UPTOWN — For more than 35 years, Chicagoans who have experienced gender-based violence have found community and safety in Apna Ghar.
Many of those who have stayed at the nonprofit’s shelter in Uptown spend time in the shared kitchen, where residents prepare meals for themselves and their families and share food.
Over the years, the kitchen has produced dishes from the 50 different countries of those who have passed through it. “Recipes From Our Home,” a cookbook to be released Monday, features 29 recipes from domestic violence survivors who have used Apna Ghar’s emergency housing services. The book’s release coincides with Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
All proceeds from the book, which will also be available as an ebook, will be used to fund the center’s services. You can preorder the cookbook here.
“Recipes From Our Home” came together organically out of conversations that began five years ago, said Neha Gill, Apna Ghar’s executive director, who has been at the center since 2003.
“Recipes From Our Home” is a collection of recipes spanning the globe from survivors of gender-based violence who have stayed at Apna Ghar, an Uptown shelter. Credit: Provided
“We’ve been collecting and sharing the recipes for so long, we just thought we should do a proper cookbook,” she said.
Apna Ghar means “our home” in Hindi, Urdu and several other South Asian languages. Since 1989, the nonprofit has provided a 24-hour crisis line, job training, legal advocacy, counseling and transitional and permanent housing for immigrants, refugees and others from marginalized populations.
In addition to providing life skill services to help make residents more self-sufficient, the shelter offers group programs where sharing of knowledge is the primary goal.
“We don’t want them to feel that things are only being done for them,” said Gill. “We want it to be empowering as well.”
Conversations about the food, ingredients and culture of their native countries are inevitable, especially in Apha Ghar’s community kitchen.
“People don’t have a shared language but through this sharing of food, you could see the ways they were communicating and bonding,” said Gill. “It helps us connect with them but it’s heartwarming to see them connect with each other.”
Apha Ghar’s staff speaks more than 20 languages, aiding in that connection.
Neha Gill, executive director of Apna Ghar, said the idea for a cookbook came out of conversations and meals in the Uptown shelter’s community kitchen. Credit: Provided
Once the decision was made to do a cookbook, Tegest Enyew, who runs Apna Ghar’s cooking program, took charge of the project to formally document the recipes, many of which were scribbled on index cards.
Enyew reached out to people who have been through the center and ended up with 75 recipes. After multiple rounds of recipe testing, she whittled them down to 29.
Enyew had to ensure the recipes chosen for the cookbook weren’t too complicated. She also wanted to feature a mix of dishes from around the world, as a reflection of those who have used Apna Ghar’s services over the years.
Enyew often relied on YouTube and blogs to educate herself about ingredients identified in their native languages. Sourcing spices provided another opportunity for her to dive deeper and learn about a country’s food, she said.
She gathered notes from the survivors providing the recipes, which helped form the heartfelt and deeply personal introductions that accompany them in the book.
“I enjoyed this journey very much,” said Tegest, who founded a safe home program in Ethiopia before joining Apna Ghar in 2015.
“She’s a wealth of experience,” Gill said of Tegest.
After multiple rounds of testing, Tegest would present each finished dish to residents and staff at Apna Ghar, always including someone who is from the country of the dish’s origins. They would help critique it and provide any needed fine-tuning.
The 110-page book is organized into three sections: Light Bites, Mains (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and Desserts. Dishes range from bolani, an Afghan stuffed flatbread, and qima, a Sudanese meat and vegetable stew, to a Singaporean noodle soup called laksa and Colombian sopa de veduras, or vegetable soup.
Accompanying each of the recipes are colorful illustrations by Urmi Roy Magoon, an artist and teacher living in Singapore. Other contributors include India-based Pearl D’Souza, who did the cover artwork, editor Lauren Grace Ewertse and designer Radhika Valjee, both of whom live in South Africa.
Recipe illustrations in “Recipes From Our Home,” from the Uptown nonprofit Apna Ghar, include alicha kik wot (left), an Ethiopian split pea stew, and date cakes, eaten during Ramadan. Credit: Provided
Uzma Sharif, chocolatier and founder of Pilsen’s Chocolat Uzma, contributed the forward to the book as well as two recipes. Copies of “Recipes From Our Home” will be available at her shop.
“As survivors, a percentage of us feel like we don’t have a sense of home or safety,” Sharif said. “One of the things I felt when I first connected with them was a sense of home.”
That was 12 years ago. Since then Sharif has lent a hand in various ways, including hosting cooking classes.
“This cookbook has been 35 years in the making and is a culmination of all the survivors that Apha Ghar has hosted in their spaces, kitchens and fundraisers,” said Sharif. “I hope people can work from the book together and add their own love to the dishes.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, providing aid to people who have experienced gender-based violence has gotten harder for Apna Ghar, said Gill. The stay-at-home order during the pandemic and federal immigration enforcement operations like last year’s Operation Midway Blitz made it especially difficult for those whose homes weren’t safe.
“I don’t think there’s a complete grasp of the trauma they are experiencing within their own communities and now there’s all these external threats too,” she said.
Threats to Apna Ghar’s funding are top of mind for Gill and her staff, who are planning another cookbook now that “Recipes From Our Home” is ready for its debut.
“Proceeds from the cookbook go directly into the hands of those who need it,” Gill said.
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