Basketball Alumna Turns Up the Heat with Award–Winning Cookbook

Hawa Hassan, 2002
Award-winning Cookbook Author, CEO, Basbaas Foods

Hawa Hassan can answer what attracted her to Bellevue College with one word: “Basketball.” She played for the women’s team in 2002 and still recalls fondly her time as a Bulldog. 

Today, Hassan is known for her cookbooks. Her first cookbook, “In Bibi’s Kitchen,” won the 2022 James Beard Foundation award for Best International Cookbook. Her latest, “Setting A Place for Us,” focuses on “recipes and stories of displacement, resilience, and community” from countries impacted by war in the Middle East and Africa. 

It’s a topic close to Hassan’s heart. Her family fled Somalia during the country’s civil war and settled in a refugee camp in Kenya. From there, she was sent to Seattle in 1993 while other relatives went where they could. Her mother eventually settled in Norway.  

 A counselor at Seattle’s Franklin High School encouraged her to apply for a Rotary Scholarship.  

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. The family hosting her suggested Hassan stay close to home. She loved playing basketball at Franklin and followed a few of her teammates to Bellevue College. There she could continue the sport she loved as she took classes.  

At the same time, she was also developing her career as a model. Eventually Hassan left Seattle in 2005 to work as a model in New York. Her career led her around the world.     

“But I didn’t like the weight of portraying a story that felt like the opposite of who I was,” she said. “I started to think about what will come next. I knew I didn’t want to be a model in my thirties. I thought it was fun in my teens but by my mid-twenties, I needed to find my pivot. 

Reuniting with her family in Norway, she began to think about various business ideas. In 2014, she left New York for a sabbatical in Norway.     

“It was a summer of quiet,” Hassan recalled as she considered possible careers. “I kept coming back to food, because for the first time in my life, I was eating a meal with family every night.” 

Returning to the United States. Hassan launched Basbaas Foods, a line of African-inspired sauces and condiments.     

“The original two condiments were based on ones from Somalia, the equivalent of our ketchup,” Hassan said.  

The cookbooks followed. Each book required hundreds of hours of research including testing recipes. Some recipes then led to new condiments for Basbaas Foods. Today Hassan is considering other ways to tell the stories that she wants to tell through a new media company. 

“I feel like my work is so fragmented, so I’ve been thinking about how to create things for the Global South that have connective tissue,” Hassan said. 

For students like herself, she encourages counselors and teachers to support their dreams. As she found during her time at Franklin and Bellevue College, just a little encouragement can take a person a long way.