Кулинария

Meghan Markle launches charity cookbook for Grenfell Tower fire victims

Author: Rachel Hosie / Source: The Independent

The Duchess of Sussex has launched a charity cookbook to raise money for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Together: Our Community Cookbook features recipes from women who are part of the Hubb Community Kitchen, which was created to provide for the hundreds of residents who were left homeless following the devastating Grenfell Tower fire.

The Duchess was joined by her husband Prince Harry and her mother Doria Ragland at Kensington Palace yesterday for a party to celebrate the launch of Together – and she helped prepare lunch for the guests too.

Meghan first thought of the idea for the cookbook after going to the community kitchen at the Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in North Kensington in January of this year, before marrying Prince Harry in May, and has continued to visit the cooks over the following months.

Here, a group of women came together to cook in the aftermath of the Grenfell blaze, and together with the Duchess they decided to create the recipe book.

“I had just recently moved to London and I felt so immediately embraced by the women in the kitchen – your warmth, your kindness, and also to be able to be in this city and to see in this one small room how multicultural it was,” Meghan said yesterday at the launch party.

The Duchess of Sussex celebrated the launch of the cookbook by giving her first public speech as a duchess, telling guests before they sat down to a lunch featuring dishes from the book: “Working on this project for the past nine months has been a tremendous labour of love.

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Speaking from a marquee in Perk’s Field close to Kensington Palace, she said of the family chefs: “On a personal level I feel so proud to live in a city that can have so much diversity – 12 countries represented in this one group of women.”

The Duchess quickly got stuck in, preparing food that was laid out on trestle tables, dishing out green rice and later flipping chapatis and then watching kofta kebabs, turning them so they browned evenly.

Guests sat down to the home-made dishes from the new cookbook including coconut chicken curry, aubergine masala and a range of chapatis and sharing dips, as well as caramelised plum upside-down cake, and spiced mint tea.

The duchess wrote the foreword for Together, which is now available in bookshops and online.

In her speech, which was made without notes, Meghan thanked all those involved, adding: “On a personal note I’m especially grateful because this is my first project so I appreciate your support and the vision that I had for this and seeing it come to fruition.

“Everyone embraced this so deeply, because it’s been a passion project for all of us – and for very good reason. I said in the foreword that this is more than a cookbook, and what I mean by that is the power of food is more than just the meal itself, it is the story behind it.

“And when you get to know the story of the recipe you get to know the person behind it, and that’s what we’re talking about in terms of coming together, to really engage and talk and to be able to celebrate what connects us, rather than what divides us.

“That, I believe, is the ethos of Together.”