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121: Beth Manos Brickey: Taking Control and Making Healthier Choices

May 4, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Tasty Yummies

Beth has been 100% gluten-free since 2005 and was inspired to create her blog, Tasty Yummies, after significantly changing her diet and her life in 2010.

Her goal is to inspire us to get creative with our food and to live and eat well with food intolerances and allergies. Her work has been featured in America’s Test Kitchen, Huffington Post and The Kitchn, just to mention a few. Beth is also an artist, a certified yoga instructor and adventurer and lover of all things yummy.

I’m so excited to have Beth Manos Brickey of Tasty Yummies joining me here on the show.

(*The photos below are Beth’s.)

On Whether or Not to Try a Gluten-Free Diet:

The longer I’ve been in this world, the more I see that it’s different for everybody. We’re all such individuals and there’s obviously classic signs of gluten intolerances, or you can have an allergy or you can have Celiac disease, which would also bring on the intolerance. There are varying degrees of symptoms. I would say, certainly chronic digestive issues, it’s worth looking into.

Brain fog, skin issues, just feeling generally run-down. I know people that have a very classic allergenic response, hives. So, it can take on many forms and there’s also different ways but I also think that sometimes people think, “Well, I don’t have diarrhea every day, so clearly…and I eat gluten every day, so clearly, I don’t have an intolerance,” but as I was saying previously, our bodies actually are really smart and they’re built with these mechanisms to protect us. If you’re constantly exposing your body to something that it doesn’t want, it will learn how to protect you from it by building up a tolerance. So, just because you don’t have itchy skin and you don’t think you’re tired or brain fogged or digestively challenged, it doesn’t mean that there’s not something else going on. So, it’s worth experimenting. I tell everybody, if there’s any question, just try it.

On Relearning to Cook Gluten-Free:

There were a lot of fails, a lot of fails, but I think that that’s what made me love food. I’ve always loved food, I’ve always had an appreciation for it but it really connected me in a different way. I built this different relationship with food, where I started learning that I had to listen to the food and what it wanted and what I wanted to do with it. Just getting back to basics but also, realize that there is so much exploring that can be done, and sometimes the most basic things can be the most beautiful things.

On a Simple First Step to Making Healthier Choices:

If I had it my way, I’d tell every person that I ever met to never eat a processed food again because it’s just garbage for you. Your body doesn’t recognize most of what you’re eating as true food. There’s no nutrition to it, so it’s not sustaining any sort of life force within your body. So, start to take note of the things in your kitchen and be aware of what’s in them. And obviously, we’re all in a world of convenience and needing to eat on the go, so if you’re going to pick a processed food – again, this comes from Michael Pollan – but my rule is five ingredients or less, and know what those ingredients are. If you cannot pronounce a word on a box, don’t buy it, just don’t.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

It’s actually under my website as a tutorial because it’s a little bit more step-by-step of a recipe. My family is Greek. My dad is 100% Greek and I grew up very surrounded by traditional Greek foods and everything that you see in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Greek people eat, someone passes away, someone gets sick, we eat, we always eat. Food is celebration. So, growing up, my grandmother, my yaya, always made stuffed grape leaves. We call them dolmades; they’re called different things in other cultures. And it’s something I always loved, I thought it was a ton of work. I would love when she would make them and I would come over and I never made time to have her teach me how to make them. It’s one of those things, she passed away. Ironically, the month that I did that cleanse to remove everything, to find out if I needed to remove gluten, that was the month my yaya passed away, smack in the middle of that. I remember then and even now being like, “My gosh, I learned so much from her in the kitchen.” She was a great cook but I never learned how to make dolmades. I moved in to this house here in southern California about three years ago and when I moved in, the whole back alley of the house right behind my bedroom window, it’s all lined with grape vines.

And I was like, “Oh, I know what I need to do. I need to make stuffed grape leaves.” So my parents came out to visit and we got my grandmother’s old church cookbook that they – all the women of the Greek Orthodox Church in Buffalo – put together and we followed the instructions and followed her notes of the things that she changed and added and we learned, taught ourselves how to make stuffed grape leaves, with fresh grape leaves nonetheless. And after we did that, the first year I was like, “I need to make this a tutorial on my website. I need to show people that even though it’s cumbersome in the sense it’s a lot of steps and there’s a lot of hands-on aspect, it’s not just dumping stuff in a pot.” It’s also such an amazing and beautiful process that it’s one of those foods I have never once ever made them on my own. I always make them when my parents are here or when I go back home or something where there’s like a community, family love aspect to the meal.

It’s cool, it’s a recipe that I have a lot of pride in, even though it’s not anything original and it’s really simple but it’s just such a fun and beautiful connection-type recipe. And then I also – in the tutorial, because I generally avoid a lot of grains and I know a lot of my readers do as well – I offer the option to replace the rice that’s in the stuffed grape leaves with cauliflower rice. So, it’s kind of a different option and then you can make it with meat or without meat, you can eat them hot or cold. So, it’s amazing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

This is not going to be a popular answer but I don’t really watch cooking shows anymore. I got sick of always turning on Food Network and always seeing Guy Fieri and a bunch of garbage food that I didn’t really want to get excited about. So, I just don’t watch it anymore. Although, Aida Mollenkamp, a friend of mine in L.A., she works with Tastemade and does a series, it’s a web series. She travels around the world and does a quick 10-minute show about the food of that area. And so, I guess I do watch a little bit, just not the traditional stuff. So yeah, that would be my pick.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Some of my favorites are Nourished Kitchen. This woman, Jennifer, who does an amazing job sharing how to enjoy real food and get into the kitchen; very similar mind-set to mine, get in the kitchen, make it yourself, real food. I really love Salt & Wind, also created by Aida Mollenkamp, who I mentioned before. She travels the world, she has a bunch of contributors, it’s really focused on travel and the food of travel and all around the world and being inspired by that. I think the other one that really makes me happy right now is a blog called Will Frolic for Food. It’s a friend of mine, Renee Byrd, and she’s just a beautiful photographer, beautiful photos. Everything she makes is just gorgeous and you can tell she really puts time into every detail of every dish and there’s just this level of love in every recipe. It makes me happy to see somebody slowing down and taking time with food.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

So on Instagram, I follow a whole bunch of people that stemmed from this one person, in terms of what she was doing. I really love Beth of Local Milk. She just takes beautiful photography that has so much emotion in it and most of the time, it’s food-focused. So, I just love what she does. There’s a feed on Instagram called How You Glow. It’s two girls from L.A. and they also seem to travel a lot and they promote healthy living and getting out and experiencing your world and experiencing all the different things there are, but also mindful living; they’re very focused on yoga and healthy eating. I love The Feed Feed feed, just because it’s a really great way to find new bloggers, new recipes, new people. And then I follow a lot of people that are very much in line nutritionally with what I’m doing. Some of them happened to be Paleo food bloggers, but Diane Sanfilippo, Mickey Trescott, Liz Wolfe, Robyn Youkilis, who I just discovered recently, who wrote a book that came out this month. I think it’s called Go With Your Gut. It’s about gut healing and food. So yeah, those are just some of my favorites. Again, I could probably go on forever.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t know if it’s unusual, but right now, it’s my most treasured. It would be a toss-up between my Vitamix and I just recently bought a pressure cooker, Instant Pot. I do a lot of batch cooking because I want to make sure that even when I’m busy and life’s crazy, that I can eat well. I drink bone broth every week. Again, another gut healing thing, and there’s just so many nutrients and I used to make it in a big stock pot and let it cook for 24 to 48 hours, and I don’t think that’s really safe to leave a pot on a gas stove that long. It doesn’t make me feel good. So the pressure cooker cooks it in a couple of hours and it’s the best. I buy a bunch of organic chicken thighs and cook that in there and I’ve been cooking sprouted grains in there. So, sometimes at the start of the week that thing doesn’t leave the counter for two days while I just cook a storm up.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

It’s kind of a weird thing. I laugh now but I used to think that maple syrup was really gross because the scent of it I felt like it would linger if you’d have it on pancakes. When you were a kid it would just, the smell of it would just stay on your body and then it was just all you’d smell. I probably realize now that it wasn’t real maple syrup and maybe that was what I was not loving. Now, I love it. I use it when I bake and it’s always in my kitchen.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One that jumps out is Danielle Walker of Against All Grain, put out a meals-made-simple cookbook. It’s Paleo but I just like that it’s simple. It’s not, you have to have a million crazy ingredients you’ve never heard of; it’s casseroles made with cauliflower, rice and chicken, and comfort food and the things that you grew up with. I often just turn to that for when I want something easy that I can throw it on the Crock Pot and not think about. But I know it’s well tested and it will be great.

I actually don’t cook a lot from cookbooks but another book that I turn to a lot when I want some sort of inspiration, I love Indian food but I obviously didn’t grow up with Indian food. It’s just called India Cookbook.

It’s beautiful and it’s huge, and beautiful color pictures through the whole thing. But, it’s a really nice way to look at a very classic, traditional culture’s food and how they would make it, and nine times out of ten, it’s way more involved or ingredients that I don’t have access to, but it’s a good inspiration for something that maybe comes from it that’s inspired by it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

A lot of times when I cook I don’t have music on, but it’s when I’m taking my photos that I turn music on and then that’s so dependent on my mood. And it’s so dependent on my mood that if you looked at my stream on Spotify, you’d be like, “Is this person bipolar or are they like schizophrenic? What’s going on?” Because it would be Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and the next day it will be Fleetwood Mac and Beyonce, and then it will go to traditional Indian yogic-style music and then jazz, and then Sigur Rós. I am all over the map with music. I just don’t like country music, it doesn’t make me want to dance. But depending on my mood, I would say almost everything else will make me dance and depending on the day.

On Keeping Posted with Beth:

I’m at Tasty Yummies on pretty much on every platform, so take your pick. I’m on Snapchat and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook. The blog is always a good home base for recipes and just stay in the loop, probably with Instagram. I have a new website coming in the next few months. So hopefully my new website will be an even better platform to keep up with the yoga events I have and retreats I found working as a nutritionist, and all the different things that I’m doing.

090: Lily Diamond: Playing with Food for Beauty and Nourishment

November 4, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Kale & Caramel

On Kale & Caramel, Lily has fun with local, seasonal produce and plays with different flavor combinations in the kitchen while creating body and beauty products that are pure enough to eat. She believes diet is a personal matter and highly recommends eating, cooking, and mixing with our own two hands.

I am so excited to have Lily Diamond of Kale & Caramel joining me on the show today.

(*All images below are Lily’s.)

On Growing Up in Maui:

Growing up on Maui, first of all, I just feel incredibly lucky that I had that background and was able to be immersed in so much natural beauty, and to have such a strong connection to the land instilled in me from a really young age. Both my parents spent a lot of time in the gardens that we had surrounding our house. And my mom was an aromatherapist and an herbologist, and so I learned about working with plants from her. And that informed the way that I approach both self care, definitely, in terms of mixing up crazy potions that I would slather all over myself, but also in the kitchen and really thinking about food, not just one-dimensionally in terms of flavor, but really on a much broader level, hence the tagline “food for all five senses”.

For me there is so much richness in experiencing the other qualities of food, the way that it feels, its scent, all of these things that make it a really multi-dimensional experience to work with in the kitchen and to play with, whether you’re nourishing inside or outside of your body.

I think having that deep immersion in gardening and growing our own food made it really easy for me to want to explore different ingredients. And a lot of that just was very basic. The fruits and vegetables that we grew, not basic now that I’m living here on the mainland in California. Their ingredients are harder to get, and I don’t have the luxury of walking outside and having three different kinds of passion fruit to choose from or being able to pick my own pomegranate. But having a culinary vocabulary in that way really informed, I think, how I eat and how I cook now.

On Foraging:

I lived in San Francisco prior to living here, and there is actually a really cool foraging movement growing, definitely, in California. I think, around the nation of urban dwellers who are aware that even potentially within the confines of their city limits, there are oasis that contain a lot of natural life that can be foraged and eaten. I definitely don’t recommend doing any of that on your own, scrounging up things that you think look edible, totally a bad idea. But if you can go with somebody who really knows how to identify plants.

Something that I did was when I lived in San Francisco, I didn’t have a car, and so when I moved down here, I still was into walking around everywhere and exploring my neighborhood, and I really quickly discovered this walled-in secret garden. I would peer through the fence and try and figure out what was going on there. And for a few weeks. I then finally saw a sign, and looked it up online, and ended up just showing up at a community service day for this community garden that is just a few blocks from me.

And it’s huge. It has, I think, over 150 individual plots and then several acres of avocado orchards. And the avocado trees, some of them are over a hundred years old. And it’s just an incredibly special place. So right away I went in and I was like, “Can I help? I would love to just be able to work here and spend some time here.” And they said, “Sure.” And I’ve since developed a really close relationship with them.

So many people who live in L.A. don’t know that this place exists. It’s in the middle of the city, but it’s just kind of hidden, and you do have to look, and you have to explore and I think, be willing to go off the beaten track and just have your eyes open for plant life. I don’t think that’s something that most people do. Most people aren’t really walking around and going like, “I wonder where the next rosemary plant is that I will see.”

But once you have it on your radar, you start noticing like, “Oh my gosh, there’s lavender growing at the end of my block,” or, “There’s a fig tree two blocks from me that is growing over the street and all of those figs are just dropping on the ground.” And that’s technically public property. Just little things that you can attune to that will make it easier to feel like you’re in less of a desert.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

I think I was about 11. I saw an advertisement for a Quaker Oats recipe contest. And I promptly decided that I should make up a recipe and enter it, and so I did. I still remember I can see the printed page, and I remember the font that I used. And I remember what they were called, and I remember what they were. I think that I should try to recreate them now. I called them “Mini Blueberry Munchies”. And they were basically blueberry hand pies, but they had an oat crumble. Instead of being as a topping, it was baked in. So I’m not sure how that would work out now. That was the first time that I really remember making a recipe, was when I was really young.

Even before then, I would go outside, because my mom started a business making body caring spa products actually around the same age when I was around 11. And I spent a lot of time from very young, watching her put together ingredients and use different plants and scents and all different aspects of food to create really beautiful dishes, and also body products. But I would go outside. I remember just running around the yard when I was young, and I would decide I was going to make lipstick or something. And I would go, and I would pick the pink flowers and different things, and mash them all together, and then put it on myself, and go show my mom.

That mentality, just playing with food, has always been really present for me. And I think what that does for me now is informs a joy in the process of cooking that, yes, I am concerned with the final outcome, but it’s also really fun for me to take my time and play with the ingredients, which is lovely for me and means that sometimes I take a long time to make things.

On Creating Beauty Products Pure Enough to Eat:

So I think on a really basic way, if you go into my bathroom, you’ll see on my sink, there’s a jar of honey, which is not usually something that you see in people’s bathrooms. And people would always…they’d come out, they’d say, “Can I use your restroom?” And I’d say, “Sure.” And they’d come out and they would say, “Why do you have a jar of honey sitting on your sink?” And it was a tip that was given to me by an esthetician, maybe five or more years ago, who said, “We use so many harsh ingredients, and we spend so much money on really complex products. And really, for most of our lives, we don’t need those products. What we need is to help preserve and care for and on a super basic level, clean our skin. That’s it.”

And one really easy way to do that is with honey. Honey is a natural preservative. If you think about it Egyptians used to preserve mummies in honey. And it also is antibacterial. It’s a really good cleanser, and if you get raw honey, it has a little bit of a grain to it. And so it’s actually a tad exfoliating, which is super nice.

I also make my own face oil as a moisturizer. It just really started as for me saying, “Our skin is our bodies’ largest organ, what we put on our skin goes directly into our body, and people spend so much money on products to try to deal with their skin issues, whatever they may be. And a lot of them have really harsh chemicals or ingredients in them that aren’t doing them any favors at all. For me, I love being able to say, “Well, my face cleanser cost me $6 at Whole Foods to get a jar of really nice raw, wild flower, wild crafted or wild whatever honey that will last me a month.”

And the face oil that I use, I make from either sweet almond oil or sometimes add apricot kernel oil. These are all ingredients that you can get super easily at a co-op or Whole Foods or a household store. And I add a few different essential oils depending on the level of dryness or moisture that I have in my skin that season, and that’s it. And that gets to be my routine. And it’s so simple, and it feels so good, and it’s really pure.

I sat next to this super sweet high school senior on my way back home on an airplane, and she was going to Maui with her family. I think it was for some holiday vacation. And we were talking about Kale & Caramel and these different products, and she ended up telling me she had a bunch of challenges, acne and red bumps on her skin. I’m not an esthetician or a dermatologist, I would never presume to prescribe anything to anyone. But I just shared with her what I did, and I said, “You could try it and see.” And we had such a nice conversation.

We ended up exchanging information, and a couple of months later, she wrote to me and said, “I’m sorry this email is so long overdue, but I just wanted to let you know that the red bumps that I have on my skin are completely gone. I’ve never seen results like what happened with using the honey and sweet almond oil.” It’s just so simple. But I think as a culture, we’ve been trained to want the thing that’s most expensive and most complex, and yet the ingredients to really care for ourselves and for our skin are close to the earth. That’s what’s also going to keep us feeling the healthiest and the most radiant, I think. Because it’s what’s naturally occurring.

On Good Resources for Learning More About Food for Beauty:

The first thing that comes to mind is actually my mother wrote a book called The Complete Book of Flowers. It’s sort of an encyclopedia of flowers. And it is possibly not available on Amazon right now. But it’s always worth taking a look. That’s called The Complete Book of Flowers. I haven’t found any singular go-to book in that regard, but I may be working on something that could help you in that dimension.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t have a TV. I’ve watched some MasterChef Junior. I’ve watched some of those with a friend’s kid, but that’s it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Some of my favorite food blogs right now that I go to as just regular sources of inspiration, I would say, are probably, Fix Feast Flair, With Food and Love, Will Frolic For Food, and The First Mess. Those are just some that are off the top of my head. Two Red Bowls, I love. My Name Is Yeh, also. There are so many. I’m really just constantly astounded by the amount of inspiration that is out there and the level of beauty is so extraordinary.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

This is someone that comes to mind right away whose blog I just absolutely adore is Dash and Bella, Phyllis Grant. She’s an incredible writer and as a food writer, I think, is doing really exciting things. Instagram, definitely, I’m Laura Miller. She just does hilarious things with fruits and veggies posing with them, putting them on herself in weird ways, which obviously I like doing as well.

Oh, I follow Beyonce, clearly, and some other fashion accounts. I really love fashion, and some travel magazines, Trotter and Cereal Mag. And I think, oh, The Feed Feed is also an incredible aggregate of a lot of what’s happening on Instagram and just in the food sphere today. It’s, I think, a great way to keep up to date. And anything else? The people who I mentioned previously in terms of their blogs, I love following as well. Vegetarian Ventures, Shelly is an amazing photographer. So those are a few that come to mind.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I’m going to have to say it’s a weird answer, because it’s so utilitarian, but my Vitamix, it’s so multipurpose, and I use it so often. Most days, I definitely use it at least once and often more than once. And so, I think, for me I would have to go with the Vitamix. Not sentimental, but practical.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Cilantro. I couldn’t stand cilantro, which I know is something that is common for a lot of people. I really disliked it when I was growing up. I don’t know when it was that that shifted, but it definitely became something that for me, I use it for so many types of cuisine, and I think it adds an incredible dimension of flavor. So I love it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely, Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Plenty More. There’s so much complexity and depth in those recipes, that I’m always astounded when I explore it. There’s a cookbook called The Balanced Plate by Renee Loux, who’s a vegan chef, but she has a lot of great recipes that are super easy. There’s a vegan cupcake recipe that she has that I used to make. I just alter it to become a coffee cake. It has a really nice streusel on top. You would never know that it’s vegan. I don’t like cooking vegan recipes where you’re making a lot of substitutions and using silken tofu, and flax eggs, and complex things. I love vegan recipes where the ingredients just all stand for themselves. That cookbook really does that, which is lovely.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I do listen to a lot of Beyonce while I’m cooking, it’s true. I would say that I alternate between listening to really fun, upbeat music like Beyonce and listening to podcasts. That’s something that, for me, I live alone and being able to have that human element in the kitchen with me if I don’t have someone else over visiting, is really nice to be able to keep my brain engaged in that way, even as I’m using the rest of my body.

On Keeping Posted with Lily:

Instagram, any social platform, really, I’m everywhere @KaleandCaramel, so you can hit me up on any of those social media platforms.

078: Chitra Agrawal: Following Tradition and Inspiration with Her Creations

September 21, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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ABCD’s of Cooking

On her blog, ABCD’s of Cooking, Chitra shares her family recipes from South and North India as well as her own creations from things that inspire her, like local ingredients and other cuisines. Chitra is writing her first cookbook on Bangalore recipes using local ingredients and runs a small batch Indian condiments company called Brooklyn Delhi. As if she isn’t busy enough, Chitra hosts pop-ups featuring Indian inspired cuisine and teaches cooking classes.

I am so excited to have Chitra Agrawal of ABCD’s of Cooking and Brooklyn Delhi joining me today.

(*All images below are Chitra’s.)

On Her Blog:

I guess I have been collecting a lot of my family’s recipes for a long time, and I also get a farm share every week during the growing season. So I usually take a lot of those recipes and then use whatever vegetables or produce that I have and make these recipes my own.

The name ABCDs of Cooking comes from that because ABCD means American-Born Confused Desi which is basically someone like me who grew up in the U.S. but is of Indian or South Asian descent. A lot of my cooking is an analogy of that where it’s based in traditional Indian cooking techniques but then using influences local or even just like cuisines that I grew up eating in the U.S.

I always was cooking for my friends in high school or in college. I remember even my roommate and I, we would religiously go to the grocery store every week, and as a college student, I think that was weird because a lot of the times, college kids go out and eat a lot, but we made it a point to cook at home. It was basically also the way I grew up. My parents have always even though they worked nine to five jobs, they always had home cooked meals on a table. So I think, it’s just the culture that I grew up into.

On Her Condiments Company, Brooklyn Delhi:

I make achaar or Indian pickle. So it’s basically a spicy condiment that is made from vegetables and fruits, and of course in India, it’s also made from local vegetables and fruits. A lot of times, green mangos or thin skinned lemon, gooseberries.

My farm share actually inspired me to come up with a lot of these recipes. The farm which I actually source from now is called Wilklow Orchards and they were the farm that was supplying the Greene Harvest CSA that we were a part of when we lived in Fort Greene, which is basically the neighborhood over from where we are now. And we got rhubarb, heirloom tomatoes, green gooseberries, and I started making achaars from all of these different vegetables and fruits, and I started serving them at my pop-ups and at my cooking classes, and then I got so into it.

My husband is a food packaging designer. He was like, “Why don’t we start packaging these?” and basically we just went with it, and I contacted the farmer directly and I was telling him that I tested all my recipes using his ingredients, and now I want to order like hundreds of pounds of the produce. I literally just text him, and then I get the produce, and then I make it in a commercial kitchen space that I rent out.

It really helped that I already had the recipes pretty much down. The next part was testing to see that these recipes could be shelf stable according to FDA regulations. So there’s all these different hoops you have to jump through when you are making a product for store shelves. So that was definitely a learning process. Luckily, I have a lot of friends that are in the Brooklyn community, in the food community that have either launched products or knew people that did launch. So I was able to gather a lot of this information through that network and then quickly bring everything to market. And it helped because Ben has that background as a food packaging designer. So, he was able to navigate for me really quickly as to how the label was going to look. I didn’t even know how big the font size should be or these types of things. So that was extremely helpful to have him there.

I think that achaar also is an unfamiliar condiment. So a lot of what we’re still doing is educating people on how to use it. A lot of people compare it to a chutney but it’s definitely more intense in flavor because it’s actually pickled in the oil, and the salt, and the spices versus a chutney that a lot of times can be definitely more mild in flavor. So that has been one thing where when I walk into a store and I want the buyer to try it, I have to explain through all of those different uses of the product versus if I was selling like a ketchup or something like that. So I think that’s probably been the main challenge, but it’s also been cool because a lot of store owners that really love the product, had been huge advocates for us, and when you have that type of support from local stores that are talking to their customers about new products that are in the store, they become advocates for us when we’re not there.

On Writing Her First Cookbook:

The cookbook is all going to be about Bangalore, South Indian style cooking. My mother is from Bangalore. So all of the recipes are based in traditional South Indian cooking techniques but also, as I cook at home, I am using a lot of the local ingredients that are found seasonally. So that’s the spin on it and it’s all vegetarian. A lot of it is gluten-free. I am a lifelong vegetarian, so this book is the story of my family and how, a lot of these recipes came to be. I have just been working on that for the last year or so.

There are so many different types of cooking in India, and they actually vary quite a bit. My dad is from North India. I guess I can speak to the difference between those two cuisines, what you find in the restaurants a lot of times, North Indian cuisine, non-curry. But South Indian cooking is a lot based in rice, lentils, you may know, dosa or idli, the fermented kinds of foods, and then both regions have dals but I’d say that like sāmbhar or rasam, these are some of the lentil dishes that are popular in the South. And so those are some of the differences. Even some of the spices, like curry leaves, are used more in South India. Black mustard seeds, even the beverage is different. So after a meal, you’ll drink tea in the North usually, and in the South you drink coffee that has chicory in it. So those are some of the differences but even in the book I talk about how, the cooking that is of my mom’s family from Bangalore is a lot different from South Indian cooking that may exist in Tamil Nadu or in Andhra Pradesh.

Bangalore is a city in Karnataka. So there is all of these different layers to cooking, and especially regional styles of cooking in India vary not only from North, South, East, West but within South India, to even from household to household. Because when I was researching a lot of the recipes, I found that my aunt may make one recipe that is according to what her mother-in-law may have taught her versus another aunt that is making the recipe according to how my grandmother taught her.

On Her Pop-Ups and Teaching Cooking:

I guess the pop-ups started because I started selling prepared foods at some markets in Brooklyn and my friend, who I used to do the prepared foods with and a pop-up that was Indian Mexican. So we started coming up with all of these different recipes, we did Indian Tacos at this one market. And that was actually pretty soon after I had started the blog, too. So I started to realize that, not only do I like writing about and creating the recipes, but I really like feeding people, and so that part became one that I wanted to explore further. After doing the market, we decided to do a pop-up supper club. That was in 2009, and we were just playing around with all these different recipes.

We would make like Indian Tamales. We would make all these enchiladas, all these crazy sauces and condiments, and then we would invite people, and this pop-up was in her house. And so we would literally would have these tables in her dining room and set it up all nice and everything, and then we put out tickets, and people bought them, and they would show up at her house. And so it was so fun.

So we did those, and then I started doing some of my own, where I would do, I did one at Brooklyn Winery, where they had someone that paired the wines with my meal. So that was the North and South Indian dinner I had done. And now, I do a dinner with my friend Diana Kuan, who is a cookbook author. She wrote, The Chinese Takeout Cookbook. So what we do, and this one is called Tangra, we make up recipes that are mix of Indian and Chinese cooking, and it’s all vegetarian, and also uses local ingredients. We always partner with a farm and also a local brewery, and then we are able to offer our creations to whoever wants to come.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chef’s Table on Netflix. That show is amazing.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Not Eating Out in New York, my friend, Cathy Erway’s site. She posts every week and it’s very interesting because she also is very in tune with seasonality and what she is getting in her farm share. And she also calculates how much each meal costs because for a year or two what she did was, she just cooked at home. So it’s an odd pairing to be eating-in every day in New York. It’s like the city of restaurants. I feel like she has a very cool take and spin on what she does, and she posts very frequently, which I feel like is sometimes the anomaly now with a lot of food bloggers, myself included sometimes.

And then another one that I’m sure you may know is A Brown Table, Nik Sharma, I feel like his photography is just mind blowing, and he is such an awesome guy too. He always has super creative recipes and I love his blog.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Instagram, I love Diana Kuan’s feed, who I partner with for our pop-ups because not only is she a really talented chef, but she’s also a talented illustrator as well. So she always has something really cool that she’s working on on her site. I love The Feed Feed, they are reposting photos from other food bloggers or food Instagrammers, and there’s always something so interesting that you can get from there. And then, of course, I love again, A Brown Table and his Instagram feed.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

So, this is my tempering pot. It’s this little pot and basically this is what I fry all my spices in. You put just a little bit of oil and then different spices, and what happens is in the hot oil, the spices, the flavor just blooms, and after that, you pour the spices, the tempering, on top of the dishes. So it could be a lentil dish or it could be a yogurt dish. But I love this thing. I take it everywhere when I’m teaching classes, and I always encourage students to buy one as well because I think because of the small surface area, it really does the job well, and I love poaching eggs in it because it’s so tiny that you can poach an egg perfectly in it.

In different parts of India, it’s called different things. So sometimes, it’s called what tempering is, it’s called chaunk, or it can be called vagharne, or it can be called tadka. So there’s all these different names.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Oh, bitter gourd. When I was growing up, I hated it. It was just so bitter, and now, I’ve developed a taste for bitter things. So I actually, I’m going to include a recipe for bitter gourd chips in a cookbook, and there’s a farm actually, Hepworth Farms, that started growing bitter gourd locally, too. So it’s awesome because we can get local bitter gourd and, yeah, the bitter flavor, I like it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I have like all the Ottolenghi cookbooks. I feel like I just love looking at those photos. They’re just amazing, and I think he just combines recipes in such interesting ways. Another cookbook is of course Diana’s cookbook. That’s my Bible for Chinese cooking, The Chinese Takeout Cookbook. Louisa Shafia’s, New Persian Kitchen. I have that. I have so many cookbooks piled up all over the place for looking at, but those are some of the ones that I really love, and of course, the classic Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, A Taste of India, all those classic ones are like gems.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I love Shangri-La by The Kinks. I love that song on so many levels, but what I love about it too, I guess, when you compare it to cooking, is that, it always surprises you. Some parts of the song are really sweet and all of a sudden, it becomes this cacophonous noise, and I love that about cooking too. There’s the slow simmer and then if you’re tempering spices, the crackling of the spices, so it’s that type of dynamic, I like.

On Keeping Posted with Chitra:

Probably Instagram, and I am just Chitra, and then on Twitter, it’s my blog, ABCD’s of Cooking.