put down roots and began to raise their family. They returned to Africa for a six-week vacation in 1985 and plan to go again in a few years.
An African table
Because the food of every geographic region has a flavor profile, we asked Rashid which tastes, which foods, most identify Liberia. "Rice is one of our main foods," says Rashid. "And you will always find palm oil, cassava, onions and cayenne pepper. If I have those things, I can cook African. My food will taste African."
Rashid pointed to the various casseroles of her native foods on the buffet and explained them. "I cook African food all the time. These would be part of any special meal -- jollof rice, chicken and beef with cassava leaf sauce, plain rice, rice bread, plaintains and sweet potatoes with a fish gravy."
Jollof rice is a typical dish and almost everybody's favorite, according to Rashid. In her version, peas, carrots, corn and green beans are cooked in oil, then stirred with tomato paste, herbs and cubes of beef and chicken. The mixture is added to rice and baked. The dish, which looks similar to Asian fried rice, has a unique flavor.
Cassava leaf sauce coats chunks of beef and chicken. The sauce, made of ground cassava leaves and spices, is dark green, tinted with an orange-colored oil.
"Oh, that's the palm oil you see," says Rashid. "It's hard to find and very expensive. When my friends go to African markets in New York and Washington, D.C., they bring it back for me."
The bright orange palm oil, native to Africa, is the color of molten sun. This highly saturated oil has little flavor but is prized for its cooking properties. To make it, the nuts of the native palm are cooked and mashed until the oil separates from the nut meat. The oil is used in cooking and the mash is turned into a product called palm butter, which is used with rice and a dish called fufu, a sort of pudding.
Rice bread is popular, but the name can be misleading. Bread, no, cake, yes. The moist, tender squares look and taste like a lush carrot cake or corn bread, with mashed plantains giving them texture.
Plantains, boiled and plain, add another starchy note. You'd swear they were cooked with sugar, but the flavor is intrinsic to the banana-like fruit, which is often referred to as a vegetable-banana.
Are those boiled Idaho potatoes? Definitely not. Plain boiled white sweet potatoes are aromatic and definitely sweet, and no seasoning is added. They are also difficult to find outside of African markets.
Fish gravy is another pretender. To serve with the boiled sweet potatoes, Rashid makes a topping of sauteed onions, vegetables, salted herring and perch fillets. "We serve different gravies with our starches," Rashid says.
But her idea of a gravy isn't the same as the American definition. African gravies are more like stews. The dish is beautiful, delicious and filling.
Rashid's younger daughter Fatima, 12, joins us as we talk and eat. She's a student at Frick International School. "At home in Liberia, parents teach boys and girls to cook at age 12," says the elder Rashid.
"The first few times, they just watch. But by the age of 14, kids are expected to be able to cook for their families."
Fatima smiles, and says she's still in the watching stage.
Their other daughter, Ramatoulie, 22, is in her last semester at Oberlin College. Says Rashid: "She had a hard time adjusting to bland college food when she first went away. I sent her some seasoning and herb packets so she could add it to her food to make it taste familiar."
Rashid says she never uses a cookbook. "I taste as I go, and if something is missing, I just keep adding things until it tastes right."
Rashid has many opportunities to show off her native cooking skills. She was recently elected president of the Liberian Association of Greater Pittsburgh. "We have about 40 active members who meet once a month," she says. "Our goal is to give relief to Liberia. And locally, we help families by cooking for weddings and funerals, that sort of thing. It's hard being far away from home. We try to be family to each other."
Liberians tend to eat at home, rather than go to restaurants, according to Rashid. "When we do want to go out, we usually go to a Szechuan Chinese restaurant," she says. "The food is also rice-based, spicy and always topped with vegetables and meats just like our Liberian foods."
Both African native foods and clothing are hard to find in Pittsburgh, according to Rashid. "I grocery shop at Asian International Shop in Wilkinsburg at the corner of Penn and Wood. And I buy my special wardrobe at Maat, a store in Garfield that imports African men's, women's and children's clothing."
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