Big Vegan Flavor | Nisha Vora
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Hello, and welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Matthew, bringing you this week's episode with Nisha Vora, a cookbook author and content creator known for her innovative approach to vegan cooking. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at Google.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2012 and working as a lawyer, Nisha switched out her casebooks for cookbooks to follow her dream in the food world. She created a cooking website called Rainbow Plant Life and has amassed over 2 million followers across her blog and social channels. She has worked with brands like Instagram and PureWow, and her work has been featured across publications like CNN, Forbes, Glamour, Women's Health, and Elle.

In this conversation, she discusses her second cookbook, Big Vegan Flavor, with over 150 recipes to help you master the art of vegan cooking. Here is Nisha Vora, Big Vegan Flavor. Welcome, Nisha. We're very grateful to have you joining us today. Hi, Googlers. Thank you.

This book is stunning. Congratulations, by the way. I'm not vegan, but I do love to eat plant-based foods. And I really had so much fun trying these recipes, eating the recipes, of course. This is actually probably the first cookbook that I've read and enjoyed reading. It has beautiful introductions.

And you have amazing blurbs in front of every single recipe that are really meaningful. I would love to kind of start from the beginning. And, you know, where did your passion for food come from?

Where did it come from? Good question. So I started teaching myself how to cook when I was a teenager, just kind of like wanting to eat something different. I started watching the Food Network, which was very popular in the early 2000s. And I was very academic. So I was like a nerd in school. I'm sure some of you can relate. And the way I learned stuff was by taking notes and like this very formal process. So when I would watch the Food Network, I would like pause and take notes and like...

I was just absorbing all this information and like I did cook in the kitchen, but I think initially I was just like learning and falling in love with the process of learning about cooking. And as I got more comfortable, I started experimenting. And I think what really helped me fall in love with cooking was

the experience of serving food to people I love. So my family and my best friend's family who lived up the street from us, we would do these like every few months feasts. It was just like a mini Thanksgiving any time of year. And I would like spend all weekend cooking like eight or 10 different dishes. And then we would all sit down to eat and just seeing the look of joy and excitement on people's faces was something so powerful about how fun

food can really bring happiness and bring people together. And so that's how I really fell in love with cooking. That's amazing. And can you, you know, share a little bit about your journey from, I know you initially worked in the corporate world as a corporate lawyer to, you know, how you became a bestselling author and, you know, content creator?

Sure. So I used to be a lawyer in a former life and I went to law school at 21, like convinced that I was going to practice law forever and save the world using my law degree. And I loved law school and like the intellectual rigor. But practicing law is much, much different than going to law school. I practiced corporate law at a big New York City law firm. It was terrible. I was waking up every day anxious and miserable. Like, what am I doing with my life? Like, why am I going to work with people who don't value like me?

me as a human being don't value my contributions, don't value my time. Then I practiced nonprofit law, which was much better, but still was feeling really anxious.

with the combative kind of combative litigation environment where you're like, you're adversarial with your opponents. You're not like working together. You're not collaborating. You're not creating something. And it was just really out of sync with my personality. And after four years of practicing law, I was like, I don't want to keep waking up every day and feeling like, do I have to go to work? Like, do I have to get out of bed? Like, I am tired of living for the weekend of like,

you know, I want to live every day to its fullest, not just Saturday and Sunday. And so I started thinking about like, what else am I good at? What else am I interested in? And I tried a couple of different things on the side. And ultimately I came back to food, which again, like I fell in love with as a teenager. And I just started posting photos of the food I was making on Instagram back when it was a photo only platform, square photo platform. And

And I had gone vegetarian around the same time and then shortly after vegan. And so I was just excited to share like the new things I was learning and it started to take off. And I was like, well, maybe I can use this budding Instagram account to turn it into a career or to at least find a different job out of the law. So I applied to a few food startups in New York City where I lived and then found one where I did a bunch of different things and started building my own business on the side until I

I think I did that for two and a half years before I felt comfortable and financially secure enough to like go off on my own. Wow. I think that's so courageous and brave because, you know, back when, yeah, Instagram was just photos and no one's, you know, growing up thinking like,

I want to be a content creator. We're not dreaming of that as little girls in our rooms. So just really brave to just follow your passion and want to do something you love. We do spend so much of our time working. It's amazing if you're passionate about it. So thank you for sharing that. But let's go ahead and dive a bit more into the book, Big Vegan Flavor. You also wrote your first cookbook was the Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook.

And what kind of was the inspiration for that cookbook versus this big vegan flavor beauty that we have here? Yeah, so about a year and a half into my journey as a content creator, which when I started in 2016, that word didn't exist. Someone told me eventually, you're an influencer. And I was like, what is that? I've never heard this term. But about a year and a half into that, when I was still working at a food startup and doing all of my stuff

at night after work, in the mornings before work, on the weekends, an editor from Penguin Random House emailed me and was like, I like your Instant Pot recipes. Have you ever thought about writing an Instant Pot cookbook? And I was like, do you have the right email address? Like me? I've been doing this for so little time, didn't really know how to measure success in this new career. And so I

a bit of an imposter syndrome, like you want me to do this? Of course I said yes, not knowing anything else. I was just like, this seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I wrote that book because the editor wanted me to write that book and I'm proud of that book. But this is the book that

I would write like if I got to make what I did, I did write this book. This is the book I like dreamed of writing for so long. Like I wanted to provide a comprehensive approach to plant-based cooking, to vegan cooking. That is exciting. That's not less than that's not trying to be something else. And that shows you plant-based food, vegan cooking, whatever you want to call it can be just as exciting, just as flavorful, just as delicious. Um,

than any type of cooking. And here's kind of how to bring it together. That's what leads me right in that to me, like I know it's like,

called like the vegan, the vegan Bible. I, to me, I'm like, this is the Holy grail of vegan cooking, especially like someone who's not vegan, um, but loves plant-based food and loves to experiment. I love that it's really digestible. No pun intended there in terms of like those first couple chapters, we are talking about flavor profiles and texture and cooking techniques and

Can you share more about the intention behind that and why it was so important for you to kind of

incorporate that into the book and share that and not having it just be 150 recipes for people to like browse through. - Yeah, I think when I first went vegan eight and a half years ago, there wasn't a book like that that gave me all the tools. So I kind of just had to figure it out on my own, just struggling along the way. Like, okay, I'm gonna take this recipe and I'm gonna take out all of the cheese and the butter and the eggs and then I'm left with like kale and quinoa and I'm like, I don't wanna eat this. Like it's so boring.

So there was a lot of trial and error on my part. And I wish that there had been a resource that was like, here are ingredients that will make your food taste better. Here's how to pair those ingredients together. Here are techniques that can improve the texture of ingredients like tofu or cauliflower or lentils. And so I wanted to include a lot of educational content that wasn't just a recipe because I think one of the...

strongest skills you can have as an adult is knowing how to cook without a recipe, like being able to walk into your kitchen at 6pm on a Wednesday without any plan and just be like, oh, I have these six ingredients. I can still make a delicious nourishing dinner for myself or for my family. And I wanted to give people the tools to be able to figure that stuff out for themselves instead of just be like, here, follow this recipe. I love developing recipes. It's my job. But I also wanted to incorporate the educational part, which goes back to like me being a nerd and like

learning how to cook by learning. Learning how to cook by learning is very circular, but learning how to cook by like taking these big picture principles and then putting them into action. Yeah. Well, and making it too like tangible. I'm also like a learn by doing, like you gotta, you know, figure it out yourself first and then you can kind of teach someone how to do it. That's what one of the things I really enjoyed about this book. So I'm not a gourmet cook. I shouldn't even call myself a cook. Um,

But I was able, like once I read kind of, oh, about deglazing or kind of all of those techniques and acid and like it all made sense. And I think there was a lot of science to that. And I imagine like you probably learned how to research very well as a lawyer. And so, you know, you really know kind of how to teach that and all the science to it. I would also now like to jump into some of the like malpractices

mouthwatering recipes, uh, inside the book specifically. You have an amazing fried chicken recipe in this book, cornbread and slaw. What is your secret to the amazing fried chicken in this book? Uh,

Um, so I'll start off by saying like most of the recipes in this book aren't trying to be a meat product. Like I think vegetables and lentils and things like that are extraordinarily delicious. There are a couple of recipes like this one where I'm like, I want to deliver that comfort food experience of a dish that you had in your childhood or before you went plant-based that

kind of delivers the flavors and textures. So for the fried chicken, it's oyster mushrooms, which I don't know if you're familiar with. They're incredibly meaty. And when you batter them in any kind of flour, spice, cornstarch mixture, and you deep fry them, like it's bound to be delicious. And the seasoning kind of gives you that flavor of like,

the typical fried chicken, and then you pair it with cornbread and slaw. So you get like that Southern comfort food experience, which I didn't grow up eating because I'm not from the South, but I have several friends in the South who were like, this is definitely that experience. Like it's obviously not chicken. And if you eat chicken a lot, you might not, you might know it's not chicken, but it delivers that same experience. And that to me is,

what I'm trying to do with food is to deliver the comfort and to deliver like the enjoyable textures and flavors that we all crave, regardless of whether we eat animal products or not. Yeah, that's correct. So all those folks who like may want, they don't want to necessarily feel like they're giving up things they love if they want to be vegan, but it is like, they still get that same feeling and the comfort from the food. So it can be a substitution. So that if they, you know, do need to go vegan for health reasons or want to do it for environmental reasons, like,

provides another, another way for them to enjoy it. I love that. Um, and then I kind of want you to veganize these common dishes, um, or kind of shout out, you mentioned some of these recipes in the book. So like the secret ingredient to a bolognese that you would do. Um, so I have a bolognese recipe, not in the book, but on my blog and I use red lentils and walnuts and

So lentils kind of have a natural meatiness to them. If you pair them with certain ingredients, walnuts are very high in protein.

glutamate is essentially what umami is. And so when you combine lentils with walnuts, with some red wine, some tomato paste, all of these ingredients kind of give you this like deeply savory, almost meaty like feeling. And then with the walnuts not being, with the lentils and walnuts having a little bit of texture, you get a little bit of a bite. So it's not just like one mushy texture, which I'm not a fan of like

Yeah. And that you mentioned in the book would be something that you, in order to flavor layer it, you like do deglazing and like you do it one layer at a time with the lentils? Yeah. So I think...

one of the most powerful things you can learn how to do as a home cook is to layer flavors. And I give an example in, I think, chapter one of what that means. But essentially, it's like, start with one layer. Let's say it's your onions that you're sautéing in oil. Then you add a little bit of salt. Then you add maybe your garlic. Then you add maybe your fresh or dried thyme. Or then you deglaze any browned bits on the pot, which have lots of flavor. And you could deglaze it with water, but...

If you do glaze it with red wine, in this instance, it's much more delicious. The acidity in the wine tends to bring out the flavors in the lentils and in the walnuts.

Um, and then you might add, um, your lentils and your walnuts. You might simmer it. Then you might add some tomatoes and then you might add some more salt and pepper at the end. So it's just like layer after layer gives you something different instead of adding everything at once, which you're just going to get a dish that tastes a little bit flat. It'll be edible. It'll sustain you and nourish you, but it might not excite you. And that's, I think the key to enjoying wholesome food is to make it in a way that excites you.

Make it taste good. Full of flavor. Another secret shining star, you have a scallop recipe in the book. Yes. So there's a mini chapter in the dinner chapters recipe called Magical Mushrooms because I truly believe they can do so many things. So one of them is the fried chicken. Another one is the scallop. So we take king oyster mushrooms, which have these kind of thick, meaty stems, and

And you tenderize them in a brine so that it's like a salty solution. And so it makes them less kind of tough and mushroom-like and a little bit softer and kind of melt-in-your-mouth texture. And then you sear them in miso butter. Miso is going to enhance the natural savoriness of mushrooms. And so you get this just very...

savory deluxe package and it has the texture similar to a scallop. Again, if you're eating scallops all the time, you will know that's not a scallop, but again, it delivers that experience and kind of what you associate eating scallops, what it's like. And then I think this is my favorite. Your chocolate mousse recipe. Oh, that one's so easy. You just put everything in a blender. So the secret in that is silken tofu and

which is, you know, you know, you get some protein in your mousse without even expecting it. But basically you just blend that with some melted chocolate and cocoa powder, a couple other ingredients. And it kind of gives you this luscious, creamy melt in your mouth texture. Silken tofu is wonderful for desserts like that. And then for me, a perfect chocolate dessert has the richness of dark chocolate, but then something a little bit tart to balance that. And so I pair it with like a raspberry compote. So you get like

sweet bitter chocolate with tart fruity raspberry. And to me, that's like the ultimate pairing. Yeah.

I have tried making many chocolate mousses with tofu. Yours is fantastic. I think the best one, like I wouldn't even go back to having regular chocolate mousse, like tofu for the win. But I think it's, you have espresso and cinnamon. I know they're both optional, but I added both of those and it just like takes it to the next level. Yeah. So that is one of the like little things I learned in my culinary education from the Food Network. I remember watching the-

Ina Garten, who's like all in the news these days, but I was an original Ina Garten fan in 2002. And I learned from her that like espresso really brings out the chocolatiness of chocolate. Cinnamon does to a lesser extent. But yeah, that's why both of those are in there.

So delicious. And then we're in fall right now. So kind of some seasonal veggies that you also have highlighted in the book. What would I guess be your favorite recipe in the book for your Brussels sprouts? So there's one Brussels sprouts recipe. So I'll go with that.

But there was one out there actually that the kitchen here lovingly prepared. It's maple roasted squash and chickpeas with mint pesto. So right now winter squash is just so perfect and you can use any variety. But what I like to do instead of like, I think you probably all had roasted butternut squash at some point. You peel it, you chop it into cubes, you roast it. It's delicious, but it's kind of like soft. And I wanted to like...

give it an additional texture profile. Again, like I don't want to eat the same texture of one thing. This is a hot take, but I don't like mashed potatoes for this reason because it's just like the same texture over and over. I know probably a lot of you just finished eating mashed potatoes and you're probably aghast, but that's...

So this recipe, you slice the squash really thinly and you toss it with olive oil and maple syrup and you roast it in a super hot oven. So it comes out a little bit crisp, a little bit chewy. And so you get like different texture profiles and something a little bit unexpected. Okay. Well, you just brought up potatoes. So then I need to bring up your smashed potato recipe. Okay.

with all of those amazing sauces. But I think the texture, like how they actually get crispy and it has multiple textures in there. What do you think your favorite sauce would be to go with the crispy smash potatoes? - So there's a whole chart if you can't pick, 'cause the first-- - Yeah, pick. - Chapter recipe has like about 50 condiments and sauces. So like every flavor profile you'd want. One of them that is just a classic for me would be the ranch dressing.

So crispy smashed potatoes, ranch dressing, maybe some like chopped chives or dill on top. The avocado crema is a really fun one if you're looking for like a Mexican spin. You could do some like charred corn, black beans to like make it more of a full meal or like a heavy appetizer.

Oh my God, I just ate and I'm starving. We just got to try all these delicious items. And then what about pears? Those are in season. You have a, is there a cobbler? Yes, there's a crispy cobbler cake with pears that would be great for Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever winter holiday you celebrate.

It is a crispy but fluffy cake. So I love cake. I'm not going to poop on cake like I... Sorry, that was a weird word. I didn't want to use the curse word. I'm not going to throw cake under the bus like I did mashed potatoes. But I think it's nice to have different...

textures in cake. And so instead of just a fluffy soft cake, this cake is like caramelized and crispy on the edges, but like fluffy and tender on the inside. And there's some spice marinated pears that go in there. And it's so lovely this time of year. And I

If you have pears, if you want like a high reward, low effort dessert, definitely give that one a try. I'm drooling again. Also, like we've talked about just a handful of these recipes. There's over 150 recipes. This book is just...

Amazing. But I'd love to kind of talk a little bit more. You know, this is called Big Vegan Flavor, just about vegan cooking in general. Do you have any top pantry staples for just like easy, flavorful, like what would be your go-to for vegan cooking? So flavor booster wise, Ducat.

Definitely soy sauce, tamari, both of those. They're mostly interchangeable in my recipes, but those are fermented. They have a lot of savoriness, which when you're cooking without animal products, you are missing some of the savoriness. So I'm always looking for ways to build that back in. Nutritional yeast would be another one. It is essentially...

again, glutamic acid, which is the heart of umami. And so a little bit of that in a sauce or in a dressing or in a cream sauce is definitely going to give you more of that subtle cheesy savoriness that I think could be used in many dishes. What else?

Again, we talked about walnuts. Those are really underrated. They're so good for you. So full of omega threes. But also like you can use them to add a little bit of that natural umami flavor that we're always looking for. And then in terms of just staples to have on for cooking any kind of lentil, any kind of bean, you can do so many things with that. There's lots of recipes in chapter six for those. And they're so good for you. Inexpensive, you know, environmentally friendly, all the good things. Yeah.

And I think this book already does it, debunks that vegan food doesn't have flavor because your recipes are all delicious and they have a ton of flavor. But are there any other kind of vegan food myths that you would want to kind of debunk or kind of share some misconceptions about besides flavor? Because we know it can be delicious. Yeah.

I think people are always like, "Where do you get your protein?" I feel like we've, you know, I've talked about this exhaustively, but, you know, chapter six is called the proteins. There's plenty of plant-based proteins. You know, you might need to be a little bit more intentional about what you eat if you have certain protein goals, but it's absolutely doable. Um,

I think also a lot of people will say, oh, I don't like how vegan food is trying to be like, there's the fried chicken recipe. I don't want that. Why can't you just not eat those things? If you don't eat meat, why do you want to eat fried chicken? Those kinds of things. I went vegan for ethical reasons after seeing what we do to animals. And so it's not that I didn't like the taste of meat. I didn't want to eat the actual animals. And so

I think it doesn't really matter why you're eating the way you are, but for people who are like, I don't want something that's trying to be meat. There's so many delicious things made from again, beans or lentils or vegetables or grains that are just genuinely delicious on their own. They don't need to try to be meat or they don't need to try to be dairy. Um, I think we often treat those ingredients as kind of like second tier status, like,

you have your meat at the center of your plate, and then you have a vegetable and a grain. And you're not really giving a lot of love to the vegetable and the grain, but those things can be truly delicious if you treat them like they're the star. Yeah, like the vegetable is the main event. One of the chapters is called, yeah, vegetable as the main event.

So then, you know, I kind of wonder, like, how do we learn to associate and equate, like, these big, beautiful, delicious vegetables as also, like, flavorful, healthy, and, you know, good for the environment? I don't know if I understood the question. Sorry. How do, you know, like, how can we, I guess, um...

get the word out there or how do we kind of, you know, besides a beautiful book like this, help teach people that, you know, there are so much more to vegetables and how to make them the main dish that, you know, they can be helped, that they can be delicious and it's, you know, can be good for the environment and they can be flavorful. You know, I guess, how would you engage with more folks that like maybe wouldn't necessarily pick up this book? Sure. How do you share with them? So my philosophy for the last several years is,

in my content has been to show, not tell. So when I went vegan, I learned all this information. I watched like 10 documentaries and I was like raving to everyone. I was like, do you know this is what we do to animals? Do you know this is like what we do to the environment? And everyone was like, we don't want to hear it. Like, stop it. And I was getting so frustrated because I was like, I have this information I want to share. But people don't really like being told what to do. People don't like being told,

"Hey, your diet's wrong," or, "Hey, you're not eating enough vegetables," or whatever it might be. But what people like to do is to eat. So if you can show people

Hey, cauliflower can be incredibly delicious or fennel can like take your salad over the top. Like I just encourage people to try experimenting with different vegetables, try some of the recipes in the book and then feed them to your, I don't know, skeptical family members, friends, et cetera, because showing is, I think the best way to subtly change people's minds and get them to be more open-minded about trying different foods. Yeah.

That's exactly what I was thinking in my mind when I was like wanting to get that question out of my mouth. So that's perfect. Yeah. Show, don't tell. I completely agree. I want to talk a bit about your community. You have built an amazing community. You have over a million subscribers on YouTube. Tell me more about, you know, how Rainbow Plant Light started and how you've kind of engaged your audience.

Yeah. So I started again, as I mentioned, as a side hustle, as a just a, well, first just as a hobby, then it turned into a side hustle. And so I wasn't, I didn't really know what I wanted out of my, like, career.

content. I didn't know, like I was doing it because I was learning all this stuff, but I wasn't sure like what the goal was. But over time, as I started to see that I was able to influence the way people were thinking about food and cooking, I really wanted to

share information in a fun, approachable way and to inspire people to try more vegetables and to think about food a little bit differently. And I never want people to feel pressured to go vegan. Like I just want people to like

eat more vegetables, try to reduce their intake of animals. And if they fall in love with that way of life and decide to go vegan, amazing. But I think part of my approach is like inviting everyone not...

making it seem too restrictive or too judgmental. And when I started YouTube, I don't think I had any of that, but I wasn't really sure what I was doing. And I was just kind of like grabbing like, oh, everyone's doing this. Let me try that. And it wasn't until I decided to just focus on what I thought I was good at and to lean into what I thought I was good at and like kind of block out all the other noise and like kind of stop looking at what other people were doing was when I started to see results.

And it's been a really powerful lesson about like trusting your intuition and doing what naturally feels good to you instead of trying to do what everyone else is doing, which is very tempting in this day and age where like we can see what everyone else is doing. And it's very easy to just like, okay, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. But getting quiet and listening to what your intuition is telling you.

And I am now a part of your community. And as I said, like, I'm not vegan. I'm sure you have folks with all different types of dietary preferences that are now a part of your community. How would you how do you get folks that are maybe not vegan to to dip their toes into trying vegan recipes as we kind of talked about? Or do you have any advice that you share with your community on those just kind of looking to try these recipes?

Yeah, I mean, I think I lean into comfort food to get people on board. You know, there's people are at different stages in their journey. So some people follow me and they've been vegan for 10 years and they're like fully committed. And then there are some people who maybe just

Like, oh, I should maybe eat meat once or twice less per week. And so I think leaning into the comfort food angle of like, oh, you can still have a bolognese and it'll be delicious and it'll scratch that itch or you can still have this really comforting Thai curry and it'll still satisfy that like Thai takeout curry feeling that you're looking for. So I'm not someone who's like,

everyone eat a big kale salad because if you are on this side of the journey, you're probably not interested. I can make you an amazing kale salad, but some people are not even open to starting that conversation. They've heard all the things about kale. They've heard all the things about salad. They've had bad salads before. They don't want to try that. So I try to offer a variety of different recipes, some which leave heavily on the comfort food angle, some which are a lot more vegetable friendly. And having that balance, I think,

allows people from different stages of their journey to like find something that they like. Yeah. Okay. I have a couple rapid fire questions for you. If you had to only pick five spices to bring with you on a desert island, I know only five, you have five. Salt doesn't count. That's included. Oh, obviously. It's the number one ingredient. Okay. Five spices, curry leaves,

Black mustard seeds, cumin seeds because then I can grind them into ground cumin as well. Cardamom, cinnamon. Ooh, okay. But like now I'm like, what about coriander? It's going to be rough on that desert island. Favorite food? Any kind of East Asian or Southeast Asian noodle soup. That's like cheating. No, we'll give it to you. We'll give it to you. What about a food you absolutely hate? Not a fan of parsnips.

They're kind of, well, nobody eats them. So you're probably like, what is a parsnip? There's, there's, Max, what else do I dislike? It's okay. We can go with parsnips. We'll go with parsnips. We'll see. And then you could only eat one food for the rest of your life. This has to be specific. Wasn't this the Asian noodle soup? No. This is one for the rest of your life. That was your favorite food.

Like, do I get to eat other foods or just have to eat this? No, you just have to eat this for the rest of your life. So we're not like thinking about dying of scurvy or anything. Nope. No, this is just a rapid fire. There's no health ramifications. And you can pick again, you can go with the like spice noodle kind of like route and it can be broader.

I'll say tofu because you can prepare it in so many different ways. There you go. And I guess I'll at least have protein. Yeah.

Okay. What is next for you? Now, I'm sure you need a break after you just spent four years working on this amazing book. But can you give us any type of hint or sneak peek into what is next or even dream out there that you would love to do someday? We should look out for it. Good questions. I'm definitely not ready for another book. This one took many years and I'm still processing. I don't know.

But so we launched a meal plan subscription at the beginning of this year where we don't send you meals, but we send you like kind of like everything you would want to make the logistics of weeknight cooking easier. So we send you a PDF that has like your grocery list and your set of prep steps to do it and things that will make your weeknight cooking easier. So we're trying to envision and work on what stage two is like. Maybe it's an app. Maybe it's a website portal where you can customize more. So we're kind of in the early stages of

developing version two. I would love to launch a physical product. We're not anywhere near that, but I get a lot of requests to do, "Oh, I love this spice blend you make that you use in this recipe," or, "I love these sauces that you do. I would love to be able to buy them at the store when I don't have the time to make them." And so that's definitely on our somewhat distant, somewhat near future radar, somewhere in the middle.

Oh my gosh, I would love to buy the five favorite splice blends to have on Nisha's desert island. And since we are here in San Diego, can I get some shout outs to favorite things to see, do and eat?

Sure. Eat. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but my favorite vegan restaurant in San Diego is called Donna Jean. They make incredible handmade, homemade pizzas and pastas. Everything in the kitchen is like made from scratch. The cheeses, the hot sauces, like it's incredible. For pastries, I love Hazel and Jade. They make incredible, like really high quality pastries, custom cakes, things like that. I also love Maya's Cookies if you need like a really good

cookie fix. And then Cali is my favorite kind of nicer sit down special occasion restaurant. It's not vegan, but they have tons of high quality, really innovative vegetable dishes. And I just tell the chef or the server, I'd like everything on the menu that's vegan or can be made vegan. And then I just go to town.

What about favorite things to do? Local? How do you like to spend your San Diego days when you are not content creating, not recipe testing, not writing? It's a beautiful book. Honestly, it's just so beautiful here. I go out for a walk all the time. I just love being outside. We went to the symphony recently and that was really cool. I don't know that much about classical music, but it was

a very cool experience in the house, what is it called? Like the arena. - Is it at the show?

Yeah, they just renovated it and it's stunning. So that's definitely like a fun activity to do to like get your culture fix. Or I like to go to the La Jolla Playhouse sometimes. Again, I used to live in New York City. So I'm like trying to find things that scratch that like, oh, I want quote culture, which is like a silly thing to say. But those are both really nice things to do.

Great recommendations. All those restaurants are now going to be completely booked up. So we're going to hop into some Dory questions. But first, I wanted to open up and see if we have any live questions from the room.

So I would love to hear your thoughts on your experience as a vegan changing. I think you said eight years. So I'd love to hear like the difference between then and now. Like for me, there wasn't even any Beyond Meat in grocery stores when I started or as many restaurants. So I'd love to hear how your experience changed. Yeah, I'm actually glad I went vegan at a time when there weren't a lot of options, like when the cheese didn't melt and everything.

made you want to gag because I think it trained my brain and my palate to cook primarily with whole foods. I think if I went vegan today, I might just eat a lot of the processed meats and cheeses, which I'm glad exist. It's nice to have those, but I don't like using them as my default. I like to like

supplement with them from time to time. And so I think that has been a benefit. In terms of changes, I have a lot more energy. I know people probably don't want to hear like, oh, if you're a vegan, a lot more energy. But for me, that's been the case. I am pretty much always energized except for bedtime. And I wasn't low energy before, but I definitely have noticed a difference.

Again, I went vegan for ethical reasons. I watched all these documentaries and I was like, "Oh my God, that's what we do to animals." And at the time I was working in nonprofit law where the goal was kind of like justice. And I felt a little more aligned with my values to say, "Okay, well, I'm doing this thing that feels justice oriented, if that makes sense."

Yeah, and then I've experienced some health benefits. I wouldn't say it's been drastic, but I have hereditary high cholesterol. It's now normal, which is great.

Um, yeah. And I, I think it's just like a really fun way to cook. Like I find myself being more creative when I cook, when I, when I used to eat animal products, it would be like, Oh, have a chicken breast today. What am I going to like pair with it? Whereas now it's like, I might make a curry. I might make a noodle soup. I might make a shepherd's pie. Like there's just, I feel like a lot more vantage points to jump off from as opposed to like, I got my protein. Now what do I put with it?

I'm just wondering, based off of you having a million followers, would you have any suggestions for people that are in your life that have health problems and have mobility issues and are pretty stubborn and stuck in their ways and how you would be able to approach them to get them to maybe be more open to a vegan lifestyle? Yeah.

I'm like thinking of my parents who are vegetarians. That's not the problem, but like, I'm trying to think of how many conversations I've had with them about like, you need to exercise more. Um, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier about like showing, not telling, like, I think ultimately we're all smart adults who know certain things. Like I think most people know I should eat vegetables. Like I shouldn't limit fast food. I should limit junk food. Um,

I think they need an alternative that's sustainable. And I also think they don't want to be told what to do. So like maybe the next time you go over, you can make them a dish that's, you know, maybe a flavor profile they really like, maybe a cuisine they really like, but it's

fully vegan and maybe you don't even tell them unless they know that you're vegan and you only cook vegan food, but like maybe you bring them food and you know that they'll love and kind of slowly start to like open their eyes to like, oh, maybe I don't need to eat meat every day. Maybe I don't need to eat cheese every day.

And then like doing it with them, honestly, like the only time I can get my mom to exercise is if I do it with her. And so like maybe you can plan a cooking date together where you're like in the kitchen together and you're like, oh, this is like how you prepare cauliflower or this is what I like to do with tofu so that it tastes really good. And giving people kind of like the know-how how to do it so that it doesn't feel overwhelming when they try to do it on their own.

I really think the show don't tell philosophy that you keep touching on is so important. Like again, this book is called Big Vegan Flavor.

People think like, no, they rather eat like a burger versus like steamed broccoli because that's how they've had it prepared. But when they try and they realize that vegetables can have this umami flavor, this sweetness, this spice to it, and then they're not missing any other flavors, like how delicious a vegetable can be when you roast it or cook.

Like that makes all the difference. So I feel like I need to just start feeding everyone all the recipes from this book. Hi, Nisha. I was wondering which recipes should I start with from the book? If you have one. Because I do cook a lot. So wondering where I should start. Yeah. And then another question, which is also if there's any sort of push and pull with what you like making.

versus what people want you to make? So in terms of where to start, it really depends on, again, how comfortable you are with cooking. It sounds like you are. Also, what kind of cuisines do you like? There's a variety in the book. And then also, when are you cooking? Are you cooking on Sunday for the week? Are you cooking on Tuesday when you have 30, 40 minutes? Are you cooking on Friday or Saturday for a dinner party or for date night? So it really depends if you want to...

ask a specific one, I can try to point you in the right direction. Weeknight. Okay. So one of the favorites in the book is in chapter six, it's called super savory grated tofu. You take a block of super firm tofu, you use a box grater, you pan fry it until it gets like crispy and chewy. And then there's a sauce that's got like soy sauce and

vinegar and chili flakes and a little bit of sugar and you coat it in there. So it gets like savory and sweet, not too sweet, a little sweet, a little spicy. And it's this lovely chicken-esque texture. And then you can pair it with any grains or rice you might have, any vegetable. It's really versatile in the way you want to serve it. So I would start there. And the second question was, how do I cook? How do I know what to, or what do I want to cook versus what other people want me to cook?

While my partner Max is here, he will eat pretty much anything I make as long as it's not a squishy mushroom or like rubbery eggplants. So having him as my partner has really forced me to learn how to cook those ingredients really well. I think there's always a balance between like, I want to just cook something creative versus like, what is the internet searching for? So like,

There's something called SEO, which I think everyone in this room probably knows what that means. But for a food creator like me, like for my website, for instance, even for YouTube, like I'm thinking about who's going to be searching for this. So I have a recipe on my website for buffalo chickpea quesadillas, which is very popular, but no one is searching for that because it's a made up thing. So in order to get like actual traffic from Google, I have to think about what are people searching for. And sometimes...

Those are recipes I don't want to make. I think I learned a couple years ago that if I had made a recipe for vegan potato soup, that I would probably rank for it. And I was like, I don't want to eat potato soup. I can make crispy smashed potatoes. I can make roasted potatoes. I don't want to make potato soup. So I passed on that. But yeah, there's a balance between making recipes that people are searching for versus what I want to make, which is why I love the book because

I can put whatever I want in the book. Nobody needs to search for it. If you buy the book, then you can make whatever's in the book versus, you know, the internet is a bit more search oriented. Hi, I'm also a cook and like I love experimenting with my recipes and ingredients. So that's basically what I wanted to ask you about. Like, how did you discover ingredients? Like outside of grocery stores, like what are some other places you just like look for inspiration or...

Just find fun ingredients as such. Yeah. So I don't know if this is a term we still use, but the ethnic grocery stores, like I just love going to like H Mart or my like Indian grocery store or even Japanese grocery store. There's different ones throughout San Diego. And sometimes I'll see an ingredient and I confirm it's vegan if I can read it.

if it's in English. But yeah, like I'll just pick up sometimes different ingredients. And then also just looking through cookbooks, honestly, like at least cookbooks that are a bit more on the experimental side.

I might not make that recipe, but I might see, oh, they use preserved lemons in this way. That seems really interesting. Maybe I'm going to make a vinaigrette with that or I'm going to bake it into some orzo. And so, yeah, like seeking out cookbooks that are a little bit more ambitious or a little bit more experimental, going to different grocery stores that are not your standard supermarket. And then when I go to restaurants...

I often think about like, oh, what is this dish that I'm eating? It has this like unique flavor. If it's not listed on the menu, you might ask the server like what's in here and then I'll write it in my notes on my phone and then go home and think about, oh, maybe I'd like to make, you know, at Donna G in the restaurant I was mentioning, they have like a date puree on one of their pizzas. And I was like, maybe I can make like a date sauce or like a date jam. And so, yeah, going to restaurants can also be creative things.

get the creative juices where I don't know the phrases get the creative juices going

Hi, Nisha. I've been making your recipes for many, many years now. I just made your butternut squash stuffed pasta for Thanksgiving and everyone loved it. So thank you. And then what I want to ask you is, do you ever think about what would have been if you were a lawyer? Like, because if you keep on, like, I love cooking. And at one point I wanted to be a chef, but then it got old pretty soon. So do you ever get bored of doing that?

doing what you actually love? Or do you ever think about your past profession? Nope. No? Okay. Wow. I mean, being a lawyer can suck. So that's specific to that. And no, I haven't gotten tired yet of what I'm doing. Of course, that might change in the future. But I just feel grateful to be able to wake up

almost every morning and feel like, oh, I'm ready to start the day. I'm ready to get to work. I'm excited for this. And until that feeling lasts, I'm sure I'll keep doing that. And yeah, I don't think about being a lawyer, except when like every two years, the New York City Bar Association is like, you owe us your dues. And I'm like, I'm not a lawyer anymore. That's when I think about it. Thank you.

Hi, Nisha. I'm asking this question on behalf of my dog. Do you have any pet-friendly recipes? Pet-friendly recipes? Oh, no. I don't have a pet, so I guess I haven't thought about that. But...

I will put it on my list for the future. Okay, we have a couple Dory questions I'm going to jump into. Mila says, "Hi, Nisha. I want to thank you for transforming my life. I make your recipes because they are full of flavor and they're wholesome. Could you tell us a bit more about the recipe development process in terms of achieving the amazing flavors?"

Yeah. So I think we touched on this a little bit earlier, but there's a lot of research that goes into it, particularly for recipes where maybe they're outside of my cultural wheelhouse or I'm trying to...

mimic the flavors and textures, like for instance, the fried chicken or the scallops. I do a ton of research because I don't want to call something fried chicken, even in quotes, unless it approximates that experience. And so I will watch a lot of YouTube videos from non-vegans who are like, these are my eight secrets for fried chicken, or these are my eight secrets for chocolate chip cookies. Um,

I've been working on a chocolate chip cookie recipe for a while, and I really just read every piece of food writing I could find on chocolate chip cookies, non-vegan ones. Like, what does the role of eggs play? What does the role of butter play? Like, what does the role of resting the dough play? Like, so that I could feel really confident once I start developing the recipe. So research, for sure. And then, obviously, testing goes into it. And the testing phase, usually, at this point,

Test one is not perfect, but it's edible because I've done a lot of research. But I am looking for certain things when the recipe is being tested. Like, is this something...

an average person at home would want to make. Is this the most efficient way to do it? Sometimes building flavor takes a few more steps than just throwing everything in the pot, but is there a step that I could cut out that's not as necessary? Does this recipe hit the flavor and texture marks that I think it should? Is there something that could take this dish from an eight out of 10 to a 10 out of 10? And then for a lot of vegan recipes,

that aren't just like, here's a vegetable recipe. Like for instance, baking recipes, there's so many different variations of ingredients like oat milk versus soy milk versus cashew milk versus...

Pea milk and all of those have different brands. Like, you know, even within oat milk, there's 18 different brands and they work differently. So if I'm making a recipe where one of those ingredients is crucial, I will try to test it with at least a few different brands or a few different options because I want to give people as much optionality as possible because I know that like not everyone's going to have the exact same ingredients as I do.

- Okay, I wanna jump into a quick question that I have for you because everyone has different palates, like different things they like, don't like, different levels of spice, sweetness. So I'm curious for this book, just on average, how many testers did you have for like, I think this is my final recipe. How many folks signed off on it before you were like, this is right? Or did you be like, okay, take a little bit of salt or add a little more maple?

So I had three professional recipe testers and one who worked in my house every day for two years. So she would make the recipes. I would talk with her, feedback, tweak, let's do this. My partner Max tasted all the recipes. Yeah, so...

It is hard to know how many people is enough. Everyone has different palates. But my hope is that with the instructional part of the first four chapters in the book that teaches you how to tweak things, that teaches you how to balance flavor profiles, teaches you how to make something less spicy or more savory or less sweet or whatever it is that people can customize to their own taste buds.

And that's why I want to give people the education so that they can feel confident when they're making a recipe, whether it's mine or someone else's. If it's not perfect to your taste, like you will feel confident that you know how to tweak it or you know how to adapt it for the next time or you know how to make it, you know, desirable based on your needs.

Okay, I'm going to do one more question from the Dory. Andinia in Irvine says, she's a longtime viewer here. Your content is what got me to make the move to more plant-based and meal prepping building blocks to mix and match throughout the week to make different meals. What's something unexpected you've encountered on this journey to become a successful content creator and author?

Unexpected. Oh gosh, what is it? Or what about kind of like similar vein? Like how do you kind of manage, you know, like you do have to share so much about your life. You do have to put it online. Like when do you take breaks? Is that like, you know, you signed up because you loved food or, you know, you wanted to write books to share your passion, but you probably, again, weren't like

I want to dream of like putting my face out there all the time for people to see. Yeah. I think something unexpected is like, I've had to figure out how to be kind to myself. Not that I mean to myself, but I've figured I have to figure out and continue to figure out how to give myself breaks, how to prioritize rest. I think for a few years I didn't do that. And my body kind of shut down. I started developing all these health problems. Um,

my body started to fall apart. And so it really taught me the importance of like, when you are your own boss, like no one's going to tell you, hey, go on vacation. Hey, go to bed or, you know, take an hour in the afternoon to just decompress. And so I have to learn how to do those things for myself. And I'm still on that journey, but it's definitely been unexpected. And the other thing I would say is like, yes, I am public facing, but I'm actually very much, I don't like, I don't like talking about myself. I don't like

You know, like if I'm at a party, like I would rather just stand next to the food and talk to one person. Like I don't enjoy that, like being the center of attention. It's a little different because I am enjoying the content that I'm sharing and I want to provide useful stuff and useful information for people. But like I, yeah, it's reinforced what I already knew, which is that like I'd rather just like read a book by myself. Right.

Well, Nisha, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on Big Vegan Flavor, another bestselling cookbook. I hope that you all get a chance to go pick it up, to try some of the recipes, and then we can all follow along your continued journey on YouTube. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.