About me

Hi and welcome to “Fanuna’s Kitchen”. My name is Afnan (Fanuna is my nickname) and I am the author, developer and photographer of “Fanuna’s Kitchen” from Freiburg in Germany. My blog is about one of my passions: food. My passion is not only about eating the food, but especially about the love of preparing and enjoying the food.

I grew up in a family where every family gathering was also a celebration of food. I remember how my mum and grandma used to cook “Quzi”, one of iraq’s national dishes, which is basically slowly cooked lamb served over rice with roasted almonds and raisins.
The first time I got in touch with food was at age of five or six by helping my mom making Iraqi “Dolma” (stuffed vegetable dish, especially stuffed grape leaves). My task was to cut off the grape leaves to fill and roll them easily. At the age of eleven, I was able to prepare the dish by myself with my moms instructions. As I know now, these early experiences created my passion about cooking and food.

When I was nine, my family moved from Iraq to Germany. Since then I had the opportunity to get in touch with different cuisines and cultures. In my opinion, food is one of the main characteristics of a culture. So when I travel to a new country, I like to explore its cuisine and then recreate the dishes at home.

Therefore the main theme of this blog will be:

Middle East meets Europe meets the World.

You will find classic and traditional middle eastern recipes I grew up with. In addition, I will introduce the western Europe cuisine I had the opportunity to get in touch with as well as some of my favourite asian and mexican food.

As a chemist, I have to stick to strict instructions in the lab. Therefore, I will write the recipes in a manner of a scientific article. There will be an introduction where I will give some background informations about each recipe. The recipe will then be described in the “Materials and Methods” section. There will be a “Results and Discussion”, where the audience can give some feedback and suggestions of improvements. In the end, I will summerize each article in a short “Conclusion”.

Thanks for reading and if you want to get in touch, don’t hesitate to contact me via email or follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest.

Cheers!