In Bibi's Kitchen is an homage to the matriarchs of eight African nations.

In Bibi's Kitchen is an homage to the matriarchs Laura Brehaut

Xawaash brings warmth to more than just the multitude of Somali dishes it perfumes. The evocative scent of toasted cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, black peppercorns and turmeric takes Hawa Hassan to the shores of the Indian Ocean. “It has the ability to transport me home,” she says.

Spices form the framework of Hassan's debut cookbook, In Bibi's Kitchen (with Julia Turshen; Ten Speed Press, 2020). Tethered by geography as well as the spice trade, she focuses on the eight African countries lining the coast of the Indian Ocean: Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Comoros.

“The Indian Ocean serves as a gateway to these African countries, but not only that,” says Hassan. “The Indian Ocean also gave and took a lot from Africa.”

At the heart of the book are the bibis (grandmothers) whose recipes and stories from the region encapsulate war and displacement, community and kinship. There's solace to be found with In Bibi's Kitchen — both in the words of the grandmothers and their time-honoured dishes.

“It contains so many stories from the people who have often provided us comfort,” says Hassan. “The matriarchs of the family: grandmothers.”

Through recipes, country snapshots and the bibis' stories, she reconnects pantry mainstays such as vanilla with their points of origin. By learning about their many uses in these eight countries, we gain a window into their history. “This isn't new and trendy,” she emphasizes. “It is everlasting.”

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, Hassan is based in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she's run a condiment business, Basbaas, since 2015. At the age of four, Hassan, her mother and four siblings fled civil war to a UN refugee camp in Kenya. At age seven, she moved to Seattle, Wash., to live with a family friend. Her mother and siblings, meanwhile, migrated to Norway.

Hassan didn't see them again until her early 20s, when she visited her mother's home in Oslo for the first time. The process of reconnecting began in the kitchen, as she helped her mother make canjeero (sourdough pancakes), digaag qumbe (chicken stew with yogurt and coconut) and suugo suqaar (pasta sauce with beef). After 15 years apart, she began to recover a sense of belonging.

Writing In Bibi's Kitchen, Hassan found parallels between herself and the grandmothers she profiled. She identified with the adventurous spirit of Ma Gehennet, a woman from Eritrea who shared her recipes for kicha (Eritrean flatbreads), tsebhi hamli (stewed spinach), shiro (ground chickpea stew) and buna (Eritrean coffee).

After fleeing civil war in Eritrea, Ma Gehennet lived in Swaziland and Ottawa before rejoining her husband in Yonkers, N.Y., with their four children. As she told Hassan, “Home means my roots.”

“She wasn't attached to a place, which to me was so refreshing to hear from an elder,” says Hassan. “Like these women, what I've always known is that home is not a place — it's people. So it was comforting and reassuring for me to hear this from women who are much older than me. Because oftentimes, especially in (the U.S.), you're taught, `You should have a base. You should have a family' … I feel like I've never played by those rules. I didn't have the option from an early start.”

The voices of matriarchs are so often missing from discussions of food, adds Hassan, and it was important for her to make space for them in the book. She learned how to cook from women like the ones she profiles in In Bibi's Kitchen — and her own mother's recipes inspired her line of hot sauces.

Told in their own words, these matriarchs' stories reveal resilience. And the ease with which they create a sense of family, no matter where in the world they are, is admirable. “They take things as they come,” says Hassan, “and move like water.”

While the role of the Indian Ocean in the spice trade provides historical and cultural context for the cuisines of these eight African countries, community is key to In Bibi's Kitchen. Everyone in the book has a connection to it, Hassan highlights; she drew on her “Rolodex of community members” to find bibis willing to share their favourite home-cooking recipes.

As such, many of the foods in the book are centred on relationships. “It's just recently I started to write recipes for six people or less, because the way we eat is in groups. So I (value) community and connection the most,” says Hassan.

“It's an exploration, which I hope readers will go on — and find themselves in the book, and in the people featured. More than anything, the thread of the book is conversations about family and food. I hope everybody can see themselves in that.”

Recipes and photos reprinted with permission from In Bibi's Kitchen by Hawa Hassan with Julia Turshen, copyright 2020. Photographs by Khadija M. Farah & Jennifer May. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.