Somali Immigrants Find Home in the Frozen North of Minnesota and Maine

Goat meat, apricot-tinted saffron rice, bananas sliced into coins, green chutney—the things you find in Somali-American restaurants are the same things you find in Somali-American homes. In this way, it’s an easy cuisine to get to know, because the “real” food, the stuff Grandma makes, is right there on the menu.

But in another way, it’s a hard cuisine to get to know—and a hard people to get to know.

Somalia sheaths...