How Hawa Hassan Built a Cookbook Around East African Grandmothers
Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler
4.4 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you're an avid reader or home chef, you've likely seen In Bibi's Kitchen on many of the year's most anticipated book lists. The cookbook is filled with recipes from eight African countries that border the Indian Ocean and stories from 24 grandmothers, and brings a new narrative to the table, one that Somali author, sauce maven, and former model Hawa Hassan is honored (if not a little overwhelmed) to share. “I was telling these new stories—I was expected to carry these stories—and I didn't know I could," she says on this week's episode. "I lived somewhere between inspiration and fear a lot of last year.”
That self-imposed pressure has paid off. Her book launched earlier this week, so we sat down to hear about her time with those bibis and what it was like to create a cookbook written and photographed exclusively by women and featuring recipes crafted exclusively by women, based everywhere from New York City to Comoros.
Order In Bibi's Kitchen: https://fave.co/3gnIVLA
Read a full transcription of the episode: www.cntraveler.com/story/how-hawa-hassan-built-a-cookbook-around-east-african-grandmothers
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. Lale and I are out on vacation right now, but we wanted to share one of our favorite episodes from last year with you in the meantime. We spoke with Hawa Hassan, whose cookbook in Beebe's Kitchen was a breakout hit. If you're looking for fresh dinner ideas or want to travel through food, be sure to pick up her book and stick around to hear about how it all came to be. I'll let Laleigh take it away. Enjoy. |
| 0:23.2 | Hi, this is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condonast Traveler. |
| 0:30.4 | I'm Lale Aricoglu, and with me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey. |
| 0:35.1 | Hello! |
| 0:36.2 | In this week's episode, we're catching up with Hawa Hassan, founder of Somali Condiments brand Vazbas, and author of the upcoming cookbook in Beebe's Kitchen, which shares the stories and recipes of grandmothers from eight African countries. We've been dying to get our hands on this book ever since we heard about it, and we can't wait to get chatting. |
| 0:55.0 | Thank you so much for joining us. |
| 0:57.0 | This feels so serendipitous because I casually mentioned your cookbook on a previous |
| 1:04.0 | podcast episode and was like, oh, thinking like, oh, maybe she'll see it, I don't know. |
| 1:09.0 | And then immediately got an email. So I'm so excited |
| 1:11.8 | that we get to chat with you today. So you moved to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee at |
| 1:18.1 | seven without the rest of your family and spent most of your childhood surrounded by family |
| 1:23.4 | friends. What role did food and cooking play for you during that period of your life? |
| 1:31.3 | Well, once I arrived at the U.S., the idea of making food or consuming Somali food was something that was very far away from me. |
| 1:42.3 | So I didn't end up eating Somali food in my formative years. |
| 1:47.2 | You know, unless I went to a friend's house, |
| 1:49.2 | then that was something, you know, |
| 1:51.7 | obviously I expected their moms to cook. |
| 1:53.7 | But I did not eat Somali food regularly again |
| 1:58.4 | until I moved to New York City in 2005 and by then I was like missing the |
| 2:03.9 | idea of home and it being a place in the people that are my bloodline and so then as a way to |
| 2:10.0 | reconnect with that I started cooking it for myself but prior to that I really stopped |
| 2:15.1 | eating Somali food in I would say say, around the late 90s. |
... |
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