Gaza food blogger serves 'hope on a plate' to war-weary kids

GAZA CITY

Sitting in a tent in southern Gaza, Palestinian food blogger Hamada Shaqoura surveys cans of beans and tinned meat and longs for something that could conjure a sense of home.

Before the war, before his house was destroyed and his family uprooted three times, the 32-year-old was a YouTuber reviewing Gaza City's buzziest burger, pizza and noodle spots.

To satisfy his craving for comfort food on a war-rations diet, he taught himself to cook using food aid packages and whatever fresh vegetable he can scrounge up.

"I had an idea to turn this canned food we have been eating for months into something new, to make delicious food for kids," he tells AFP in a video call from Khan Yunis.

Shaqoura's cuisine includes beef tacos "Gazan style", pizza wraps and a deep-fried "golden sandwich", which he films as he cooks and offers up to the tent camp's hungry children.

"Zakee [delicious]!" a boy beams in a video after biting into a sweet "fettuccine crepe," strips of fried batter mixed with apples and chocolate sauce.

Despite patchy internet Shaqoura offers a different side of the conflict to document what he calls "resilience and persistence" amidst the rubble of war-devastated Gaza.

Online he is known as Hamada Shoo and his blogs have attracted nearly half a million followers on Instagram, as well as donations from his fans.

"I want to feed as many mouths as I can," he said.

Barefoot children toting empty pots and bowls run through the ruins of Khan Yunis to his tent, where the war chef cooks up pea stew in huge pots over an open-pit fire.

"There is real famine" in northern Gaza, says Shaqoura who fled from there in March, and little to go around in the south of the battered territory.

He says he is determined to help feed children. "That is my motivation."