How cooking eased the grief after Grenfell

After the devastating London blaze, a unique community kitchen was set up to help survivors. Lindsay Nicholson explains how she – and Meghan Markle – got involved, and shares its recipes

In the days after the Grenfell Tower fire, Munira Mahmud knew there was only one way to ease the pain and grief – and that was to cook. Living in temporary accommodation, her family were tired of takeaways and she craved the taste of home-made food. With no kitchen of her own, she asked to use the one at the nearby Al Manaar mosque and community centre. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she began to cook fresh, hearty meals together with friends, mothers from the local school and the women who worked at Al Manaar. And so, the Hubb Community Kitchen began.

Soon, women from more than a dozen cultures gathered there. Munira became, by default, the head cook, but there is no hierarchy and no set menu at Hubb (which means “love” in Arabic). Each woman simply prepares and serves the dishes she has been making all her life. Most had never cooked for anyone outside their family before. When you arrive, Munira wraps you in an apron and tells you to get chopping.

Which is exactly what she did when Meghan Markle, as she was then, visited the kitchen. The Duchess of Sussex was living in Canada when the Grenfell fire happened; when she moved to London at the beginning of this year she began making private visits as a way of getting to know her local community. Like everyone, she took turns with the cooking and washing-up, helping out with dishes such as green rice and chapatis. Remarkably, news of her time there never leaked, despite all the people going in and out of the kitchen in this busy community centre.

The food at Hubb is served as a midday meal on long tables. Leftovers are wrapped up for those who are still in temporary accommodation, so the next day’s meals need not be takeaways.

However, the Al Manaar centre has only been able to fund the kitchen twice a week. The women dreamed of opening the kitchen seven days a week, and the idea to raise money by writing a cookbook – from where these recipes are taken – came from the Duchess herself. She volunteered to write the foreword and the task of compiling all the recipes began.

I first got involved because it seemed a practical way to help. But from the very first taste (an Iraqi casserole), I knew this was more than just a charity