Hillside Church initially supported refugees by helping them grow vegetables. Now, it’s fostering a vibrant community centered on food and preparing immigrants for careers in cooking.
Margaret Chege shapes small balls of dough about the size of a golf ball, brushes them with oil, and stacks them together.
“This is Kenyan tortilla,” she explains, pressing them down. “We use it to wrap sambusas.”
Sambusas are crispy, deep-fried triangular pastries filled with a variety of savory ingredients such as spiced beef, lamb, or potatoes.
Chege leads a demonstration on how to make sambusas and mandazis, soft, nutmeg-flavored doughnuts, during the first cooking class of the World Relief Community Learning Kitchen. Held at Hillside Church in Kent, Washington, the session draws a diverse group of participants on a Wednesday morning, including mothers who arranged babysitters, a home economics teacher, and a mother-son duo.
