642: Yasmin Khan Takes Us to Sabzi School

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0:31and i think sometimes we can get a bit too attached to thinking oh we need to recreate meat-laden dishes if we're going to continue carrying on a tradition because actually i think many times you might not get exactly there but you can certainly bring the memory back with plant. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Yasmeen Khan is an author, broadcaster, and human rights campaigner based in London. After releasing The Saffron Tales, Zeytun, and Ripe Figs, she has a new cookbook, Tzabzi, a collection of over 80 vegetarian recipes drawing from her travels and Iranian-Pakistani heritage. It's so special to have Yasmin on the show to talk about adapting traditional recipes for a plant-based diet, motherhood and the power of culinary lineage, and more. Yasmin Khan, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much. It's great to be back. Yeah, I'm so happy to have the opportunity to speak with you.

1:37I am always a fan of your books, and this new one, Sabzi, is no exception. I guess to start, I was wondering if you could tell me an early food memory that you have that you think maybe informed your point of view in some way? Sure. Well, my mother's side of the family are from Iran and they are farmers. And my main memory of kind of hanging out with my grandparents and my extended family are these big lunches that my grandmother and my aunts would prepare. Now in Iran, lunch is the main meal of the day. And on the sofra, which would be this like patterned tablecloth that we would place on the floor that we'd all sit cross-legged around, there would always be steamed Persian rice, you know, straight from the farm.

2:25There'd be these rich herb laden stews, there'd be salads, there'd be kind of yogurt dishes, there'd be pickles. It was such an assortment and it was such a feast. But actually the thing about that food memory that strikes me the most is the sense of connection of all of us sitting around. Sometimes there'd be like 15 of us, uncles, aunts, kids. And honestly, even to this day, when I think about those meals, I just hear laughter. I hear kind of the crunch of Tadiq. I hear kind of arguing over like something that might be going on that day. And I think for me, that is what eating and good food is all about.

3:06It's those connections that we share, not just over the ingredients, but over the actual process of eating a meal together. Yeah, I love that story and image. I think food is such a great connector. And even looking at your own career, you have this incredible background working in the human rights space, being a lawyer, etc. And the last time you were on the show, I believe, was like five or six years ago. And I'm curious how your relationship with food as a medium for storytelling is these days, and if you think it's shifted over the past five or so years since the last time you were on the show.

3:42That's such a good question. I was also reflecting on the last time that I was on the show, which was for my Palestinian cookbook, Zaytun. And I remember having just such a powerful conversation at the time. and I think I actually wrote a piece for Taste about Gaza at the time and the food of Gaza and the blockade so it kind of feels weird to kind of revisit that today and kind of the context where we are so in a way you know my work and my relationship to food has definitely changed in that time frame I mean last time I was on I was talking about this kind of book and the big reportage that I was doing and I was doing so much more travel, which has been a feature of all my books, right?

4:26Kind of storytelling, cooking in people's home kitchens. And these days I'm at home a lot more. I recently became a mother after kind of quite a long and tortured path that I've also written about. So, you know, some readers might be familiar with my story. It kind of took me a long time to become a mom. And now I am really enjoying, I guess, revisiting some of the places I went to in my travels through the things that I'm cooking in my kitchen. Yeah, I really appreciate the way you kind of encapsulated where you're at and where you've been recently, because I think while reading Sabzi, I was thinking so much about the way that your travels are informing the book, obviously, because you're the person that you are now through those experiences, but it does feel much more of like a kind of interior personal book.

5:15And I'm wondering if you would just say a little bit about how you first began developing the idea for Subzi and then how you went about actually developing the book itself. Yes, I think you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. This feels like a really fun book in terms of it's an opportunity for me to invite readers into my kitchen and my home. It kind of feels like my most personal book to date. And the name Sabzi and the idea for the book actually has been germinating for like a really long time. I think I first had the idea when I was in New York back like about like six or seven years ago.

5:53I was just like, oh, I think, you know, I should write a vegetarian cookbook at some point. And, you know, if I do, I want to call it Sabzi because Sabzi is this word in Persian, which means greens and fresh herbs. And obviously my mom's from Iran, but it's also a word in Urdu, the language of Pakistan, which means fresh vegetables or cooked vegetables, sorry. So it was kind of there in the background. And I think a lot of creatives will resonate with that. Like you have an idea, but it feels really far away. And then I, during the pandemic, I met and then later married a guy who was vegetarian.

6:29And so the cooking I did at home kind of changed quite a lot it became a lot I mean it's always been veg forward as as yeah people who will have seen my previous books will know but all of a sudden it was quite important to me to have kind of meals that we shared that we could share together with my partner which reflected some of the flavors I grew up with um so then I set myself this kind of little challenge just for me of trying to make a plant-based you know vegetarian or vegan versions of kind of Persian classic stews, which are often very kind of meat heavy. So that, I guess, made the book kind of come into life because I was cooking a lot whilst I was pregnant.

7:11This is kind of when I mainly wrote the book. And it's a collection of recipes inspired by my travels, but very much rooted in the cooking I like to do at home. So full of flavor, quite easy to make, and really encapsulating all of those wonderful Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ingredients. Yeah, I think reading the book, I was so interested in this idea of culinary lineage, which is something you talk about in terms of what are the recipes that were passed down through your family to you that you want to pass down to your own child? Also, how do they fit into the way that you cook and eat at home, which, as you mentioned, is mostly vegetarian, it seems, at least based in cooking for your partner as a whole family unit.

7:52And I was curious if there were any like traditionally like meat based dishes that you were working on adopting for the book that were kind of a good case study to talk about, like what is traditional, what is what can be adopted? Yes. Now, I think that most people kind of accept that, you know, we should be eating more vegetables and it's kind of good for us. It's good for our health. It's good for the health of the planet. it. But I feel that what often holds us back is some of the emotional connections we have to food. And I think especially if you come from some kind of immigrant background and you're kind of a second generation immigrant, because you kind of have the food that your parents cooked, which was perhaps different to kind of the food that everyone else is cooking.

8:37And in those particular realms, there's such an important connection to ancestry and lineage, as you described. but of course food is like a language it's constantly evolving and I really started thinking deeply about that when I was adapting these recipes and I think the one that perhaps is a really good example of this is oram sabzi which is this herb laden Iranian stew I would say it's like the national dish of Iran it's traditionally made with lamb but it's also got like maybe like a pound of like fresh herbs in there it's got red kidney beans it's got dried limes and it's the dish that maybe I most commonly associate with my heritage my Iranian heritage and in the book I have a recipe where I use oyster mushrooms that are fried in some butter so they've got that lovely kind of rich juicy umami kind of flavor kind of running through them and I use that as a substitute whilst making a stew which has again a few more kind of deeper notes in it so it still has all the herbs it still has the dried limes it still has the red kidney beans and I genuinely was quite shocked when I made that recipe or like developed it and realized that actually when I ate it it was hitting those taste points I was getting that hit on the back of my tongue that brought back the memory.

10:06And I think sometimes we can get a bit too attached to thinking, oh, we need to recreate meat laden dishes if we're going to continue carrying on a tradition. Because actually, I think many times you might not get exactly there, but you can certainly bring the memory back with plants. Yeah, I do think it's interesting because I think of, you know, Persian food, Iranian food as such a herb heavy, like vegetable heavy cuisine that obviously like there are these dishes that have meat as a part of it, but it doesn't really seem like the most essential part of the flavor. I think you're absolutely right.

10:45And I remember something that my mom always used to tell me growing up, you know, meat was very much seen as a way of flavoring a dish. So many Persian dishes are kind of rich stews. And the idea that, you know, meat, you can kind of use it, you can use the bones and you can use pieces of meat as seasoning. They don't have to be like the main event. If you have all these incredible vegetables, incredible herbs, like fantastic beans and pulses. And I really liked that as a concept. And I've kind of tried to carry that through. So obviously this book is vegetarian, but if I'm not cooking vegetarian, I've also really tried to think more carefully, I think about how much meat I'm consuming and in what way.

11:25Yeah. I think that is such a important way to think about what is the ratio of meat in this dish? What's the intended purpose? From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus.

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12:52That's the This Is Taste listener survey. Link in our show notes. We're talking a little bit about stews, but there's obviously a wide array of recipes and dishes in the book. I'm wondering if you could just speak a little bit about, like, what is the array of food in the book? How is it kind of organized? There is a real mix of dishes in here. Everything from kind of really bold and bountiful salads that are kind of really filling dishes, not just like a few limp leaves. So one of my favorite recipes in the book is this roast broccoli and lentil salad with this amazing curried tahini dressing.

13:31And it's got dates in it as well. So it's kind of like sweet and spicy and creamy and crunchy. So I'm really proud of the salads chapter. But, you know, I also have like a great breakfast selection. Again, I think everyone can get quite stuck in a rut with breakfast dishes. So there's some quite good ideas for smoky tofu shakshukas. There's a lovely recipe in there for a Persian kind of breakfast platter, which is very much how kind of we eat at the weekend. So loads of herbs, fresh tomatoes, pickles, eggs, this kind of lovely kind of meze board that you can have. So of course, there's lots of stews in there as well because of the Persian heritage, but also some incredible creamy coconut infused dhals, A personal favorite, the halloumi lasagna, which is filled with Mediterranean vegetables, such as eggplants, courgettes, and a rich cinnamon spiked tomato sauce with strips of halloumi on top.

14:29That's very inspired by a dish I ate in Cyprus that was quite similar. There's some kind of Southeast Asian influences as well because I used to live in Thailand. So some of my favorite kind of curries are in there. I'm really glad you called out your salad section because I think it's one of my favorites. I like to make something that I call opulent salads at home, which are just salads with a lot of good things in them. And I think you definitely have a lot of opulent salads in the book. And I also enjoy these kind of quotes and proverbs that you have at the beginning of every section. The salad proverb, I want to read out loud because I think it's so fun.

15:04It's, let the salad maker be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a statesman for salt, and a madman for tossing. Where does that come from? I think that's a Spanish proverb, if I remember correctly. um I was a Spanish friend that told me it and I just thought it was so spot on wasn't it um that it's such a small technical I guess task the tossing a salad but it actually makes such a difference and I am a big believer in using your clean hands of course as much as possible because there's something about trying to make sure every leaf or every vegetable is kind of coated in whatever you are dressing.

15:49I love salads. And I think almost too often, you know, again, we can get either stuck in a rut or just turn to, I don't know, a bit of lettuce and tomato and cucumber. But I've tried to come up with ideas which perhaps are a bit more unusual, you know, using, you know, the typical kind of Mediterranean ingredients that I've talked about in the past, whether it's frique or sun-dried tomatoes or using kind of cherries and almonds in salads. But also spices, you know, there's a great orange salad in there that's inspired by Morocco. It's like an orange and radish salad and it's got lovely cumin and paprika in the dressing.

16:28So I hope that people will find, you know, salad dressings, but also maybe techniques that they can not only apply to the vegetables that I've written about, but perhaps, you know, your own favourite kind of veg at home. Yeah, I think it definitely instills more of a maximalist viewpoint towards salad. Like what is another thing that I can add that would make this even better, that would contrast the other ingredients even more? Absolutely. And for me, it's, you know, there's a couple of things that are non-negotiable with a good salad. I want a lot of texture, you know, I want different texture.

17:02I want a lot of color and I want a dressing that kind of really makes the ingredients shine and you know there's a wonderful recipe in there for this kind of Garzan roughly Garzan inspired tomato salad and it uses like dill garlic and green chili in the dressing and it is so punchy it's like a really easy salad to make like literally ready in like five five minutes like if you're quick at chopping um but so unusual And so, yeah, it was a really fun chapter to bring together. Yeah. And of course, like I called out that proverb because I love a salad especially. But I think it's interesting to see them kind of sprinkled throughout the book.

17:44And I'm curious what made you want to include these kind of contextual cultural quotes and also how you kind of went about pulling them together. Yeah. Well, I think that it's always I love proverbs in general. right and it's always so funny I think how different cultures have got different emphasis that they they put on on on food um it really came about quite organically like you know the the salad one was just one that I knew from a friend of mine and I actually think that was the first one that went in um and then there's a there's a really good one at the end I think by like Ernestine Ulmer which is like life is uncertain eat dessert first and that I think is from I think that I just read that in an anthology somewhere.

18:30That was quite famous, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it was kind of fun to kind of disperse it with a few different kind of food sayings as well. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. And I guess while we're talking about recipes, I'm always curious, what recipe in the book was the most difficult to perfect before publication? So there's a rhubarb and cardamom tart in the book, in the dessert section. and I love the flavor of rhubarb. I love the tartness of it, and I really wanted to kind of put it in a tart. So this had kind of many different iterations. At first, it was like a cake. I was like, oh, maybe I can get rhubarb and cardamom in a cake.

19:11That would be good together. That didn't really work. In the end, I kind of decided on a kind of frangipan kind of almond filling, and then it was just about kind of to work out kind of what kind of pie tart case to put around it and in the end I'm just so happy with what I came up with it's kind of a really sweet crisp kind of tart with like a soft gooey interior it's really good at warm it's kind of works fantastically at room temperature you can also serve it chilled I think it's really adaptable and it's just also just so colorful which I think is what I want when I kind of have a dessert so I'm just really happy with that one it's often actually the the recipes that take like a little little bit of time to perfect that you end up being really proud of.

19:57And that's one that I'm really proud of. Yeah, I think it sounds really delicious. And I think, you know, baking can be such a science and an alchemy of like, what is your ideal version of this thing? But I think the one that you landed on sounds really special. I'm curious to talk a little more about this idea of developing Subzi, like while you were pregnant and, you know, thinking about this idea of culinary lineage. Do you think that like being in this moment in time in your life kind of impacted the recipes that ended up in the book or the way that you were kind of thinking more broadly about food?

20:30It really did. I almost felt like this book was a sort of a memoir for me of recipes that were important to me or that reminded me of a place. You know, I kind of talked earlier about, you know, living in Thailand for a while I've been working at this wellness resort and there was this you know incredible you know broccoli and tempeh salad with peanut dressing that was always on the menu and it's like one of my fondest memories kind of living and working there uh so you know the fact that that went in was quite important um but in terms of the lineage it's actually been really surprising to me like how hard that's hit uh I find it you know because of the political situation in Iran, it's really not possible for me and my daughter to travel there at the moment.

21:23And one way I can connect her to her heritage, her Iranian heritage, is through the food. And so earlier this summer when it felt like we were on the edge of a huge, huge war in Iran. Actually, I did the strangest thing on this one particular day where I was feeling super stressed about what was going on. Bombs were being dropped near where my family lived. And this is a true story. I literally didn't know what to do. So I was like, well, I can't work this morning. I'm too stressed. I'm too anxious. And I went to the nearby grocery store and I bought a bunch of herbs and I bought dried limes. And I bought these Persian flatbreads and cheese and I came home and I actually cooked you know the gora misabsi that rich Persian stew and I just spent a few hours in the kitchen and then we all ate it together as a family and honestly there was something so grounding and so nourishing and so important in that but also just the fact that I was keeping something alive for my daughter at a time when just life itself felt so fragile.

22:34And I think that's one of the most fascinating, you know, anthropological things about food, right? These kind of deep, deep feelings that can evoke in us. It's so primordial almost. I think I was shocked actually how even though maybe I shouldn't be because obviously food is kind of a form of therapy, a form of joy for me. Of course, it would be where I go to. But I think now more than ever, I really want my daughter to be able to enjoy these things. And then the pleasure I get when I see her just, she loves tart flavors, which obviously has got her Iranian heritage. She'll just sit there and like suck away on a dried lime.

23:16And it's just so funny. It's really joyful. And I feel really happy to be able to pass that on to her. Yeah, I think it is so special not only to be able to tap into your own kind of taste memories and feel grounded in that tradition, but to be able to share that tradition with your daughter. And then also by sharing these recipes, you know, maybe make it possible for someone else to be a part of that tradition, too. Is that something that you think about in terms of your work more broadly? I know you're really drawn to kind of challenging stereotypes about the Middle East and sharing these cultural traditions.

23:52Like what kind of significance do you think food has in the ability to kind of alter or kind of impact those relationships? Absolutely. That is a big driver in what I do and why I do it. You know, when my first book, The Saffron Tales, was published, it was so extraordinary to me, you know, with the power of social media to be able to see people cooking recipes from the north, the regional north of Iran. where my family are from in, you know, Brooklyn or Berlin or Brisbane. It was just so global. And for many of those people, it's, you know, perhaps the first actual relationship they might have had with Iranian culture.

24:36And, you know, I'm sure that when they're serving the food, it sparks conversation. It's like, oh, what is this? Oh, it's from an Iranian, you know, Persian cookbook. What, you know, what's that? And it's so easy to see people from, you know, So my work so far, my book so far, I've focused on the food and culture of Iran, the food and culture of Palestine, the food and culture of kind of refugee communities and also Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. And I think one commonality in those groups is the fact that they're often only seen through a very one dimensional lens of what is in the news, which is generally terrible.

25:15and I think you know food in these kind of circumstances isn't just about eating it's almost like an act of preservation um it's a preservation and also it's a celebration and it's about seeing these cultures and these people as having a more than one-dimensional you know existence that people who like to grow who like to eat who like to feed who like to share and that's why I love what I do so much. It brings me so much joy whether I'm at an event or whether I'm seeing pictures of what people have cooked on social media. Yeah, I agree and I think also at the same time there's a responsibility that I think I can see that you feel in the work that you've done to not just be sharing recipes but also sharing historical context, cultural context.

26:07I think there's a phrase that I see on social media sometimes which is, I wish you loved us as much as you love our food. And I think, you know, sometimes food is a gateway in, but it's just the gateway. It really is. And I think there's been a kind of an interesting phenomenon over the last, let's say, I don't know, five to 10 years, where the popularity of Middle Eastern ingredients has just like exploded, hasn't it? Like whether it's pomegranate molasses, you know, whether it's, I don't know, like tahini, dates, you know, barberries, dried lime, sumac, Aleppo pepper. You know, you can get all of these ingredients in kind of mainstream grocery stores now, which is great because it's great, I think, when culture travels and they're fantastic ingredients and everyone should enjoy them.

26:56But yeah, I think there is a dissonance. I think we've really felt it over the last few years in particular. as the region's kind of been plunged into horrific acts. And I guess I do think there is a responsibility if, certainly for people in the food world, I think that if you are using these ingredients, if you're sharing them, if you're talking about them, I don't mean just like the average person cooking, but I think that if you're working in the industry, then I think it's really important not only to acknowledge the source of all of these ingredients and dishes, but also, you know, the history of how they came to be about.

27:41So I think, you know, with the sharing comes responsibility. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And I think at the very back of Sabzi, you have this section about advocating for a fairer food system. And you kind of call out different farms or like food producers that you are interested in buying ingredients from. And I think that's a part of it as well, which is if you're buying heritage, cultural ingredients, like that can be an act of supporting people who have been growing that food for a long time. Yeah, absolutely. So on that point, I'm just going to give a huge shout out to one of my favorite producers.

28:16They're producers that I've had the lovely privilege of visiting in the West Bank. They're the Canaan Collective and they produce the most incredible Palestinian olive oil as well as Zata and almonds and dates. So a whole range of products. You can get them in so many stores like Whole Foods Market has them, like they're everywhere. You can also kind of source them directly from their website. And they're such great producers. You know, I visited the women's co-ops I've spent time with the farmers um these are people on the front lines of producing products in circumstances that are quite frankly unimaginable and you know the fact that they create such incredibly tech you know I I first went to them because I was just like hey I'm interested in the ethical story but they run me over and I still get the olive oil from them because it just tastes so good so I think we can all use our bucks to really support the the people the producers, I think, who, I guess, are having a significant impact.