Creating home through food

Cooking is a form of self-care, a form of community care, a form of love in action. A few years ago, I committed to sitting down to eat, eating slowly and only eating beautiful food that nourished my body or soul. This is a privilege I appreciate, and one that I don’t take for granted. I need to feel like there is love and care in what I consume, whether I am alone or in the company of others.

The body is the only home that we can be certain of. Therefore, taking care in nourishing and moving or stretching it daily is a form of love. The idea of home and food can be discussed practically and poetically in a million ways, from it being the bricks that build the home we live in, to creating home wherever we go through spices, aromas and heirloom recipes.

Food has been the medicine when we are homesick or sad. I was born and raised in SA, but lived in Europe for over a decade — first in the UK and then in Germany. Food helped to sustain me through grey weather and everlasting winters. It held my heart when it felt like it was breaking after a long relationship ended. I started cooking SA food, creating pop up dinners with the familiar flavours of my birthplace. Then, I felt at home in Europe for a while and wondered if I really missed my family, the small talk of strangers or the African sun at all, or if it was just the feeling of home that I longed for, which I learnt that I could create with heritage foods all by myself.

Learning to understand people through food and how to touch someone’s heart through their tastebuds and senses is a love language and a rewarding aspiration. Food is how I show that I care. I not only create meals for myself with intention, but try to do the same for others.

In the last few years with growing awareness of genocide and injustices in so many countries, I have been thinking more about the importance and power that food has to create a feeling of home for displaced or exiled people who are unable to return to their physical homelands, having to flee injustice, violence and cruelty.

One of my brothers is in love with a Palestinian woman and she has not seen her family for more than a year. There are currently no Palestinian restaurants in Cape Town, where we live, and in order to eat Palestinian food she normally has to make it herself. Through her meals, I discovered the delicious Palestinian rice dish — maqlouba. Though it can stir up conversations about the parallels it has with biryani, akni or pilau, maqlouba is an entirely differently flavoured tasty rice dish, like nothing I’d had before.

And since creating home through food is a goal for me, I learnt to make maqlouba for my new Palestinian sister. The first time I made it, she lit up and her reaction alone made my heart flood with joy and sadness at the same time. Often, I feel powerless and useless in the face of the vast and immense oppression in the world. But cooking a meal that takes someone home when they are unable to go home physically is a deeply meaningful experience.

I started 2025 asking myself about the purpose of life. And though I don’t have a complete answer yet, to prioritise making yourself and others feel loved, feel seen, feel a sense of belonging, feel like a worthwhile human being and feel at home through food is the self-care and community care we can start with.

A quick and easy vegan maqlouba recipe:  

Ingredients:

1.5 cups jasmine rice

1 tbsp all spice

1 tbsp turmeric

1 tbsp cinnamon

3 tbsp olive oil

2.5 cups vegetable stock

Half a cauliflower

2 small potatoes

2 red peppers

2 aubergines

For serving:

3 tbsp pomegranate seeds

3 tbsp pine nuts

3 tbsp almonds

3 tbsp parsley

Method

Heat oven to 180°C. Cut the vegetables — peppers lengthways into 4-6 pieces each, the aubergine lengthways into 1cm thick slices, the potatoes into wedges and break the cauliflower into florets.

Lay the vegetables on a greased oven tray, sprinkle with salt and coat in olive oil

Roast the vegetables for 30 minutes. Once roasted, remove from the heat and cool.

In a bowl, mix the rice with the spices and olive oil until the rice is coated in all the spices.

In a greased pot or rice cooker, arrange the vegetables with aubergine layered at the bottom then rice, then alternate layers of peppers, rice, potatoes and cauliflower.

Pour the vegetable stock over the rice and vegetables and cook in the rice cooker on the rice setting or on the stove on low heat for 30 minutes or until the rice is cooked.

While the rice is cooking, lightly toast the almonds and pine nuts in a pan on the stove.

Serve by flipping the pot over on a large plate, then sprinkle with chopped parsley, pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and almonds.

Parusha Naidoo is an artist, cookbook author and Wanted's newest food columnist.