My Cookbook: Souk to Table 
About Amina
I’m Amina (pronounced “Amna”), the lead recipe developer and founder of Hungry Paprikas, one of the most trusted sources for middle eastern recipes online. I’m also the author of the Amazon Best-Seller and Taste Canada Award Nominated cookbook Souk to Table. I’m on a mission to use my engineering background and my daily life as a mom of 3 kids to create and share easy, family friendly and accessible middle eastern and mediterranean meals.
About Amina
Expertise: Authentic middle eastern and mediterranean recipe development, weeknight cooking for busy moms and professionals, cookbook author, food photographer and social media content creator.
Experience: Over 8 years of recipe development experience for Hungry Paprikas, recipe development and food photography for The Food Network, CBC Life and hundreds of brands, author of the cookbook Souk to Table, and owner of social media channels with a reach over 265,000.
Education: Masters of Science (Renewable Energy and Power Systems), City, University of London and Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering, McMaster University.
Career Background: Over 10 years of experience as an engineer and manager within the electrical power industry before becoming a full-time entrepreneur.
Location and Family: Amina is Iraqi-Canadian, based in the Greater Toronto Area in Canada with her husband and three kids.
How Amina Started Hungry Paprikas
Rewind 10 years, and if you asked me if I’d ever be cooking for a living, the answer would be a resounding no. I was born in Iraq, grew up in Canada, graduated from university and dove head first into my engineering career – a 10-year long stint that I enjoyed very much and learned so much from.
I started to blog about food during my maternity leave with my first born son. I got bored and decided to share the food I was cooking on Instagram. Fast forward 6 years later, and in 2023, after managing many multi-million dollar engineering projects and crunching way too many numbers, I threw in the towel on my engineering career and embraced the kitchen as my new office.
That was quite possibly one of the best decisions of my life, and soon followed the publication of my debut cookbook Souk to Table.
I learned how to cook from my incredible mother, whose palette is impeccable. She taught me how to cook Iraqi food using my senses and eyeing my measurements. To this day – it’s exactly how I cook for my family. But for Hungry Paprikas and my dear readers, I put so much more into my recipes.
I develop recipes with the precision of an engineer/scientist – using detailed measurements, timings, and visual cues to help my readers re-create every dish successfully. There’s no “add salt to taste” around here! I tell you exactly how much salt makes every recipe incredible. I test and re-test my recipes until they’re perfected. But I also keep them simple. It was not long ago that I had to juggle a demanding 9-5 job in the city, get home in time for kids school pickups and have a nourishing and delicious meal on the table.
That’s why my cooking philosophy is this: easy, family-friendly recipes for the weekdays. And fun, authentic, nostalgic middle eastern dishes for the weekends. Because cooking should never be a burden during a busy week, and it should also be cherished and celebrated with family during the weekends.
5 Fun Facts About Amina
- I’ve lived in 4 different countries, in 4 different continents, for 5 or more years. (Email me if you want to know which ones ;).
- My favourite food fluctuates between maqluba and Iraqi dolma, but those two are always at the top. And I beg my mom to make them for me whenever I can.
- I can bend my thumb back really really far (double jointed) and I didn’t know it wasn’t normal until the 5th grade when a classmate pointed it out to me and said it was very scary.
- I was my mom’s sous chef since I was 9, always assigned to menial kitchen tasks. I didn’t know that almonds are actually sold peeled and slivered until I was an adult and started doing my own shopping. My dad always bought them raw and whole, and it was my kitchen task to take care of them for mom’s Quzi.
- I have 3 kids (1 boy, 2 girls) and they challenge me in new ways every single day but they are the light of my life.