At the Migrateful cookery school in central London, chef Najee teaches family recipes from back home to a group of young professionals. — Screengrab from AFP videoLONDON, June 20 — At the Migrateful cookery school in central London, chefs Najee and Sanobar help their Syrian colleague Faten teach family recipes from back home to a group of young professionals.
Traditional Middle Eastern music plays throughout, and at the end of the three-hour class, students and teachers sit down together to enjoy the fruits of their labour.For Najee, an artist who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, cooking and sharing meals among strangers creates a sense of camaraderie that brings people closer.
“I was really impressed. Everyone was so kind,” he said, even if he admitted being nervous at the start. Sanobar Majidova left her native Uzbekistan for the UK to provide a better education for her children. A year after she arrived in 2019, lockdown began.To keep her children happy, every day she would scour the internet in search of new recipes to cook for them.
Many of their chefs go on to obtain full-time employment in restaurants or run their own catering business.