Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When Hawa Hasan was seven, her mother made a very difficult decision. Because of the Somali war, Hawa was sent to live in Seattle with family friends. You may remember hearing her story back when she was on this show in 2020. Five years later, the James Beard Award-winning author has a new cookbook honoring the food, culture, and people from conflict zones. It's titled Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War. There are recipes for spicy Liberian chicken and tomato stew, Lebanese cabbage rolls, lentil soup from Iraq, and a cantaloupe juice from El Salvador, alongside stories about people like New York City coffee shop owner and Queen's native Ali Zaman, who tells the importance of passing along Afghan culture and traditions. Fast Company writes, Hawa's new book is a more intimate exploration of her life story, one that relates to millions of displaced people around the world. Setting a Place for Us is on shelves now. Author and chef Hawa Hassan joins us to discuss. Hi Hawa.

Hawa Hassan: Hi Alison. Good to be back with you.

Alison Stewart: It's nice to speak to you as well. This is your second cookbook. You were on your show with your first, Bibi's Kitchen. What did you want to do with your second book that you weren't really able to do with your first?

Hawa Hassan: Well, as you know, In Bibi's Kitchen was to focus on celebrating grandmothers of East Africa and their power and their love for food, but Setting a Place, I really wanted to go a bit deeper. This was much more of a personal exploration of my own story. This isn't just a book about recipes. It's about understanding how food preserves culture in the face of displacement, something I've had to confront in my own story. It's exploration of migration and identity, and what becomes of a table, and when you have to reclaim what's been lost. The goal was to really speak to more voices that I thought had experienced similar life of bringings like myself.

Alison Stewart: What is something you learned about the importance of food as it relates to preserving culture while you were writing this book?

Hawa Hassan: Oh, so much. I think one of the things that I had always known and could feel viscerally, but was so clear to me in this book, is all of our connectiveness when it comes to food and how we prepare it, and the questions that we're constantly asking ourselves daily, what's for dinner? How will the kids get to school, and how things are passed down just from asking those questions. Not only have I learned a lot about myself, but I think I learned how similar I am to so many people around the world because of the ways that we tell stories and how we use food to tell those stories.

Alison Stewart: Setting a Place for Us is focused on displacements, in a way. What are some of the preconceptions that you wanted to correct, I should say, that people have about conflict zones?

Hawa Hassan: Displacement in the context of this book isn't just about geography. It's about the loss of familiarity and the longing for home. It's the feeling of carrying pieces of yourself into parts unknown and into a future unknown. Through food, people find ways to create what they've lost, and even if it's just for a moment, and I really wanted to demystify that word for people because we're so much more than that.

Alison Stewart: Which nation was the first one that you traveled to for the book?

Hawa Hassan: El Salvador.

Alison Stewart: Tell us why.

Hawa Hassan: It's funny. Before we talked in 2020, I'd already gone to El Salvador. February 2020, I went to El Salvador with two friends to do research for this book. I didn't know much about South America growing up, sadly, and I think when I moved to New York, one of the constant rhetoric that I would always hear was that it was unsafe and it was dangerous. When I got older and I started traveling to places around the world, I started to think, "Oh, this is also the same story that is being told about my beloved Somalia."

I wanted to go examine El Salvador for myself. I wanted to see if the stories were true, and I was met with warmth, laughter, food, and joy. That really pushed me, and I'm so grateful I had that month in 2020, in February, where I had the foresight to go do the research because I knew In Bibi's Kitchen was coming. I knew I'd be tied up for a year or so. I'm very thankful.

Then I went again in 2022. It was my first trip in March. My photographer, Riley, and I went. Same again, it was a group of people once again rebuilding and creating new stories and new ways of being together. I just feel so fortunate for that.

Alison Stewart: What were some of the guiding questions that you had about all of these places that you visited and the communities that you visited as you researched? What questions did you have?

Hawa Hassan: My Guiding questions were actually ones I often ask myself. They're always rooted in memory and belonging. I would ask people, "Does this remind you of home? Who taught it to you? How's it changed since you've left? How's it changed since war has started?" Those questions would open up conversations about survival, lost, joy. All of the ideas often came back to how food is a thread that ties us back to where we come from or where we are.

Alison Stewart: My guest is James Beard award-winning author and chef, Hawa Hassan. She's sharing recipes and stories from her latest cookbook, Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War. Let's talk about the stories for a minute. You spoke to, I believe it was Rana Abdelhamid. She's from Little Egypt in Queens. She's one of the people that you feature in your book, and she said the dish that best represents her country, Egypt, is chicken over rice. First of all, how did you meet Rana?

Hawa Hassan: I met her through the photographer for our Egypt chapter, Doaa. They're friends and know each other from their community. Talk about a powerhouse. She runs a program for women and girls, and her organization is dedicated to empowering through self-defense and economical empowerment, and community building. Talk about planting your feet on the ground and recreating and starting over in a way that feels incredibly powerful. I also was so shocked for Rana's desire for chicken over rice, because isn't that so New York?

Alison Stewart: Chicken over rice? Really?

Hawa Hassan: She said it was the perfect representation of her diaspora cooking. She said it's a little bit of home, it's reimagined with what's available. It's a comforting food that speaks to her belonging, even when she feels far away from Egypt. I thought that was really interesting.

Alison Stewart: In the Lebanese section, there's a recipe for braised dandelion greens with caramelized onions. That's exciting. First of all, we think dandelion greens. What are we thinking of, actually?

Hawa Hassan: [laughs] I say this in the headnotes for the book, in that it's a recipe that grows earlier in the spring, and it's grown too late, it gets really bitter, and so-- It's greens, but its-- People, when we were doing research, they say that this is a recipe that is passed down through generations, and it symbolizes the toughness of growth and home. It's made with caramelized onions, and it could be served as a first course or a side dish. It's very popular, and I think just as people are starting to talk about things like fonio in West Africa, they say it's a thing that could be grown and is resilient.

Alison Stewart: I'm interested in the culinary part of this, this idea of pairing these greens with these caramelized onions. What does that do to the texture of the dish?

Hawa Hassan: I think more than texture, there's a sweetness that the onions add. It's sautéed in onion and garlic. It's quick. It comes together really quickly and is eaten often in the season that it grows.

Alison Stewart: Very important to remember. Let's talk about a quesadilla from El Salvador. It's a little different than other quesadillas, the way we think about quesadilla. What's unique about a quesadilla from El Salvador?

Hawa Hassan: The El Salvadorians feel so strong about this recipe because it's uniquely theirs. It's a hybrid. It's a cake bread. It's both sweet and savory. It's eaten at breakfast. It's a snack or can be served as a light dessert. It's traditionally made with queso duro, a crumble, semi-hard cow's milk cheese, which can be found in the States in many neighborhoods with El Salvadorian communities. Not to be mistaken with the one that most people know, this is a sweet cheese bread.

Alison Stewart: When is it eaten during the day, anytime?

Hawa Hassan: Anytime, as far as I'm concerned. You can have it with a cup of coffee or-- It's comforting, it's easy, it's quick to bake.

Alison Stewart: In the section, you also include a story about a man named Francisco Martinez who administers a coffee farm. Tell us a little bit about his coffee farm.

Hawa Hassan: Francisco had been a coffee manager since he was 19 years old, working for many different owners. Farmers and owners are two very different people. Most people who own farms, in my research and the folks that I met on the ground, hire people like Francisco to become managers. He and his wife Maria were living on this farm that he'd been at since he was 19 years old.

For him, he says, coffee isn't just work, it's a legacy. His family has been doing it for a generation. He says that each harvest is a testimony to what can be made. He had so much pride. As a coffee lover from Seattle, Washington, he made me really think about a cup of coffee differently. He said that coffee's woven into the fabric of their community. He says that it's a source of pride and a symbol of perseverance. I was so blown away by him and his insight. It reminded me that a cup of coffee isn't a cup of coffee. It's about the hands that planted. He talked about harvesting season and how it's prepared with care. I really enjoyed myself and really learned so much from Francisco.

Alison Stewart: Recently, you've mentioned that your next book will focus around rituals around food. What kind of rituals came up during the research for this book that made you realize, "Oh, there's another book to be written"?

Hawa Hassan: I think since COVID, I've been thinking about the way we gather and what a table looks like and what do real connections in real life look like. When I started to think about that, I started to think about what are some of the rituals that we examine ourselves every day, and then how are other people doing it globally? When I've been talking to my team, we're thinking about researching things like, what do you eat when you speak to God? That could be fasting over a period of time. In some religions, that happens.

What do you eat when the king dies? In Ghana, where my husband is from, in certain tribes, when the king dies in the Ashanti kingdom, there's a particular food that they eat, and there's some foods that they don't eat. What do you eat when you climb Mount Everest? There's so much there to be examined.

Alison Stewart: I noticed in your book, hold on, that you dedicated it to your husband.

Hawa Hassan: I did.

Alison Stewart: Tell me why.

Hawa Hassan: Why did I dedicate the book to him?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Hawa Hassan: I think book writing can be lonely, and I think it could especially be lonely when you're traveling to countries that are far from home and constantly giving and pouring and pouring and pouring, making sure that you're getting the stories. I think one of the things I learned from In Bibi's Kitchen, and I was very alone back then, is that good stories can't be rushed, and things like this take a lot of time and care. Kwame was at home in New York, basically acting as the producer of this book. He provided me the care and the need that I needed so that I can extend that to the people I was interviewing.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Setting a Place for Us. It is by Hawa Hassan. Thank you so much for being with us, and congratulations on the book.

Hawa Hassan: Thank you, Alison. This is a delight.