'Top Chef' host Padma Lakshmi is digging into her new cookbook, Padma's All American!

0:00Welcome to Snacks, the podcast where we dig into all of the hidden little food secrets that our favorite stars have. I'm so excited because today my guest is none other than Padma Lakshmi. She is the star of 17 seasons of Top Chef and Taste of the Nation. She's written multiple cookbooks and she's actually here to talk to us today about her latest, Padma's All-American. We'll be right back. Thanksgiving does not have to be stressful. The Delish app presented by DoorDash makes it easy to plan, prep, and actually enjoy the cooking part. Whether you're hosting the whole crew or bringing a side to share, you'll find recipes that work and tips that'll make it seem completely effortless.

0:43No panic, all fun. It's more Delish on the app. Download for free.

0:53I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the Bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No, stop. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the Bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. Today, I'm joined by food personality, cookbook author, and Emmy-nominated host extraordinaire, Padma Lakshmi. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. How are you feeling about this book? I'm excited. I'm glad for it to finally be in the world. I've been working on it for seven years. Oh my gosh, seven years.

1:39It's a long day coming, so today's publishing day, I guess, pub day as they call it. Padma's All-American. Padma's All-American. So what does All-American mean to you in this context? It means all of us. You know, it was very purposeful to put the flag on the cover with me in front of it. I think that a lot of people have worked really hard in this country over many generations to make that flag mean what it does. And so I wanted to do something positive and joyful to celebrate all of the wonderful food that so many generations of Americans and immigrant Americans have brought to the food landscape of America.

2:19You know, we like to say things like as American as apple pie. But the truth is not one ingredient in apple pie is indigenous to North America, not even the apples. So what are we talking about here? But, you know, I think we're all curious about different types of food, but maybe we're scared to cook them at home. But we all get Thai takeout. We all go, you know, to different Peruvian mortiscire chicken or tacos or whatever. I mean, probably make tacos at home. But, you know, I want to encourage every American to explore the regional cuisine of this country because it's so delicious. It's so varied and it's so exciting.

2:59You know, in food, things don't trickle down, they trickle up. And so all those fine dining chefs that charge, you know,$250 for a tasting menu, they're getting their ideas from the cooks in their kitchen during family meal. And the cooks in their kitchen are usually immigrants doing most of the work. That's incredibly poignant. And actually, I think something that most people don't really think about is the influence that we feel from the top really does come from all of the experiences they have. Is there something in the book that you feel is specifically, is there a recipe or something, a story that you feel like it specifically speaks to the heart of this book?

3:41Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I got to travel across this country literally, literally eight months a year for the last five years. And it's an exciting country. And that you can see in the dishes that are there. For instance, there's a Cambodian beef skewer. It's very simple to make. You just get a bunch of fresh aromatics. You whiz them up in a blender. You marinate beef flank steak. And then you put it on a skewer and you cook it. I had that dish with ex-gang members in a park in Lowell, Massachusetts. Now, Lowell, Massachusetts is one of the oldest towns in New England. It was named for Robert Lowell.

4:22You know, you can't get more WASP-y than that. But in recent times, in the last few decades, it's really become very grim. Right, right. And a lot of businesses closed up. You know, in Main Street, everything was boarded up. and because the rents were so cheap and no one wanted to live there because of gangs because of drug issues cambodian refugees went there because the rent was so cheap they didn't know the language they didn't you know they didn't come here on h1 visa they really came here as asylum seekers and refugees and within one and two generations like literally in the last 40 years they have transformed the city of lowell they have revitalized the businesses they have reopened Main Street and it looks vibrant now.

5:08It's still a very small little town, but they've cleaned up the river. I mean, when was the last time you fished in a river in New England? Because they're water people, right? So, and there's beautiful, beautiful stories like that in every community I went to. Each chapter has a long form essay, a profile of some of these people I met. So I met an Apache Navajo Apache woman named Twyla Casador at the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. And if you had left me in that desert for just a day, I would have starved to death. Right. But literally, but because I was there with her, she made me a meal where we foraged every single thing we ate.

5:53What was it? We ate desert pack rat. Stop. I'm not even kidding. How was it? It was good. It was like chicken. I'm serious. It did. Like white meat. Not the white meat. Sorry. Like chicken thighs. So in fact, I adapt that desert recipe instead of desert pack rot. It's called desert chicken. And I make it the same way with agave, with sumac berries that she foraged and dried and crushed. It's very easy, that recipe. But when we were in Arizona, we foraged for wild onions. I didn't know onions grew in the desert. You know, I didn't know any of this stuff. I did not catch the pack rat myself. She caught it.

6:34I didn't even look in the pot. So you're not perfect. I know. I'm sorry from it. I'm so inept. But, you know, her story is magnificent. And she has a big essay that I wrote about her. There's this guy, Hamid Mossavi, who's an Iranian man that came here to study before the revolution. and he was you know playing water polo at glendale high school he was having a great time and then the hostages got taken in the 70s and everyone's attitude towards him changed and he couldn't go back to his country and he felt like telling them no i feel like you do but that nuance was lost and all of a sudden you know somebody tried to put a bomb in front of a restaurant he was working like a pipe bomb where he was working.

7:18He suffered a lot of discrimination. He's come through the other side. He's had a lot of stuff happen. And he has these thriving restaurants in Westwood. And I went to these restaurants. I mean, they're packed. And he said when he first opened them, they were only Iranian people. And then they started to come, the college students started to come from UCLA. And then now it's sort of very mixed. It's half white, it's half everything. And so, you know, his story is really interesting. I met these Thai war brides and there's two essays. One is in the beginning with a green papaya salad that we all love.

7:57We all order green papaya salad. And I pretty much give you a really simple recipe that demystifies it. I don't want people to be scared of this book because you don't need cooking technique to make these recipes. They're mostly like just dump and stirs. Some of them might be taking you more time and some of them might have ingredients that you're not familiar with. But they're just aromatics and spices. They're really easy to come by now with everything online. You can get anything brought to your door. You can make anything in this book. And I do also have a pantry list. And I try to demystify these immigrant recipes.

8:35Most of them are made by working parents who have full-time jobs. And so, you know, most of the recipes are doable on a weeknight. There are some feast recipes. Like there's a seven-layer eggplant dip called fatah batinjan, which I call Ramadan eggplant. Because you want to make it for a special occasion. Make that on a Saturday maybe with a friend to help you. There's a beautiful cobbly palau, which is this beautiful lamb and rice dish. It's the most tasty thing I had my whole duration of filming. And it's in the book. That's probably a weekend recipe again. But it's a showstopper. You make that in a cucumber salad and you're done.

9:14Right. You don't need to make anything else. I do think, and that's been a huge piece of the delish puzzle, I think, in the food world, is the idea of inclusivity, but also the aversion to fear that we have here, where it's like, even if something looks hard, try it. You know, because the worst thing that can happen is you end up with a terrible mess that's still probably going to be very delicious. Yeah, nobody has to know. I mean, it's fine. You know, in the introduction and also in the how I cook section, this is advice I give to any cook making any recipe. Read the recipe through twice. Read it twice.

9:50Look at the ingredients list. It's a very simple pantry list. I have everything written, you know, this much of tomatoes chopped or this much of whatever minced. Get all your ingredients, wash them, chop them, measure them, put them on the counter in the order they're going into your pot and then begin cooking. Most of cooking is chopping anyway. It's not only how they do it on all those cooking shows. It's how they do it in every single restaurant. It's called a mise en place. Even a chef is not peeling garlic while the onions are burning, you know, and that takes so much stress out of it. And I'm trying to not only teach you how to make any given recipe in the book.

10:32I'm trying to teach you the good principles of cooking. I'm trying to teach you how to cook while teaching you just this recipe. So by the time you make 10 recipes, it'll be really instinctual. Oh, I don't salt all at once. I salt at different times. You salt a little bit when you add the onions. because salt draws water out of the onions. Don't just throw everything in there and, you know, think you're done. And I always say, like, cook on a Saturday as a fun, leisurely activity. Do not invite six people to dinner when you've never made these dishes before. Right. Don't start. Don't start fresh with that.

11:06Yeah. Just, like, take the stress out and make it fun. Do it with a friend or a loved one and just enjoy it. Yeah.

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12:03This is the thing that makes me feel warm at home. I mean, there's two things. If I have, if I'm really starving, it's just yogurt, rice. It's just salted yogurt and rice and some condiment, like a pickle. But if I want a warm hot meal, it's lentils and rice. It's dal, tadga dal, which there is a recipe for. It's the lentil dish that we always have. Like we have that probably four out of five days a week. It's there. Can you make it with your eyes closed at this point? Yes, I can. And you can too. It's such a simple thing. It's really just boiling lentils with a pinch of salt and a couple of bay leaves.

12:39while that's boiling it's like one cup lentils to four cups water you know yeah half a teaspoon of salt and two bay leaves let that go on medium when it starts to boil up turn it to low while that's cooking chop a couple shallots up and some ginger and then just put some oil in a pan and saute some cumin seeds add the onion after the onions cook down and sweat for a little bit add the ginger add curry leaves which you can buy at any asian market and just rip them up add a little tiny bit of um sambar powder if you want or just turmeric stir stir stir then you add the tomatoes that are chopped stir stir stir add some salt and by that time your lentils should be boiled and you're throwing that you know for lack of a better word so frito yeah um that's in the frying pan into the lentils, mixing it up, removing the bay leaves, adding a squirt of lime.

13:41If you want to make it healthier, throw in a handful of spinach leaves. If you don't, just put in some cilantro. If you have an aversion to cilantro, leave it out. That's it. Taste for salt. Add salt if it needs it. You're done. Oh, my God. That sounds like such a dream. Although lentils, I can't really eat lentils anymore. I feel like now that I'm old, I'm like, I can't eat anything. But lentils are one of my favorite foods that I'm just like, I don't know. I just feel like my stomach gets like, like, I don't know. Upset? Rumbly? Yeah, it's rumbly, you know. Okay. And I'm just like, now I'm like checking off.

14:12Don't you find, do you find that there are things you can't eat now over the years? Yes, because I have abused my stomach for decades with, you know, obviously I am eating for work. But even before that, I was a spelunker. Right. I would go to any hole in the wall. Some guy would be doing barbecue off the back of his truck. I'd be like, what is it? let's pull over and eat that street food all over the world yeah yeah um but but i i can't eat as spicy as i used to i was gonna ask that because you i feel like you've been a bold spice eater for a long time all my life right but do have you do you find now yeah i mean i like it going in i just don't like it half an hour later i have acidity and it's not worth it you know acid reflux is really bad honestly like i power through anything i feel like i've somehow developed an allergy to avocado but every time i go to eat one i'm like i'm sure it's fine i'm sure maybe that one time was weird maybe you just odita exactly exactly well try a different kind you know they have those giant ones that they sell at latin markets do those also i don't know i probably i need to go through an avocado test yeah but i that is first of all those lentils sound incredibly delicious this is warm and comforting but is there something like if i opened your fridge right now is there something in there that you're like embarrassed by?

15:31Is there something in there you're like, is my dirty secret of snacking? Um, it's not mine, but it's my daughter's. She likes salsa. She likes medium salsa and it bugs me. And what bugs me even worse is that when she finishes the bottle, my nanny will wash the bottle and use it to put something really yummy in there. But you still got the lid staring me in the face. I mean, if you shoot this, if you open my bridge right now you would have sundubu which is a korean stew with silken tofu with or without pork if you want you would have dal you would have rice you would have some leftover taco meat you would have melissa king's pork uh with um jicama with lettuce cups separated because she came over to make that with me for a video my fridge is like 65 condiments nothing about this is embarrassing Bottles and bottles and bottles and bottles.

16:29Wasabi caviar from Russ and Daughters. You know, kumquat pickle that we are hoarding from last year's batch because they're really not in season yet. And I haven't made the kumquat chutney or pickle recently. Where do you get your kumquats from? My mother in California has a tree. But they sell them. They'll have them at Chelsea Market. They'll have them at the Essex Street Market. Yeah, Manhattan for a year. I feel like there's like sometimes down time. Yeah. I mean, a friend of mine who's a chef told me recently that he has six kumquat trees. Yeah, Michael Chimorusi. So I'm going to be like, Michael, I need, here's my FedEx ID.

17:09I need you to send me 10 pounds of kumquats right away. I've never been to his house, but apparently he has this giant orchard with all kinds of citrus. So now I'm going to take him. Aren't kumquat trees like so, I mean, this is, they're so beautiful. They're really beautiful. And I grew up stomping on them and eating them and daring my friends to eat them. And I just pop them whole in my mouth and then spit out the seeds. They're really a weird, interesting fruit. They're really weird. Where did you grow up? Well, I grew up in New York City. But then I went to high school in a suburb of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley.

17:45I was going to say there's no kumquat trees in New York now. There's no kumquat stomping in New York. No, no. But I have peach trees in New York City. Do you? I have two dwarf peaches. We get sometimes we don't get that much. Sometimes we get like 20, 25 peaches. But this last year we got about 100 peaches. What? In New York? In New York City. Oh, my God. Downtown on my roof. I have blueberries and peppers and tomatoes. I have caviar and baby melons. I have an apple tree that grows two kinds of apples. A little crab apple and a mini golden delicious. Is this all in like a greenhouse? Like what's the setup?

18:21It's not in a greenhouse. It's on my terrace. But they're all in planters. They're all in planters. Like underneath the fake astroturf, there's concrete. But you'd be surprised. My mint leaves have migrated and they're coming up from the deck boards. I think some birds dropped some purslane. So we have purslane growing. I never planted purslane. Oh, my gosh. We have sorrel, but I never remember to pick it. We have blueberries, blackberries. I'm blown away by this. It's absolutely incredible. It's incredible to me, too, because I have zero green thumbs. My parents do. My dad has a curry leaf farm.

19:00Wow. He's the largest producer of curry leaf in California. He sells to everybody. But I do not have this. I've only always lived in a city, and I couldn't care less about gardening when I was in high school. So I did not inherit this gene, especially because he's my stepfather. But I do now have a really amazing gardener who comes to my house literally four times a year only. But he has rigged this really nice irrigation system that's on a timer. That is incredible to me. But also the fact that you can grow knowing what New York weather is. I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal. We had a mild winter last year, so it was possible.

19:44I mean, now we have to wrap the trees. Right, of course. You know, like potato sack or something. But it's wild. It's really wild. Well, also, I can see how that inspires your like your culinary creativity, too, when you have all of this stuff. And also, you know, going out and seeing all of the people that you've been talking about who have, you know, made food their livelihood. You know, I'm sure that that's been very inspiring. I mean, that's been the greatest part of my job is being, you know, it's not great when you're a single mom. to be away from your kid. She used to come with me everywhere, but now she has her own life.

20:20She's in high school. So that part's hard, but it's wonderful to be able to really roam the country and get to know it, not as a tourist, as really somebody who's meeting the farmers, the chefs, the dance teachers, the gas station owners, whoever it is. And that has been a revelation. Like I learned how to make tortillas from scratch, including nixtamalization, which you have to do. You know, it's basically lime that you add to the corn, to the dried corn. Then you boil it so that it can be made, can be ground and made into tortillas. I did the whole thing. So now I know how to make homemade tortillas.

21:02It's not that hard because you can just buy the masa. It's really fun. I've learned so many things. Have you ever tried something on camera that you've hated? Yeah, many times. I'm not a big fan of foie gras. And I mean, it's gross how they make it, but it's not even because of how they make it. I'm just not into gorgon meat or offal or any of that. So, you know, if I'm judging it, right, I have to judge it by whether it's a good example of that thing. Yeah. I can't judge it based on my personal tastes. there's an empirical way for things to be good and there's an empirical way for things to be bad now it's you know it's also very like um subjective right because i may have a higher heat tolerance than you do or i may not like as much salt and chefs tend to like a really lot of salt and so i'm always like oh it's salty you know but even in a family my daughter puts extra salt on everything and it irritates me because i'm like you're 15 when you become a woman you're not going to be able to do this you'll have cankles at this right i mean i have cankles just looking at you um and my mother my mother likes even less salt than i do so you know we usually just have salt on the table which chefs get kind of you know twisted about but hey you know you're supposed to want to cook to give me pleasure so yeah it must be really hard to like judge something that you don't like i never really thought about how challenging that must be for you like if there's something i mean first of all also let's just go on record like foie gras is a really weird texture it is that's what i have a problem with it's a little gamey i mean it's also like really really fatty yes and so i can't have a lot of it i mean there are other things that are that fatty that i can't have a lot of either but like you know cheese is really fatty and i managed to have a block of that without blinking so yeah i love cheese but it's also like um it has like a jello-y i don't know it's gelatinous i'm with you on the blah blah thing um but i never really thought about how hard that must be to if you're just like if you empirically don't like something and then you have to like smile and nod on camera and be like and it's fine i can take a couple of bites and i can you know do the needful for judging it appropriately like you know i haven't ordered a steak in a restaurant in over 30 years and i wouldn't or you would never catch me ordering like a ribeye or a t-bone steak rare like no that's not gonna happen really no why because i i just i don't i think that's really heavy and i would have trouble digesting that i would feel that for three days i'm like lentils i have a problem with raw rare steak i'm good i got it yeah but you know your system is different than mine so like no diet is good for everybody no diet is good for even one person at different points in their lives so but i know how to cook a steak properly i know you want a crust on the top i know you want it you know beautifully seared i know you know you don't you want to let it rest before you cut it so all the juices don't leach out you know i know a proper way but like and i can taste it and i can tell if it's seasoned well if it's rested how good the quality of the meat is if it's aged all that i don't want to eat the rest of it totally i mean sometimes honestly also that's all you need right it's just like a little bite um how has modeling I forget I mean because how many years were you modeling I modeled from the time I graduated uh college from the time I was 21 um and and steadily probably until I was about 28 you know how did that in like sort of I mean how did that guide your food principles at that age Was that challenging?

25:00I mean, as someone who's... Not really, because most models are like freaks of nature. Let's just be honest. Like I still, you know, my metabolism has obviously changed. I'm a 55-year-old woman, but I still have a really fast metabolism. That's just genetics. Right. And it really bothered me because I know that a 15-year-old girl looking at magazines, and now I guess looking at the internet because nobody looks at magazines, But, you know, may not understand that her body is different. Her body is never going to be a size two or whatever. And she may employ some healthy, you know, unhealthy, excuse me, unhealthy methods to contort her body to look like what she sees as the beauty ideal.

25:43And that bothered me a lot, which is why when I was modeling, you know, I got really good at covering my scar with makeup. Now, mind you, this is in the 90s before retouching was, you know, the press of a button. Right. And so when I could and I did gain some power, I always said, don't retouch my scar. And I always talked about it on late night shows because, you know, this notion of being perfect as beautiful. Perfect is great, but perfect is boring. Yeah. You know, all the truly beautiful women in the world, whether it's Kate Moss or Kim Basinger, you know, pick anyone you want. They have some imperfection.

26:24One eye is smaller, you know, one side of their nose is a little askew, something. And that is what makes them beautiful. If you have everything perfect, it's like, okay, you're pretty. You're AI. You're not perfect. Yeah. So, like, it's symmetry. But I just think that people forget. I mean, for me, my metabolism started changing when I was about 28, you know. And I think by that time, I was already getting ready to publish my first cookbook. And the only reason I got that deal is because everyone wanted to know where to model eight. Right, of course. You know, and I did a movie and I had to gain 20 pounds for the movie.

27:07And then I had to lose 20 pounds. I never tried to lose weight in my life. And it was tough. And that's when I started first going to the gym. And that's when I started, you know, eating healthy and just taking the fat out of things. And, of course, now we know that fat is good and carbs are bad. But I think everything is good in moderation. You know, I'm of the Michael Pollan school of thought. You know, eat everything but not too much. Eat, you know, as plant-based as you can. I grew up a vegetarian. I didn't start eating meat until I was a teenager. Was that from your parents? About 15, 16.

27:42Yeah, we're, you know, traditionally we're pretty orthodox Hindus. I mean, I'm pretty secular, but so I grew up a lacto-vegetarian. So we could eat milk and cheese and yogurt, but not eggs or fish or chicken or any kind of animal product that would hurt the animal. Right. Got it. So it was really hard for me, you know, to eat. That's why I probably don't want a bloody steak or opal. But, you know, so I think I had good habits and I love vegetables in any given meal at my house. Fifty percent of that plate is vegetables and fruits. And then, you know, 25 percent is carbs and 25 percent is protein.

28:25But a lot of times our protein is really vegetarian. It's tofu. It's beans. It's lentils. It's whatever. You know, there's something really refreshing, honestly, about also and maybe this is just years of like programming in our country, but about a beautiful woman really enjoying food. Right. It's like for so long there was that sort of perception that like to your point, you know, that we weren't sort of encouraged to experiment or to try or to cook big meal. You know, like it was it was almost frowned upon that women were supposed to like eat daintily. Yes, we were supposed to be dainty and delicate.

29:09You know, and then models were, you know, we're thin and we're only having tiny little bites of things. And the fact that you have made such an incredible career about going out there and experiencing and tasting and trying, I think, is really something. I mean, interestingly, I don't think that I would have the career in food that I do. First of all, I fell into it, you know, just before I was 30. But I don't think I would have had that career if I hadn't been a model and had the opportunity to travel all over the world and try different foods. You know, I learned all about spices because I come from the land of spices.

29:45You know, my family's from Kerala, which is where all the spices from ginger to black peppercorn are originating from. And so my grandmother gave me a real education before I ever left India. and then you know when i traveled after college that's when i really learned about european cooking technique and um i didn't know any of that before because my mother wasn't cooking that food even when she made spaghetti would kind of taste indian you know so um but like so i learned that after college and i started modeling after college too so i think i could appreciate it more. And, you know, I would have never had the resources as a young person to travel as much as I did to live in Paris, to live in Milan, you know, to go everywhere on trips.