this spice mixture is phenomenal you should be jealous of me that i get to smell it and
you cannot hey this is so exciting i am mindy kaling and i am in the tasty
kitchen with my friend halwa hassan the chef her amazing book
in baby's kitchen is great we're actually doing a recipe from it hello what are we making today
we're going to be making a sugar salad which is a somali pasta sauce we're going to talk
about what makes it special and different and how it makes me nostalgic for home
i think this will be fun because a lot of somali cuisine is heavily influenced by indian cooking so
i was lucky enough to meet hawa through unhcr the u.n refugee agency and hala is actually a former
refugee so we're going to talk about our story a little bit and cook what more could you want
so what makes this pasta sauce incredibly special is that all the flavors of the indian ocean are
present in it we have a stick of cinnamon cumin coriander black peppercorn cardamon whole cloves
and some turmeric i'm very intimidated by this already i'm not gonna lie don't be at all it's
very much like garam masala okay i'm sure you're using your everyday cooking at home okay can we
just stop the way that she said garam masala i'm indian okay that put me to shame so i'm just gonna
take a heavy pot and just crush this a bit do you want to do it yeah if you have some frustration to
get out i would love that i do thank you while you do that i'm going to go ahead and throw everything
on our stove i'm going to let this come to smell about two minutes over medium heat i don't want
it to burn and then we'll go ahead and grind it so can you smell it yeah this is like i just want to
waft this into my face for all of eternity i have a spice grinder i'll just go ahead and transfer it
so when i was growing up and we would cook with indian spices sometimes you would make
something and then the house would smell like that dish for like the next two days
oh my god or you'd go to school smelling like it yeah it makes me feel like i'm at home
well what's still cool is how similar these spices are to indian spices so somalia is on the longest
coast in the indian ocean that's not an island i think madagascar is has a longer coast than
us but we're right on the indian spice trade i'm gonna go ahead and grind this maybe mindy
actually will do it so now i'm doing the easy thing oh it's like i think you can push a button
i'm gonna go ahead and pour it into there and then we're just gonna make sure it's super fine
okay i'm sifting like an old-timey prospector looking for gold i feel like a proud mama i know
look at this that looks really good mindy look at how beautiful and again it just smells it smells
like samosas and chana masala and i just can't wait for this all those childhood memories are
flooding right back at the smell of hoage i love that we've made our hawaj we're gonna go ahead and
use it in our pasta sauce we're gonna be making my mom's sugo which is an italian word for sauce
i have this over medium heat i'm gonna put about three tablespoons of olive oil so i'm just gonna
let that warm sous chef you wanna go ahead and throw in the garlic bell pepper and the red onion
all at once all at once you got it give it a stir so again we have this over medium heat
we're gonna let the vegetables soften it'll take us about eight minutes and from there we'll add
our beef let it break down add our garage this is the beginnings of also what samosa the garlic
onion spice thing that's like how we start 90 of our dishes i feel like in indian food i would
always remember my mom just like handing me a knife handing me garlic and i just knew that i
had to like chop everything and then she would do everything else do you have a little helper now
you cook with anyone at home there's young people in my house but they're not helpful definitely not
helpful vegetables are sweating we're in a perfect place okay great so i want to hear more about you
can you tell me a little bit about like where you were born i have brothers and sisters i'm dying to
know yeah so i was born in somalia in the capital of mogdishu i am the second eldest of 10 children
wow i know big squad so mindy our vegetables are completely softened this is a good time to throw
in our beef if you want to just grab the salt it's a teaspoon of salt mindy just eyeball it eyeball
it how's that i'll just go ahead and break this up and i'm going to do three tablespoons of our
hawaj which again is the bedrock of this recipe and makes it so much more different than other
pasta sauces do you want to just throw it i would love that is this a good tablespoon a heaping
tablespoon or a regular that's great that's going to keep going let's go ahead and break that yes
okay and then we're going to take about 15 minutes let our beef brown on all sides and we'll carry on
with the recipe this spice mixture is phenomenal you should be jealous of me that i get to smell
it and you cannot so while our meat's cooking i wanted to talk a little bit about why you were
forced out of somalia if you feel like talking about it yeah so in 1990 there was a civil war
that had taken place in somalia my mother at the time had four kids and one on the way and my
father decided that we were going to flee and head to nairobi my siblings and my mother and myself
went to a refugee camp we stayed there for about a year and afterwards my brother and i were sent
off to school in nairobi and in 1993 there was an opportunity for a little girl to head to seattle
my mom thought that would be great and so i grew up in seattle washington just thinking about the
little seven-year-old you flying alone to seattle it's like do you remember a lot from that journey
yeah the thing that was so interesting to me was the food that they served on the airplane we had
olives and i remember calling my mom when we landed and i said oh these people serve
eyes and she was like i don't think they serve eyes and i was like there were green eyes on the
airplane mom so our beef has completely browned i'm gonna go ahead and throw in our tomato paste
and then this is canned tomatoes with just it's juices and everything so i'll just go ahead and
dump that in there so mindy go ahead and bring our tomatoes and tomato paste with our beef to combine
i'm just going to fill up a little bit of water and get the rest of my tomato juice out of there
so mindy is doing a perfect job of bringing all of our flavors together i've just turned
the heat to high we'll let this boil then i'll cover it and let it simmer for about 30 minutes
so what is important to you that people understand about refugees you know i think that displaced
people are often have a blanket statement about them and that they are infringing on different
borders and they're running to take from different countries but the truth is is that refugees are
not monolithic we come from many different walks of life and oftentimes wherever we go we create
opportunity for ourselves and our community i'm here by the grace of god but i'm also here because
of the many people who made way for me and i think that's when people think about refugees they
should think about what has to happen in order for someone to leave their home in the middle of the
night yeah i'm sorry i'm getting emotional because you read so much and hear about refugees but then
you think about someone like hawa who came from really kind of unimaginable circumstances
and is such an accomplished woman giving back so much through her cooking and her businesses it's
just great we're so lucky to have her and i'm so lucky to be cooking with her can you talk a little
about your journey into becoming a chef i got into the business of making somali food because
i couldn't find it for myself it was storytelling from a healthy perspective that's where in bibi's
kitchen was born was how do you inspire people to cook at their home how do you inspire people
to have longer tables and shorter fences and food is a it's a community builder yeah it absolutely
is and now i mean i haven't tried this yet but i'm already getting so excited about my first
somali food experience okay mindy let's see if our sugo is done ah that looks perfect i think so too
looks and smells delicious so i have some cooked pasta here you want to just go ahead
and toss them on top of there yes how generous should i be here with this i mean get crazy okay
am i putting too much on here it just smells so good that's perfect that's good okay yeah
and then i'm just gonna go ahead and sprinkle some cilantro right over this this is how somalis
eat it we love fresh herbs the biggest thing that somali people do is we have banana on the side we
love sweet and savory i was shook i had no idea so the food is plated and this is the moment of
truth can we start yeah okay let's dig in i'm so excited for you to try it with the banana and all
me too it's so beautiful so molly's will be proud that the banana's not sliced hey i'm
not thrilled about people having to see me eat spaghetti on camera i don't do it in a ladylike
way so good this is so good thank you mindy we did it together team effort i barely helped but
this is absolutely this is incredible the banana tastes amazing with it it's so sweet
very subtle it's like spicy it's not hot it's just like flavorful and delicious okay
well this was fabulous how i'm so grateful to you for teaching me how to make this amazing
recipe i love somali food i can't wait to learn more of your recipes from your amazing cookbook
and thanks to tasty and unhcr the un refugee agency for introducing us absolutely and it
was such a pleasure getting to know more about you and your story thank you mindy
and now we're just going to keep eating the camera wants to film us bye everyone bye
you