Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season | Asma Khan

0:06Welcome 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. Asma Khan is an Indian-born British chef and a social change advocate in the food industry. She joins Google to discuss her book, Monsoon, 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.

0:50She 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 Muglis 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.

1:36Her 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.

2:11Asma, 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.

3:00This 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 yeah and I wasn't sure you know 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 uh sorry I just get still emotional about that and monsoon I could have written at any point.

3:51But when 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 now very stable. I had to move during COVID and all kinds of drama. I have a great team, front of house. My 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 you're weaving.

4:32You 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? Okay, so you know. There is no jar in which a cockroach will not go into it. Okay? So, and the sunshine is everywhere. So no one has jars of spices sitting in their shelves.

5:14This 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 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 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.

6:33I'm telling you what are you listening for? How is it transforming? What's the aroma that you're getting? So that immersive thing, you know, my nephew, who's absolutely useless, he's one of these techie types, like some of you guys, I think, very, you know, 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's bakwas. But has managed to make three things but the onion tasted really good. Wow. So that's the kind of, that's great hope for anyone who's not cooked. And if you have cooked, there are recipes here which are very unusual.

7:09Yeah, 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 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? I never heard the word curry till I came to England. And everyone said we're going for a curry.

7:45And I was thinking, what are they going to eat? I have no idea what a curry is because it's, you know, 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 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.

8:27And 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 on 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. Yeah. You know, Bengalis are just smart because then how can one season just slam going to another?

9:08You 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 yourself. 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.

9:59can 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 bazar 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 Langara or which mango is there.

11:00That knowledge, 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 be this huge fuss with Karela, which is bitter God. I mean, big fuss on the table. I don't want to eat it. Everyone ignored me. I don't want to eat it. I don't want to eat it.

11:37Why 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. You know, so we've got in Bengal Panta Bhat, and we've got all these bharatas. It suddenly becomes very warm. And you want these kind of cooling things.

12:10And that is how, you know, 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 Bhattura. The guy asked me, 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 me? 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.

13:02And 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, you know, I've never, again, I was working on a television series, which we're still working on, on what happened outside Milan when COVID hit. The first, that COVID ravaged, you know, 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.

13:43We 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.

14:25Our food is very, very futile. Who is making the chapati or the dosa or the appam in the kitchen? 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, the 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 choiceless pieces of meat will be given to them. And for those, I mean, I had a session with Padma Lakshmi.

15:05I'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 the one of the women who cook in my kitchen for she's she's Nepali but he was telling me about you know Bhai Bota you know they it's like kind of it's like Rakhi but where they put a tillak on their brother and she was saying oh I make this dish for him I was really nice and I want to cook I said very good cook so I was asking how you know that how does the meat taste she's saying I never got to eat the meat we got the gravy and And we got to suck the bone.

16:08And 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 there for left their parents home hungry. And if you're South Asian is full of Tupperware, they will give you food to take away. And no one leaves a home hungry in 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.

16:58Because, 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 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 omelette 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 for yourself. It's just giving yourself that time. And everybody is this kind of very stressed out life, pressure. Just go into the slow lane of 10 minutes and cook.

17:37I want people to cook not because I'm a cook. 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 from on soon. 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.

18:23Can 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 I Victorian drainage age or no this is why we are all flooded British left many years ago we have done nothing about it we're 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 And bazaar is closed and there was no blanket and all this other rubbish.

19:14The tech people had not arrived in our lives. Thank God for that. So 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. monsoon. 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.

19:50My father should describe the Spanish Armada. My father is a great guy for stories and telling all the different battles of, so we used to all have with boats in our flooded garden from the steps we were letting out boats but i think especially now uh 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 in UP you have this brain 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.

20:58The 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.

21:56And what was so beautiful is that the birds would open their mouth and drink the rain water 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 try 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.

22:39We 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.

23:20You 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 the recipe for soothing 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.

24:03This 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 your, like, you know, this is like you're living in your nani's house. The food is... Truly. Nani is your grandmother.

24:44And you're a maternal grandmother. Dadis are not so great sometimes. But nani's are rock stars because you are boss in your nani's house. It's like, you know, the food is constant. I 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 you know I never told him you know RS don't cry you're not a girl don't cry but I have friends whose sons are being forced to do you know degrees they don't want to being forced to marry people they don't want to patriarchy is is a curse for women and men men are not allowed to show their weakness because they're the tough guy so again you know i'm always upset you know 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.

25:53But for God's sake, don't give us this hypocrisy. Do not give us this hypocrisy. Sorry, I shouldn't curse. You can... I am so sorry. I am 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. Because 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.

26:30No one's going to give me money because I'm in my 40s. I had this experience. I went to three bankers to... I was only trying to open a tea shop. Chah Dukan, Bengali style. Below my house, my right cleaner closed. I thought, oh great. I would open a tea shop and have chingara and chai. chingada is 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 shingada in winter with cauliflower potatoes and peas you have not lived till you've had that okay okay some plug for my 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 let's 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.

27:17It's so tough. And I just think that there's at so many levels, the ageism, the misogyny, the bias about, you know, 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 nani would tell me oh I'm you know I'm not 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's 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.

28:16How 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.

28:59That you matter. Because all of us are spending a whole day feeling out of sync, inadequate, on the fringe. Like there are 10 things they have not done. Turn around and see the 10 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 and think, oh, but I did do this. Because we are all mad people. And we don't understand this big thing. No one is guaranteed the next sunrise. Please live before you die. I know this is not the kind of thing you expect someone who's come here to talk about. But I'm speaking about things that nobody else will tell you about.

29:38I 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. Everyone's making me feel inadequate. the fact that you know i'm on the cover of vogue i've done this so that no one cares a damn that between three cookbooks i have a show coming up no i only have two kids all of these other things all 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 you know what your sexuality is you cannot fix what you look like, you know, or, you know, that your boss is a horrible person or that your neighbor is terrible.

30:42You can't. There are some things that are not so easy to fix, but you can cook. Yeah. 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 power because you can nourish yourself you can uplift yourself in this act of mindfulness in cooking and a lot of people like you know it's like seen as domestic servitude you know oh i have to cook for the family i do understand that that's cooking has always seen us 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 hot bread have something that you enjoy and you know I I don't know how many of you seen this Indian film called La Pata Ladies Lost Ladies 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 yeah we are always taking the lower 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.