Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season | Asma Khan
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with chef and award-winning author Asma Khan. 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.com.

Asma Khan is an Indian-born British chef and a social change advocate in the food industry. She joins Google to discuss her book, " Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season: A Masterclass in the Flavors of Indian Cookery." Originally born in Calcutta, Asma's journey into the culinary world wasn't straightforward. She initially pursued academia before moving to Cambridge in 1991 to join her husband.

Her passion for cooking began mainly to combat homesickness. Asma's culinary career began in earnest in 2012 with a supper club in her home that evolved into a pop-up in a Soho pub and eventually led to the opening of her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, in June 2017.

Her restaurant is known for its unique blend of street food, comfort food from Calcutta, and royal dishes from her Mughlai heritage. The food is cooked by an all-women team who began, like Asma, as home cooks. In addition to her restaurant, Asma gained recognition as the first British chef featured on Netflix's Chef's Table. Her episode was part of the series' sixth season and nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Documentary section.

Business Insider named her number one on their 2019 list of the 100 coolest people in food and drink. Asma was also included in Time 100 as one of the most influential people of 2024. Here is Asma Khan. Delicious Indian recipes for every day and season. Asma, it is my pleasure to welcome you to Talks at Google. Thank you very much. And thank you for everyone who's taking the time out to come. Very grateful.

So I would first love to hear, can you take us through the process of launching your cookbook, "Monsoon"? What was the catalyst for coming out with this cookbook and what was the inspiration behind it? I think this book was always in me. I've always found it uncomfortable that when people very casually speak about Indian food,

the perception was that it is complicated, that you need a lot of spices, that it's got so much ghee and cream. And I should tell everybody, I know everybody probably thinks when they go to a kind of curry house in UK that we have a bath in ghee and cream every day because of the amount that we have so much that we put in our food. This perception of what was Indian food bothered me a lot.

Because, you know, it's like saying I'm going to go and have American food. I'm going to have European food. What are you going to eat? This contrived cuisine that was being served in the name of my people was uncomfortable for me. And the first cookbook was written at a different time in my life. The second one

in a very vulnerable time in my life. I wrote that over COVID when the whole world shut down. And I wasn't sure, and every day in the WhatsApp group, there were people I knew who were dying in India. There was no oxygen and all of this, terrified, that I wanted my mother to see this book alive. And sorry, I just get so emotional about that. And Monsoon, I could have written at any point, but then I reached that stage where I thought that

Now is the time to write because now is the time when I have the ability to travel because my restaurant is not very stable. I had to move during COVID and all kinds of drama. I have a great team, front of house. Kitchen is, my God, they're rock stars. And because I wanted to go and tell the story of what our food is, how it's cooked. So this book really explains that, which I'm going, this is why I picked this dish to make.

Indian cooking, South Asian food generally is very modular. No one explains it this way. We have a process like your weaving. You put in different kinds of flavors. You add whatever you're adding, meat, vegetables, fish, and then you add some liquid. It can be water, it can be tomatoes, it can be yogurt, coconut milk. Then you cook it down. Then you garnish or you don't garnish.

But the impression everybody has is like, you know, you're this kind of crazy person who's cooking a complicated dish and you have you need 10,000 spices. I don't know if anyone is from Calcutta. Is anyone from Calcutta? OK, so you know, there is no jar in which a cockroach will not go into it. OK, so and the sunshine is everywhere. So no one has jars of spices sitting in their shelves. This is not how we cook.

You do not have kilos of spices everywhere. Even in the north, my father's from Aligarh, you don't. Aligarh, you have different problems. No one stores spices. It's a very small amount. It's used in ways of layering. And the most important thing is less is more. And so in Monsoon, the first few pages, I go through how do you cook with spice? How do you use water?

People get that wrong. The use of water when you're cooking. You either drown the thing or you burn your masala. How you actually able to use water, how you use oil, just kind of simply and also how to make ghee. Yeah. Because I mean, you can buy shop made ghee. It's overpriced and it's yuck. You start making your own ghee and you do not need to swim in it. OK, use it sparingly, mix it with oil, add it a bit to something.

that fragrance of ghee gives it a different thing. So this is really what I was trying to do. It's a very long answer, but I was trying to kind of have a book where it would feel as if I was sitting next to you and I was chatting to you while you cooked.

Because throughout every recipe, I'm telling you that it's going to take 10 minutes, it's going to take 15 minutes, but I'm telling you what's happening in your pan. I'm telling you what are you listening for? How is it transforming? What's the aroma that you're getting? So that immersive thing, my nephew, who's absolutely useless, he's one of these techie types like some of you guys, I think, and never cooked, made three things from the book. He invited me to his new house.

And I was in tears because I realized, my god, this guy is bakwas. But has managed to make three things. And it tasted really good. So that's the kind of great hope for anyone who's not cooked. And if you have cooked, there are recipes here which are very unusual. Yeah. And I love what you said about how it's very modular. Because I feel like so many people feel, like you said, that Indian cuisine is so inaccessible, difficult, time consuming.

and to what you said about also this notion that people have of the contrived Indian cuisine. And you talk about this in your book, addressing the misconception that most food in India, irrespective of region, is quote, "curry and rice." Can you talk how you explore this in your book and how through this book you hope to debunk this misconception? - Yeah, I never heard the word curry till I came to England. And everyone said, "We're going for a curry." And I was thinking, "What are they going to eat? "I have no idea what a curry is."

Because it's a complicated word. And like a lot of other things, the problem is that then the genie is out of the bottle and you can't take it back. That every dish has a name. Every dish has a story behind it. And for some things, like so you will find I've used curry in something like a yellow curry in my house because it doesn't have a name.

So it's a yellow curry, it looks yellow. And there's a, you know, Matira, which is the watermelon curry from Rajasthan. My father is Rajput Muslim, one of the five clans that converted to Islam in the reign of Akbar. And they left Rajasthan, but they didn't, this dish, which is, you cook with watermelon, it's incredible warm and it's beautiful cold.

And it's still made in my house. So even when now there is abundance of everything, we never left the fact that this was the only thing that you could cook and eat in the height of summer where they were. They were at the border with Pakistan, absolutely arid. And the only thing that they had the sweetest bottom island. And I think that I want to kind of

really celebrate produce. This is why this book is in six seasons. Bengalis are just smart because then how can one season just slam go into another? You don't. There's this in-between season and so we have six seasons and in Bangladesh as well so of course I mean Bengal as in united Bengal and so this book is in six seasons so it's the spring

vegetables that you get in our part of the world, in India, but also what you get here. But really it's about spring-like food, food that you want to have in spring, food that you want to have in autumn. So this book, I hope, is a companion for everybody to nourish yourselves. Yeah. And you talk about the six seasons that you bring up in your book. The number six seems to play a big role in your book, where recipes are categorized by the six Ayurvedic

flavors, sour, tangy, spicy, sweet, salty, bitter, and the six Bengali seasons, as you said, summer, monsoon, fall, dry season, winter, spring. Can you elaborate how the reader can go through incorporating the Ayurvedic flavors and seasons into their cooking, and specifically how they can translate the Bengali seasonality of cooking into the West?

Okay, I am biased. I grew up in Calcutta and I think that's the food capital of the world. But keeping that aside, I think that especially in the 80s when I was there in Calcutta, not so anymore. But in the 80s, if someone didn't tell me what

month it was, what time in the month it was, which whether it was mid or the end of the month and took me to the bazaar and said, look at the produce and tell me what there is. I could tell them this is winter by seeing the red carrots. I could tell them a cauliflower, you know, in Bengal in summer, what would be there? The mangoes, of course. But also I could tell you whether it's early summer, late summer by the fact that it's Hemsagar or it's Langraa or which mango is there. That knowledge is

It's a gift. I grew up at a time, you know, almost it's a forgotten time in India now. That was a time in Bengal when no one asked you who your father's name was. You were embraced whoever you were. We ate with the seasons. Everyone, all Bengalis obsessed about eating.

And that's all people talked about. No one said, do you eat this and do you eat that? No question. You don't want to eat this? Don't eat. Like I used to make this huge fuss with Karela, which is bitter God. I mean, big fuss on the table. I don't want to eat it. Everybody ignored me.

I don't want to eat it, no one eat it. Why does it bother you whether I eat something or not? You eat it if you want to eat it. That was the kind of place I grew up. And so seasonality is very important to all our festivals, you know, and it's our spring festival, it's our Bengali New Year, it's all the regions in India. This is a time when the spring harvest, you know, everybody has some festival from the north to the south everywhere.

And there's all the dishes that are linked to that. So we've got in Bengal, Panta Bhat and we've got all these bhartas. It suddenly becomes very warm and you want these kind of cooling things. And that is how I think we should eat. You eat with the rhythm of the season.

We have become consumers. I went to Delhi just recently. I went to a cafe, I've been many times. I went to have chana bhatura. The guy asked me whether I want to have avocado on toast. I almost bloody died. I said, "Where's the avocado from?" He says, "Come from Australia." I was screaming. I said, "Why are you having it?" Why are you doing this? But the problem is globalization. Everybody wants to eat what everybody else is eating. I hope in monsoon, you will find some nostalgia. You'll find memories.

even if you thought you'd forgotten about them, through the whispering tones of what I'm describing to you in the seasons and the songs and the ingredients and the rhythm of cooking, you will remember the matriarch in your household. And this is not only South Asian. This is for every household of every culture. Every home had a woman in there who decided what was going to be cooked, who made that decision, who was part of that cooking process.

And I've never forget, I was working on a television series, which is still working on, on what happened outside Milan when COVID hit. The first that COVID ravaged Italy, but around there, there were villages where every grandparent died. Every grandparent died. I spoke to their grandchildren who were in the fashion industry in Milan.

And everyone was the same thing. We came back just in time for Easter. The table was full of food. I don't even know how anything is made. This is all of us that we, when we go home, we go home so late that we haven't seen. Presuming that person who's making that food for you is still there. You're lucky if she's still there. If she's gone, she's gone with the recipes. And I just wanted to celebrate in every culture, there is this person who, even the simplest of things,

made it so beautiful. So it's really about love, it's about resilience and about the politics of food. Who eats, who doesn't eat. The fact that women eat last. Our food is very, very futile. Who is making the chapati or the dosa or the appam in the kitchen?

How is, we don't have this idea of a loaf of bread going on the table, everyone cutting slices. We don't. You go into rural India, you will find that when the farmer comes back, his wife is serving him, often fanning him. Every agrarian culture. In Ireland, story is still the same today. The men have not gone and done any harvesting, they're useless. They've come and done nothing. But women will serve the men. They will sit at the head of the table, the choicest pieces of meat will be given to them.

For those, I mean, I had a session with Padma Lakshmi. I'm just saying this because I think this will come out somewhere for James Beard. And Padma was remembering how her grandmother would keep one spoon of rice, add water to it, add a spoon of yogurt in it. She would share that with the servant because the men on the table didn't leave enough rice.

And she was so overwhelmed because when she read the book, it suddenly reminded her of this and she was talking about this. And it's happening in every culture. We don't notice it.

We don't notice it at all. One of the women who cook in my kitchen, she's Nepali, but she was telling me about Bhai Pota. It's like Rakhi, but where they put a tilak on their brother. And she was saying, "Oh, I make this dish for him." I said, "I want to cook." I said, "Very good cook." So I was asking her, "How does the meat taste?" She was saying, "I never got to eat the meat. We got the gravy and we got to suck the bone."

And I was like, the sisters all cook for the brothers, but you never ate the meat. And she said, yes, I never ate the meat. I'm giving it. And you can't even say anything because every culture you will find this, you know, who has gone, left their parents home hungry. And if you're South Asian, it's full of Tupperware. They will give you food to take away. And no one leaves a home hungry. It's every culture, not just South Asian. But no one is looking at the

person who's cooking and I think that Monsoon really is a story about that person, male or female, but the nourisher in your family and how you need to now become someone who's nourishing yourself. Because I mean I have to say even though I understand how bad it is, I eat cornflakes from a box if I'm alone. I won't even bother with milk. I'll just eat it as it is because it's not worth it.

But why am I not worth it? Why are you not worth it? If you're alone, there are recipes here that are really good like Bengali omelet curry and things like that. Really, this is also very simple. You'll see I'm cooking in real time. It'll be unforgivable if you don't cook this yourself. It's just giving yourself that time. Everybody is this kind of very stressed out life, pressure, just go into the slow lane of 10 minutes and cook. I want people to cook not because like, you know, because I'm a cook, I think it's like,

You need that. You need that investment in yourself. We don't invest in ourselves anymore. And I think that I'm hoping that people will cook for monsoon. I love thinking about your book as an homage to the matriarch, to all this invisible work that the lineage of all the women in our family have done and often goes unnoticed, not appreciated.

And speaking of nostalgia that you brought up that's so woven into cooking, there are so many beautiful essays throughout your book remembering specific moments throughout the season, like the relentless downpour of the monsoon, the closing of the bazaars in Rainy Day Lunch. Can you speak to how you find food plays into nostalgia and memory and how you hope to transport your readers into these moments with these recipes?

The name of the book, "Monsoon," it really, I mean, I was born in July, so I was born in Monsoon. And the time in Calcutta, when, you know, in the '80s when it rained, and of course every family is cursing the British. "Aye, Victorian drainage, aye, Johnno, this is why we are all flooded." British left many years ago. We have done nothing about it. We are still in the Victorian drainage. So every time, "Monsoon," full, all the,

areas are flooded, you know, knee level, not even like, you know, so you can walk around and bazaar is closed and there was no blanket and all this other rubbish. The tech people had not arrived in our lives. Thank God for that. So you had you had no choice. You got no food. And the only person who was making a killing was the Andawala. The guy would come in with eggs and would wheel his cycle through. And then whatever price he asked for the eggs, you got. So we had so there are some egg recipes in here because this is a very much thing. But

For me, monsoon is deeper than just the season. The fact that all of us know school, that's the best thing. Know school, sitting with my father. My father also can't go to work. He used to make boats, paper boats with newspapers and we used to have all these battles. My father should describe the Spanish Armada. My father is a great guy for stories, telling all the different battles. So we used to all have boats in our flooded garden from the steps, we were letting out boats. But I think, especially now,

Monsoon is a reminder about how suffering can end and darkness can end. My father's from the north where the earth would crack. Everything was parched and dusty. The trees were dusty. You could see how thirsty the birds were. In their call, in their eyes, you could see they were searching for the rain to come. And then there used to be all these false hopes that the clouds would come and then go away. As if

your suffering is ending and it's not. It's a life lesson because at that time, you know, in UP you have this thing which is called the loo, which burns your skin when it is at its hottest. At that time you feel nothing good is going to happen. The only good thing that's happening is mangoes. Apart from that, it's horrible. Then when the rain comes, my absolute, the most powerful memory is the peacocks.

who would then get onto the roof of the palace and dance. And like diamonds, the raindrops would spray out of their feathers and they would call, but then the birds would sing. And Abba used to always tell me that this is how you have to deal with life. When through your arid, parched drought, never ever think that the rain will not come. The rains will always come in your life.

and the earth will suck it in. So when you are broken and you're lost in your dark space, just imagine those birds that they were dancing when the rains came. And what was so beautiful is that the birds would open their mouth and drink the rainwater as it fell. It's very humbling. And this book has been written from that space of huge kind of appreciation for produce.

for the fact that you have the privilege to eat, that your children eat, that your parents, if they're elderly, have a security system that they're being looked after. This is not true for everybody. And I just tried to communicate the joy of food, but the joy of family. And this is why the season, you know, I've described how... And in Calcutta, when it rained, it was like we all went out and got wet because it was so humid. We were like in a sauna.

and then the rains would come and the way the aroma no perfume in the world ever matches that first rain in calcutta after the dry spell it's unbelievable and you know it's just it's a joy to be able to have lived that i'm trying to communicate that for those who have had some experience living in the east or whichever part of the world or your family is from there you may have heard stories this is also a storybook

Yeah, and I think you communicate that so well in your essays. That's so transportive. And I find food specifically has this emotive connection where you're transported. You feel like you're back with the sense wafting through the air in the monsoon. And

Specifically, you have this beautiful essay. We talked a little bit about making space for ourselves and in soothing and the recipe for soothing supper supper dubbed as the introspective meal. You write, quote, too many of us, especially women who have families to look after or elderly parents or who work in toxic environments and are constantly battling to stay in one place.

or those carrying burdens of grief and pain often burn themselves out to keep others warm. Yes, you can be the healer and the feeder, but you cannot always run on empty. This is the meal you need to invest in for your well-being. Something about this passage just resonated so much with me. And as we think of our audience, can you talk about how you explore the idea of meals as they relate with...

emotional and physical well-being? And how can you advise this audience to incorporate this kind of thinking and feeling into their home cooking? Yeah, the thing is that, you know, I understand, especially if you're on Google, food is on tap. You can go, you can eat. This is this is your like, you know, you're just like you're living in your nanny's house.

- Truly. - Nani is your grandmother. And your maternal grandmother. Dadis are not so great sometimes. But nanis are rock stars because you are boss in your nani's house. It's like, you know, the food is constant. I, and it's, you know, yes, I'm directing it at women because I think that women disproportionately carry this burden more, but also men. Also, I've seen increasingly South Asian men. I have a 25-year-old son.

I never told him, "Aris, don't cry. You're not a girl, don't cry." But I have friends whose sons are being forced to do degrees they don't want to, being forced to marry people they don't want to. Patriarchy is a curse for women and men. Men are not allowed to show their weakness because they're the tough guy. So again, I'm always upset when I hear, especially

I'm going to take a pot shot at them. South Asian Michelin star chefs or fine dining chefs, when they ask them, who's your best chef? Who's your best? My mother, my grandmother. No one fucking looks like your mother or grandmother in the kitchen. But for God's sake, don't give us this hypocrisy. Do not give us this hypocrisy. Sorry, I shouldn't curse. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. I got emotional.

But really, this is ridiculous. Then don't be a hypocrite. Do not say that the best cook is my mother and grandmother and not have someone representing her. The ageism is shocking. Yes, you tell me to go chase a deer and catch a deer in a forest. I'm so fat, the deer will be like in another country by the time I catch it. No way I'm going to catch it. But tell me to cook. Tell me to start a business with food. No one's going to give me money. No one's going to give me money because I'm in my 40s.

I had this experience, I went to three bankers, I was only trying to open a tea shop, a tea shop, Bengali style. Below my house, my dry cleaner closed. I thought, great, I would open a tea shop and have shingara and tea. Shingara is the Bengali version of samosa. Best version, by the way. Especially if people have had Punjabi samosa, please, go to Bengal in winter and have the shingara in winter with cauliflower, potatoes and peas.

You have not lived till you had that. Okay, some plug for my state. Now I'll come back to what I'm saying. And three men in suits turned around and told me, what a lovely hobby, Mrs. Khan. We'll come to your house for tea. I asked for 10,000 pounds. I was asking for the Kohinoor. I was asking for 10,000 pounds and they said no to me. It's so tough. And I just think that

There's at so many levels, the ageism, the misogyny, the bias about what is happening with food. Yet unloved, unwanted, unpaid in their graves are our grandmothers who never got appreciated for what they were doing. Incredible cooks. My nanny would tell me, "Oh, I cannot read and write." She always felt she was insignificant.

I think a lot of people also made her feel insignificant because she had had five daughters. My mother is the middle of the five daughters. She lived her whole life feeling inadequate, unwanted, till her death. The yellow curry that is there in this book is from Nani. She never lived to see this point where her recipe was being cooked by strangers. How she would have loved it. Don't waste your life because one thing is there. I don't know about everything else but I can tell you one thing. Every day you live one day less.

You all live one day less. Everything that you're delaying in your life, you may not get a chance to do it. And as you live every day, take out that short time, even if it is making that chai. I have a chai recipe here. Very nice. Soften thing. Forget my book. Google something, please. And make it. Whatever ingredients you have, just make it. Invest in yourself. It's the most beautiful way to tell yourself you're worth it. That you matter.

Because all of us are spending a whole day feeling out of sync inadequate on the fringe Like there are ten things they have not done turn around and see the ten things you have done, but I know this I'm also guilty. I'm panic panic panic. Like, you know, I haven't done this and I haven't done that I don't slow down I think oh, but I did do this because we are all mad people and we don't understand this big thing No one has guaranteed the next sunrise. Please live before you die. I

I know this is not the kind of thing you expect someone who's coming to talk about cookbook. But I'm speaking about things that nobody else will tell you about. I am your crazy mad Indian auntie who has actually got brains and not just one of these airheads who tells you why are you so fat? Why don't you use nail polish? All my aunties are like this. Nobody has any kind of suitable, sensible thing to say. All my aunties are like this. And they keep telling me, my one child is 20. They say, oh, you only had two children.

I mean, if I had to have a child now, I'd die. But even now, you know, only two children, only two. I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm so sorry. This is all I had. But everyone's making me feel inadequate. The fact that, you know, I'm on the cover of Vogue or I've done this or that. No one cares a damn. I've written three cookbooks. I have a show coming up. No, I only have two kids. All of these other things. Our culture is really messed up. So I'm talking about other things because the food is a core of it.

A lot of other things you can't fix. You cannot fix who you're married to or you're not married to. You cannot fix what your sexuality is. You cannot fix what you look like, or that your boss is a horrible person, or that your neighbor is terrible. There are some things that are not so easy to fix, but you can cook. So all this telling you about the shortness of life and how everything is held by a thread

is really this book that celebrates how you can heal yourself. I love that. And I think there's something so powerful about turning to food as this mechanism of freedom, of independence, of power, because you can nourish yourself, you can uplift yourself in this act of mindfulness and cooking. And

A lot of people like, you know, it's like seen as domestic servitude, you know, I have to cook for the family. I do understand that. That's cooking is always seen as, you know, that you're tied to the kitchen sink and whatever happens. I have friends, you know, she's a, I have quite a few friends who work like in the investment bankers. There are some who are brokers, you know, they come, they're very stressful, but they'll go home and make roti for their family. And I know that these things can't change, you know, this is how it is. So without changing that,

All I can try and reach out to people that make the roti for yourself as well.

Sit down, have a garam roti, have a hot bread, have something that you enjoy. And, you know, I don't know how many of you have seen this Indian film called "Lapata Ladies", "Lost Ladies". - Yes, it was so great. - But it was so powerful. But, you know, Kiran Rao and I went to the same school. And one of the things that we were both talking about how there's that one scene in that film where the mother-in-law says that she stopped making something because her husband doesn't like it. And this is all of us.

And when I saw this, I was crying, I was telling Kiran, I am so happy you put this in because

We do this all the time. We're always taking the low, we're stepping off and trying to make others around, which is, you know, we burn ourselves to warm others, whether you're a male or a female. It's not a bad thing. And I know that it's intuitive in many of us. I also do this. You know, I also try to please my husband. I'm pleasing my two, you know, giant kids. And, you know, one is absolutely useless. He doesn't do any help. You know, the plate will be left there after...

after he's eaten, you know, he's a Nawab, he will not pick up his plate and take it. You know, why am I living like this? I also have this and you know, you can't fight with everything. But I have learned one thing that I need to also do things that make me happy. Cook a little bit of something.

And on that note, we would love to start the cooking portion of today. So Asma will be making Shadha Bada Kofi from her book, Monsoon, which is cabbage with nuts. So for those of you with the book in front of you, you can turn to page 122 to follow along. Asma, would you like to tell us a little bit about this recipe? So what I'm trying to show, I picked...

A very very simple recipe. I hate inductions. If the dish doesn't work out it's because this thing is shit, okay? I'm just telling you from before. What is this? It's like cooking on a light bulb. But now everywhere, everyone has it. Okay, I'm going to put it away. So Indian food is very modular. I know no one ever says this.

I'm now going to try and say it and you guys are all like smart go and tell everybody this as well you know I eventually will open my own YouTube channel I will become very techie in my old age I don't even know how to change the sim on my phone so I don't know there's not much hope in life for me so there is this is just the simplest of cabbage the great thing about cabbage is that it won't go off fast

So if you buy the cabbage and you keep it and you don't have to have the whole cabbage, you can make this is like quite a lot. I may not use everything, but it's very, very important that you do eat things that are healthy for you. And I'm just by adding cashew nuts. Oh, my God, how much I hate this. By adding cashew nuts, I'm pumping up the nutritional value.

and you don't have to add nuts if you don't have nuts you can add anything that you have in your house even if this makes nuts or something it just makes it more nutritious and you're also full for longer because cabbage has a lot of nutrients but adding nuts does bring so what maybe all of you all have fried nuts before but if you haven't i just wanted to you can smell the the aroma that's when you start need to watch it because

cashew nuts all nuts have a lot of oil in them they will burn like that

You want it to be browned. But if you wait for it to be browned, we'll all be evicted because the fire alarm will go off. OK? So don't wait for it to become brown in the way that you think, oh, it's going to be a brown color. That's too late. Because of the residual heat, it's going to continue to cook. No chef ever explains this. They say brown the thing. So you will keep trying to brown it. The moment that tinges are browned-- and more than that, you hearing the noise? Yeah.

I say this in the book, I tell you what to send. So now you know that some of them have released the oil and you can smell it. I mean, at least I can. So this is now a lighter shade of brown, the brown that you always see. So I'm going to start taking it out. And when you fry something like nuts, do not put them on kitchen paper. You need them to put them on a plate so that they can actually cool down fast. Otherwise they will burn. And if for some reason, can you see this?

Yeah, so you know I'm saying brown you would have thought this is not brown enough. No, but then it'll be burning very soon. If for some reason you manage to burn a few, maybe I have, no I haven't. I haven't. At least you won't think I'm stupid. So if for some reason you have burnt any, look properly, don't add more things, take out that cashew nut because that will become very bitter. It's just this little bit of things that you need to be a bit careful that, oh please come down okay.

I hate this so much. Okay, fine. So this, I'm just going to leave as it is. Now I'm going to show the modular thing. So I'm putting in dried red chillies. I'm going to break it because I want it a bit spicy. You don't have to. This is cumin seed, whole cumin seed. You can smell. Oh, it smells so nice. So you can smell it. It's just sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. And you put the turmeric in. Then the tomato. The turmeric, you put in first.

because there's nothing worse than what we call raw turmeric. You don't want that. So now the turmeric is going to cook. So in goes the chili. Sorry, I knew that you had measured the oil. Sorry. I'm not used to working with such efficient people. Smells amazing. No, I need it higher. So this was the modular thing. So as you think, that has come out.

But imagine that that oil is full of this beautiful cashew nut flavor. Then I put in the cumin and the dried chilies.

Then the two masalas. The idea that we put 55 masalas and cook it. This I blame a lot of the male chefs for. They don't know how to cook. They learned in culinary school where masala is for free and it's a stainless steel empire. Not in them. No boy was hanging around in their nani and dadi's kitchen or mother's kitchen. I can guarantee that to you. So if you look at the CV of all the Michelin star chefs,

the Indian Michelin star chefs identical IIM they all went to the kind of they went to IHM they went to management places or they went to culinary school then they went to Taj or Oberoi and they learned in these big empires with lots of fancy stuff freezers and jars of spices now you know of course you know if you have jars of spices let me add this and add that there are only two things that go into this nothing else is required so the idea that you know you

You are in a place where there's a freezer. I recently gave an interview, you know, because everyone looks much younger than me, so you may not know. But a fridge in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, was whatever size it was, the freezer was for only two ice trays. That's it. It wasn't for you to prep something and make your kali dal and freeze it and all that. No household had that.

When all these chefs went to the Oberoi's and Taj and were in the cookery school, they have huge freezers, which, you know, I've never been to a cookery school, so I have no idea what it looks like. But I know that, you know, they do have these big... Let me remove this. And so the temptation is to kind of cook, you know, batch cook. I was shocked when I came to England. And when I made dal, which is a yellow dal, which almost everybody eats, someone told me, oh, no, no, your dal is black.

I said, "You're bloody mad." The reason why the dal is black is because you can freeze it. You cook it, you freeze it, and then the easiest thing is to take it out, put a lot of cream and butter, and it's ready to serve in seconds. So the average punter in England thought all of us eat Kali Dal. In Bengal, you eat that Kali Dal, it's a difficult thing to digest. The Bengalis already lazy lot will not get up till the next day if they ate Kali Dal with so much cream and butter.

But this, so our cuisine has been ruined by, you know, just how people find it easy to cook batch cook. If you go to an Indian restaurant, they have this many things. You come to my restaurant, there's one of everything. And if you come late, it's run out. A khosha mangsa runs out every day. And every day we have crying Bengalis, like I came from Chicago to eat this. So before then we keep, we hide for them.

Because I can't take the tears of Bengalis. They are most dramatic people. So for that, that is hidden for Bengalis, only for Bengalis. But you have to prove, either you can speak Bengali or you have to say something then because there are a lot of people who fake it. But actually I don't think any person can fake being Bengali. Bengalis are original things. You can't fake being Bengali too much, especially when they are emotional. Then they are absolutely, clearly, totally Bengali. We have to, we hide. But

That's how it is. So now what I'm trying to do is you can't see. Can you see what's happening here? No. The oil, I'll try and hold it. The oil has come to the edges. Okay. Can you all see that? The oil has come to the edges. That means most of the excess liquid of the tomatoes has evaporated or cooked out. That's when you can add the cabbage. This is an, and it's so quick for you not to cook is not justified. And I'm just cooking a bit longer.

By now, the tomatoes in England would have collapsed. So I don't know where this is from. You talk about that about how you first got introduced to cabbage, right? At Cambridge University in your book, how it was really a soggy mess. My God, 30 years ago, what passed off as food in England, you would not give to your greatest enemy. The cabbage, I think someone boiled, you know, many days ago and forgot and then boiled it again before they served it.

was so bad and college food was shocking and even my husband was a fellow at the college so he occasionally I would be invited to the high table so this is like good food and Mushtaq used to tell me that you know because you don't drink wine you know there's there's no way to hide because I don't drink alcohol then all I have is the food and then I'm waiting for the dessert English desserts are nice they are my best dessert I love trifle English desserts are nice but

It was so crazy that the food they didn't know how to cook at all. Although now I work with a lot of colleges. So now it's tempting to think that I'll add water. Don't. Because slowly, slowly the water is going to be released. I'll load it a bit and you can see that the cabbage is glistening. It's not the tomatoes.

because it's now got in touch with the salt that I'd put in. So that releases, not that cabbage has a lot of water. I mean, you can't do this with spinach and things, the whole thing will be just full of water. And you can see there is some amount of liquid coming out, which I had actually cooked out. And that is where I think the magic happens. I could have put the extra cabbage, but I didn't. Wasn't so sure what American cabbage is like. How does it compare to British cabbage?

British cabbage is full of liquid because it's a damp country. This is why I got shocked when I first used English onions to cook. They're not cooking at all. There's more and more water coming out. The onions in India don't have water. And you know the Spanish onions, I don't know what they're called here, but you must have an equivalent. So big. Absolutely like a water balloon because it's got nothing but water in it.

These are awful because they take forever. But there is a trick. If you are cooking down onions and it seems like it's never going to become caramelized, you can add a touch of salt. You add a touch of salt that will suck out the water. So it looks like everything is like bubbles, but cuts down the frying of the onions by half because that salt will drag out all the water and make it faster. And it's not like you're sitting and stirring. So now you see the thing and I'm going to increase it. I need a spoon just to taste.

Oh and the one thing is that you know people always say that you know don't taste. Don't double dip. That's it. You that's all. Just be hygienic. Please taste your food and because this is at this stage where I can add more salt and not wait till it reaches the table and my mother-in-law will say oh there's not enough salt. Don't. Why going for public humiliation okay. Taste it and then just don't you know you don't have to be very careful. Well I can add some more cabbage to it because it's

This needed all the cabbage, but I'm just gonna add to it. But it'll cook fast now because the rest is there. So the salt is a bit more than it should have. And there are many ways to sort it out. If there's too much salt in your thing, you put a raw potato. The raw potato will suck up any extra salt. There's a touch of extra salt, so they, of course, measure the cabbage correct, but I just wasn't sure.

But I can always redeem it. You'll see this in the book throughout, I tell you how to problem solve. If you have an issue, you solve it this way. But if I had put so much salt and didn't have the cabbage as a backup, I would have been stuck. And then that raw potato, do you then take it out? The raw potato you take out, yeah. But I'm very bad, I'm very Bengali, I'll eat it. But don't eat it, you know, because it's not fully cooked, huh? So the raw potato is there. I'm putting the cashew back, the cashew nuts, and that's it.

My dish is done. And this is maybe because I'm Bengali. I like I would eat this with with rice. But you can eat with anything you want. That was so fast and easy, too. Yeah. And also it's inexpensive. Yes, the cashew nuts are there, but it's inexpensive. It's cheaper, cheaper than any meal you get. Yeah. And also I feel that, you know, we

need to do this for ourselves. And the most expensive ingredient out of all of this was my time, was my estimate that I tested the salt and whatever. Your food is invaluable because especially if you're cooking for someone else, your time is invaluable. That's the one ingredient no one can buy. So when you're cooking even something very simple,

you know that there's this, I don't know whether anyone's supposed to try this. And also we'll take questions now. If anyone has a question, you can raise your hand and we'll run the mics around. Hi Asma. Shubha Navar-Varsho. This is like the best, today is Bengali New Year, by the way, and this is like the best gift ever.

So I am just so inspired. And I think my question to you is exactly the hypocrisy that I have seen. Firstly, I'm a big food enthusiast of cooking. I'm a Bengali, but I've lived in different states. So there's always that identity question wherein for Bengalis, you're not Bengali enough. And for the rest of the world, you know, you just like, where are you from is a complicated answer. And the food you eat and cook is a complicated answer.

But my question to you is about women make up so much of the food experience for the entire population, but they don't have representation in kitchens and professional settings. So when you were making the call of having a women-only kitchen, how difficult was it for you to even find these people, to train them? And what do you think needs to happen for more such kitchens to exist?

Thank you, that's a very good question. The women found me and I could easily now say this was a political project. I began with these women in my supper club in my house. They were nannies in the school where my children went and they mostly worked for French families as live-in nannies. On Sundays they had to leave, Saturday night they were out. So they were roaming around in parks in this terrible weather. I lived opposite the school so I started bringing them in and

It was complicated. They found it difficult to deal with someone like me. They realized I was from a royal family, from my father's side, mother's side. My entire kitchen today, entire kitchen is Hindu.

for a long time they would like not sit on the chair with me they will sit on the floor there all these baggage that we have so in the end everybody used to all sit on the floor and have samosa and chai because I realized if I sit on a chair no one's sitting on a chair if I sit on the floor where will they go they have to sit on the floor because the one who is sitting on a chair after that so they'll all sit there fine we're all sitting but this this is how I found them those women who I call my spice girls the original spice girls are still with me today

They never left me. They are Darjeeling Express. This is the whole project. But this point that, you know, it is very, very hard. We are...

Everywhere, you know, even female farmers. I was at Davos. I was the only one speaking about female farmers when people were talking about farming. There were eight men on that bloody panel and all speaking about farmers. When you put in, especially in Google, I know this, we protested about this. When you say farmer, some man comes up. Why not a female? Huge numbers of women are farming, but they don't own the land where they farm. So their yield is less. But this is because they are

Ownership matters a lot. And also there's no guarantee. It's seen as temporary because no one will make a woman own farmland. The daughter will not inherit the farmland. This is every culture, not South Asian. So all of these complications. So when it comes to food as well, the fact that we have such a big part in the whole food, and I'm so happy to see that there was a woman and a man cooking. The world is big enough for both of us.

Everybody, the stage can be shared by men and women. The fact that so many women are excluded is unacceptable and at the level where I am, I am the only all-female Indian kitchen in the world. You know, you have like NGOs and small organizations. You have a kitchen here in New Jersey, mother and daughter, Bangladeshi. But this is, but I am, you know, you pay £100 to eat in my restaurant.

per head. I don't know, that's $120. This is without alcohol. So it's, we're not cheap, but we're not fine dining. We don't use the whole edible flowers and fill up the thing to make it look. I get so irritated, you know, if I wanted to eat grass, micro herbs and flowers, I'll go to the field and I'll graze.

I have come to eat in a restaurant. Please do not give me all this Hathi Patta, all this thing. I don't want to eat all this shit. I want to eat food. I want to eat proper food. Don't hide the brownness with all these flowers. My skin is brown. My food is brown. I'm unafraid. Let's celebrate the power. So it's complicated. I hope I live long enough to see a woman doing better than me.

I want to applaud her. I want to stand on the sides and see her glory. I will not die till then. It's so important for me. I'm fighting this. It's draining. It's not easy. I could have sat on my accolades and just cruised. That I'm not doing it, that I'm burning myself to keep going and talking to people to try and raising the politics and the injustice of why women are where they are.

It's because I can't take it because I know one thing that I couldn't name anybody when the three bankers were laughing at me. I couldn't say, "Oh, I'll be like this person." But today, any woman walking in to a landlord or to a bank and they say at 40, we're not so sure, she can say my name. This is my greatest victory. So it's hard, but it's worthwhile. - So inspiring.

So we have time for one more question. Yeah. So one as a Punjabi who loves Punjabi samosas, I'm very offended by that statement, right? I'm so sorry. I also love Punjabi samosa. I love any samosa, actually. There we go. We'll agree on that. That's where we'll go. You made one big mistake, Asma ji. This book is way too nice for me to take it into my kitchen. There's no way I'm going to let it get near that, like anything. No, it's the paper wipes. The paper wipes. And stay in the book. Use the book.

It's a generational thing as well. If all of us let this slip, the generation of children who will come after us will never know. Because they may never have met their grandparents. They may not go to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, wherever their family roots are. You may not have a house anymore left to go back to. Some of us do, but some of us don't.

So you are the sole source of food. Sustain it, ruin it, but cook it. I absolutely love that. I guess my question is, can you talk a little bit about the journey of designing the book, right? Yes, I wanted the book to be about produce, about seasonality, about the brightness and the sweetness of something when it is in peak season. You know, even beetroot, you know, I'm not a huge fan. It's so sweet when it's the beetroot season. And I...

Sat and I and the blue comes from I have I have an image in my head that you know There is a the ocean is waiting for all of us That's where we'll all end up But we are like that river carving us our route through the through rock through dust through Obstacles we'll all end up in the oceans. I wanted to bring the blueness of the water that connects us all the water and the whole world is interconnected and

We are interconnected and all of us are on that journey. We do not see it. But for me, you are all rivers. You're cutting your way through. You will eventually go to the ocean. But that path and the nourishment

and the contribution that you make on that journey is everything. So I picked the shade of blue. And then we had, you know, there's rice at the back. You know, there are these little grains of rice because, you know, my mother used to always say, and I know that, you know, even Chinese tradition, East Asian tradition, rice is very sacred. And my mother used to always say, in every grain of rice, your name is written. Rice is a destiny. You know, don't ever think that, you know, your food that you're eating is your God-given right. It's not.

Something else works so that you eat. And that for me, rice, you know, we drop rice, we kiss the ground and we take it. Eastern Europeans also do this with bread. There's a sacredness in rice. So yeah, we had the rice. I was so happy when I saw the cover. It's exactly what I imagined. It's a bright, beautiful book. But even though I've spoken about darker themes, I want you to take away from this, this thing about the joy of eating and the love that people have fed you with. Now it's your turn.

Show love through food because others did it for you. Today you are an adult, but running through your blood veins is a love that someone else fed you. And we've all forgotten that in the life that we all lead. Now it's your turn.

That's such a beautiful way to end this talk. Thank you so much, Asma, for such a thoughtful conversation, for cooking for us. I hope everyone in this room enjoyed the dish. And for those on the live stream, perhaps you're inspired to make this dish or other ones in Asma's new cookbook, Monsoon. So thank you so much. Thank you very much.

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