SOLACE & STORIES
Classic African recipes from ` bibis' celebrate cuisine and connection
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).
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 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.”
Born in Mogadishu, 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.”
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.
“More than anything, the thread of the book is conversations about family and food. I hope everybody can see themselves in that.”