For Amani, it was coffee which brought her family together: “the smell of coffee reminds me of home – to me it means the gathering of family: we would go to prayer, and after that my Grandmother would prepare coffee and we would all sit around her and drink it together”.

Amani remembers: “It is made like Turkish coffee – really strong, very dark brown, without milk and with some herbs in it”.

Amani moved to Bristol from her home country of Sudan, North Africa, nine years ago when she married her husband.

The food Amani cooks here in the UK is closer to her Sudanese roots than when she was living in Sudan.

“My husband came here in 1995 and I arrived 11 years later when we got married. When I came here I found that people who’ve lived here for a long time like my husband like to eat traditional Sudanese food, so I had to learn how to cook it here even more than back home in Sudan!

It’s the same with our Sudanese friends too: when we have visitors they ask if I can make traditional food for them”.

“I think it’s because they just miss it here”.