Cooking is Abdikarim’s way of sharing memories with her mum and her Somali culture with her children.

“I guess cooking is very special because it's a time when you enjoy, you talk, you discuss, you have culture — for me it’s also the memory triggers,” she said.

“My kids are born in Australia and they have no idea about the memory I’m talking about.

“All I can do is give them the experience and when I cook the rice they know — they love my rice.”

Her fried rice is fragrant with cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, garlic, coriander and plenty of love.

“It reminds me of Fridays where I lived in Mombasa, which is in Kenya’s coastal area — Friday was a special day,” she said.

“ … Fridays is where you invest on buying spices and really cooking good food, and the smell in the neighbourhood — that’s amazing, that’s Fridays.

“I guess I do the same special dish on Fridays.”

Typical ingredients in her Granville kitchen include mango, tamarind, pumpkin, papaya, coconut, sweet potato leaves, adzuki beans, and crushed maize.

In Kenya she would grind huge amounts of maize to use in place of rice.

“You couldn’t afford to buy rice every day so we would have maize every day except Fridays or special occasions you would cook rice,” she said.

Abdikarim is one of many community cooks that will serve up a vast array of dishes at the annual Africultures festival in Lidcombe next week where 40 countries will be represented.

Crispy Sambusas pastries from East Africa, vibrant red jollof rice from West Africa and teff flatbread injera from Ethiopia — and of course Somali fried rice — will jostle for space at more than a dozen stalls.