“I always looked at cooking as a chore,” says model-turned-kitchen connoisseur Hawa Hassan. “But when I moved into the space of food, I started to see cooking as a joy and a safe space for other people.”
Hassan is the CEO of Basbaas Foods, which is the only line of Somali sauces and chutneys available in the US. She also penned the newly released cookbook In Bibi’s Kitchen. Her recipes and cooking draw on her Somali heritage, and feature an exploration of that history. In Bibi’s Kitchen weaves narrative and recipe together, placing each dish in context with the stories and recipes of African matriarchs.
For Hawa Hassan, cooking called later in life
Hassan’s career started far from the kitchen. In fact, she began as a model. While she was in college, Hassan would accompany her best friend to shoots. After some convincing from her agent, she gave it a shot as well.
She tells Vogue that despite the initial success, the world of modeling soon proved toxic. Once she reached New York she began hearing, “we already have a black girl who looks like you.”
At this point, Hassan moved to Oslo to join her family. There, the idea for Basbaas became more than an idea as she spent more time cooking and reconnecting with her family.
She cites her mother as an inspiration for the company. “The level of strength she had to restart so many times gives me so much gratitude for my life,” says Hassan.
Hawa Hassan reconnects with her roots through cooking
Hassan was born in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. But she spent a large part of her childhood in a UN refugee camp in Kenya. At just seven years old, Hassan moved to Seattle and lived with family friends, apart from her family. 15 years later in Norway, she would finally see her mother and her nine siblings again.
After being discovered as a model when she was a college sophomore, Hassan moved briefly to Cape Town at the recommendation of the agency. “I got to know what self-love was, what it felt like to confront my abandonment issues, to confront my loneliness,” Hassan tells Into the Gloss about her time there, “I was like, ‘Who are you going to become? What’s going to be your legacy?’” Her subsequent trip to Oslo helped Hassan reconnect with her Somali roots.
“In Bibi’s Kitchen” is an ode to grandmothers through 8 stories
“In my culture, we says ‘paradise lies at your mom’s feet’,” says Hassan. Her cookbook, In Bibi’s Kitchen isn’t just a recipe book, but is a collection of stories from eight women from different parts of Africa. Each woman tells her story along with her recipe, and speaks about family, immigration, and most importantly, food.
“My ultimate goal in life is really to tell an accurate and beautiful story about the continent, not one of despair,” Hassan explains. She says that the burden of telling others’ stories is a lot for one person to carry, since she worries if she caught the nuances of a tale that isn’t necessarily hers to tell. “One of us can’t speak for all of Nigeria,” she says, “One of us can’t speak for all of East Africa… It’s all very delicate. It’s all heavy.”
Learn how to make Somali suugo suqaar, an Italian-influenced spiced pasta from the recipe that Hassan gave Vogue, or learn how to make lahoh, Somali pancakes, along with Hawa here.
Buy In Bibi’s Kitchen here.
