Read an excerpt from Marvel’s Black Panther: The Official Cookbook of Wakanda with an introduction by Ndi Chikondi, Executive Chef of the Royal Palace of Wakanda.
Wakanda’s food is like nowhere else and, at the same time, everywhere one could travel to in the universe, because Wakanda lives in everyone’s heart. He was destined to be a culinary from the womb. My iya agba (grandmother), iya (mother) and Anti (aunt) Bahiya created a legacy through growing and preparing food, and I dedicate this first Wakandan cookbook to these powerful women.
We were raised as Wakandans to practice a healthy lifestyle, eating lots of fresh fruits such as mangoes and bananas, fish from Nyanza (Lake Victoria), and peanuts that can be farmed. Growing our own vegetables is part of customary life here. If you have land, you cultivate it. Most of us have chimanga (corn) in our backyards that we use to dry and turn into cornmeal. We also love to eat it fresh and give ears away.
My grandmother was a farmer along with my grandfather. During World War II, when King Azzuri was fighting against the Nazi invasion, my grandparents supplied the Royal Palace with products from his farm. They grew lemon trees and lime trees, they grew peanuts like peanuts, and they grew corn and hearty vegetables like kale and collard greens. They also raised goats, oxen and chickens. It was on this farm that my mother and Anti Bahiya grew up and where I was born.
Both my mother and my anti attended school in their town and worked on the farm before and after. It was when they were young that my grandfather was killed during a tribal conflict, leaving my grandmother farming alone. It was then that my mother and Anti Bahiya decided to start a business together. Anti Bahiya was seventeen and my mother fifteen. They were going to open a food stall in the Birnin Zana Market in the Golden City. They started with one dish, making a chicken curry stew and selling chicken dishes, nsima and kabichi, a curried cabbage salad. My mother wasn’t an inventive cook, but my anti thought like a chef. The more they visited the market, the more elaborate their meal ideas became. His small street food business gained notoriety near and far.
Word of the young women spread with the delicious food and soon they were serving not only the day workers but also the staff of the Royal Palace. Their food reached the mouths of King T’Chaka and his wife N’Yami. On their days off, members of the Dora Milaje would stop by their latest creations. My Anti Bahiya was creating recipes like zoumba moa, a snack of dried mushrooms, and baked sweet potatoes with oatmeal and walnuts found at the market that Dora Milaje could take with her during training.
After months of selling food at the market, my mother fell in love with one of her regular customers. My father was an engineer who worked for the Wakandan army and lived in the Golden City. He continued to attend school and work with his sister. He dreamed of getting married and having a daughter to whom he could pass on the family business. Anti Bahiya’s future would be very different.
The Dora Milaje fell in love with my anti’s snacks. They could see that she was a hard worker and her intelligence shone through her creative recipes, as well as her quick thinking while working at the concession stand, all qualities that the Dora Milaje looks for in a new recruit. One day, they came to her with an offer from her. They said that they had spoken to the elders of her tribe and that she had been chosen to join them and train at Upanga. At seventeen, my anti was initiated as the Dora Milaje. Later, my mother married and my father moved to her family’s land to help her on the farm.
My mother continued to make and sell food at the Birnin Zana market and when I was born, she brought me with her as a baby. As soon as I could get hold of a knife, she was cutting cabbage for salad. At home, I would sit with her while she prepared meals for the next day. Once I was old enough to go to school, in the mornings I would go with my father to feed the chickens. And in the afternoons he would meet my mother at the market.
He often received letters from Anti Bahiya. He was telling me about his adventures, traveling the world defending Wakanda and protecting King T’Chaka and young T’Challa. She always included the new foods she was discovering and explained to me, “Wakanda is everywhere!” She promised that one day I too would see the world outside of Wakanda.
One day, his promise came true. She was eighteen years old and had been working on the farm and the market with my mother. We had lamb kebabs and samosas that day and they were running out fast. A woman came up and asked for one of each. She returned shortly after, exclaiming that it was the best samosa she had ever tasted. I blushed and thanked him. She then revealed that she worked for N’Charu Silema and that she knew my Anti Bahiya. My heart began to race, I had never met anyone from King T’Challa’s inner circle. She explained that the king and his sister needed a new private chef to join the palace staff and that I had been offered the job. They told me to go home and pack my things and that the next day I would start.
This was the best day of my life, and that night we celebrated with a feast of braised oxtail, smoked fish, nsima, and kale. The next morning, I said goodbye to my mother and father and headed to the Wakandan School for Alternative Studies. It was there that they taught me how to incorporate technology into my kitchen. Wakandans do not traditionally use fossil fuels for cooking. We try to use environmentally friendly cooking techniques. At the Wakandan School of Alternative Studies we use dehydration and temperature controlled machines for cooking instead of firewood or charcoal. It was all new to me and I loved it! Once I graduated I took up residency at the Royal Palace. King T’Challa began to request special diplomatic trips from me. I have catered many dinners at the Wakandan Embassy in New York City.
It was through my travels that I saw what Anti Bahiya said in all his letters. There were signs of Wakanda everywhere. I had always thought that mangoes and pineapples were a Wakandan secret, but I saw them in the street markets of New York. Sometimes I could find goat in the Caribbean markets, but there was also lamb, which I found to be a good substitute. I also saw the spices of my homeland in African grocery stores that sold dried crawfish. Sweet potatoes, kale and tomatoes were plentiful. I began creating dishes that incorporated everything I was seeing and everything I had learned from the braised chicken at the market to the sous vide yams I saw in restaurants around town.
This cookbook is a tribute to the warm heart that lives deep within the African continent and how, through its food, that love has spread throughout the world.
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