The Chef Fatima Foundation is an initiative to spread joy and bring about change through food.
When my daughter Fatima was five years old, her teacher often gave her a weekly assignment. She would be given a pictogram of a recipe — a cupcake, a fruit cup, sometimes a sandwich — to make on the weekend. She would anxiously wait for each recipe and excitedly wave it when she came home on Fridays. She was, then, the only child I knew who enjoyed homework.
From pictograms she graduated to cookbooks that she found in her school library. Fatima would pick a recipe, nudge me to take her to the grocery store and we’d bring back the ingredients she needed. I watched her marvel at the food chemistry as cakes rose in the oven, spices sizzled in the pan and vegetables changed colour. Soon, she was ordering calamari at restaurants at the age of six.