Riffat’s Kuku Paka

Riffat Khalfan, my mother-in-law, is a community leader I’ve admired from afar for most of my life. She’s a vision of elegance and strength and inspires many women she meets. While she might not care for food in the romanticized way that I do (unless we’re talking about butter), we do bond over a shared admiration for discipline, faith, a good deal, and clothes, of course.

Kuku paka, a coconut milk–based chicken curry, is an East African classic, and every family does it a little di