This Refugee-Run Catering Company Cures Homesickness With Hummus

On a current afternoon in a kitchen within the Long Island City community of Queens, chef Diaa Alhanoun drizzled olive oil over creamy hummus and garnished it with pita bread.

Diaa grew up in Syria. There, he barbecued meats and crispy kibbeh, or potato croquettes, which can be stuffed with minced pork, onion, and spices, along his circle of relatives and buddies. He picked up the competencies from a cook in his uncle’s eating place in his fatherland of Damascus.

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“When I devour, or I prepare dinner Syrian food, I don’t forget when I changed into younger,” he said in this week’s episode of the Bite podcast. “When I changed into very young, my mother cooked Syrian food. When I make it now, I don’t forget a majority of these moments.”

Before the disaster in Syria began, Diaa turned into Sudan with his family, looking to release an eating place. But whilst he desired to leave, he couldn’t pass back to Syria because the war had begun. So he went to Jordan as an alternative, questioning the war might stop quickly and he’d be capable of going back to Damascus. He waited 4 years in Jordan as a refugee before coming to America in 2016. He now lives in Staten Island together with his wife, son, and daughter.

According to information from the United Nations Refugee Agency, 12 million Syrians had been forcibly displaced at the giving up of 2016. That’s more than half of the united states of america’s populace.

In New York City, Diaa continues to cook Syrian meals through a catering organization known as Eat Offbeat, which employs refugees resettled within the city as cooks.

Manal Kahi, co-founder and CEO of Eat Offbeat, likes to say her enterprise began with a yearning for hummus. After coming to New York City from Lebanon in 2013 to attend graduate faculty at Columbia University, Kahi quickly realized she didn’t like the hummus on American supermarket cabinets.

So Kahi made her own hummus, based totally on her grandmother’s recipe. Her brother, Wissam Kahi, encouraged her to sell it. This changed into in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis of their domestic usa of Lebanon.

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Food can be so much more than calories and nutrition, and it can be a celebration of people, places, things, and experiences. It can be the story of someone’s life or the simple delight of sharing a moment with family and friends. At Feed the Food, we love food. And we want to share it. So we create beautiful and creative photo shoots, write engaging stories, and create recipes that make food fun.