Safiloan Cuisine includes:
Fermented Seaweed Salad
Variety of fermented local seaweeds accompanied by young bamboo shoot & garlic paste sauce.
Served atop a teff sponge pancake (injera).
Red & Green Salad
A relatively modern dish, lightly massaged young Red Russian kale is topped with savory basil-cashew & nutritional yeast cream sauce, pistachio crumbs, and pomegranate arils.
Spring’s Gift
This Safiloan holiday dish is made with rice, beans, and a semi-fried alternative meat sausage using seeded Cat’s Claw beans, and hydrated yellow lentils. The mixture is wrapped in a thin sorghum-base edible paper and then further wrapped in a large banana leaf. Historically, these were only eaten during the New Year/Spring celebration, but tourists can partake whenever.
Fermented Sharknut Brie
An indigenous relative to the Tigernut-which is also grown and consumed here, Rednuts have a notable savory taste similar to dried mushrooms. A paste is made by grounded Rednuts, wrapped in seaweed, and then left to ferment. The easy-to-spread “brie”-like paste is a Safiloan childhood classic and staple sandwich insert.
Mashed walnuts
Mashed Safiloan walnuts, garlic, salt, Safiloan cinnamon (a coumarin-rich spice, similar to Tonka beans), and black olives contribute to another memorable smear-able paste to consume with your favorite crackers.
Barbecued Watermelon & Pineapple
Exactly like it sounds.
Fried Silkworm pupae & Pomegranate wine-fed Periodical Cicadas
Safiloan cuisine is 99% vegan friendly, however, on a few special holidays, locals (and only locals) are not only permitted but encouraged to partake in the eating of certain insects and other invetebrates. Silkworm pupae, honey, bamboo worms, and other caterpillars and grubs, as well as oysters, snails, slugs, scorpions, become - almost overnight - high in demand in Safiloa. Notably, the amount of preparation and care that goes into safeguarding periodical cicada farms is impressive. Only fed papaya, pomegranate, and watermelon leaves and leftovers, creates after 12 years, an extremely delectable cicada, which is emerge from the ground laced with the fruity alcoholic concoction infused into their little bodies. Unfortunately, insect consumption by tourists and non-citizen foreigners has been deemed illegal.
