Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Padma Lakshmi Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City.
We have a very special two-part episode for you today. I'm pinching myself because I am talking to three total superstars, Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Padma Lakshmi. Julia and Ayo joined me from their press store in London to talk about their new film, “After the Hunt,” directed by the brilliant Luca Guadagnino. You know Luca from movies like “Challengers,” “I Am Love,” and “Call Me By Your Name.” Of course, you know Julia from “Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill,” “Erin Brockovich,” so many classics. Ayo is our beloved Chef Sydney on “The Bear.” Julia, Ayo, and I talk about mentorship, the making of the movie, and birthday cake. Happy belated to Julia, by the way, whose birthday was last week. “After the Hunt” is a riveting film, with incredible performances by Julia, Ayo, and the rest of the cast. It's the kind of movie that you will need to discuss the second you walk out of the theater. In the second half of the show, Padma stops by to talk about her brand-new cookbook, which drops tomorrow. It's titled “Padma's All American, Tales, Travels and Recipes from Taste The Nation and Beyond.” Stay tuned for Julia, Ayo, and Padma in just a minute.
A little housekeeping. Early bird tickets are on sale for Cherry Bombe's next Jubilee conference, which is happening in New York City on Saturday, April 25th. Jubilee is an amazing day of connection and community and great food and drink. It's also an incredible day for networking. Over the years, folks have gotten book deals at Jubilee, met their literary agents, been cast in ads, and one brand, Talea Beer, even got a distribution deal with Whole Foods at Jubilee. Oh, and Kristin Kish, she met her lawyer at Jubilee. I almost forgot about that one. But more importantly, over the 11 years that we've been hosting Jubilee, thousands of folks have made important connections and friendships. That's the reason we started Jubilee in the first place. To learn more, head to cherrybombe.com. Early bird tickets are available through December 31st. If you're a Bombesquad member or paid Substack subscriber, check your inbox for a special discount. Also, if you're a ShopMy creator, you can share an affiliate link for Jubilee. Use SnapShop or the link creator on ShopMy, or just snag the link in our show notes. Any Jubilee questions? Email us at jubilee@cherrybombe.com. We'd love to see you next year in New York City.
Now, let's check in with our first guests, Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri. Hi, Julia. Hi, Ayo. How are you?
Julia Roberts:
Kerry. Good, how are you?
Ayo Edebiri:
Good.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm in New York. All is good. How's London?
Julia Roberts:
It is perfect. Well, how would we know, but it is perfect London weather outside. It is cool and gray and wanting to be greeted.
Ayo Edebiri:
Yes, a bit balmy in the hotel room.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you been able to get out and get any good food?
Julia Roberts:
We've had good food, but we've not been out. Have you been out? We have not.
Ayo Edebiri:
Not I.
Julia Roberts:
No.
Ayo Edebiri:
Not I.
Kerry Diamond:
Ayo, happy belated birthday.
Ayo Edebiri:
Thank you very much.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you get to celebrate?
Ayo Edebiri:
I did. I did. I kept getting little surprises, which was nice, and I had some nice dinners with some nice friends.
Julia Roberts:
Yeah.
Ayo Edebiri:
One next to me.
Kerry Diamond:
Ayo, what's your birthday cake of choice?
Julia Roberts:
That's a good question. What is it?
Ayo Edebiri:
Okay. I really like the strawberry shortcake that you get at an Asian bakery. They're so fluffy and light, the cake, and then I think the cream is also really fluffy, but not too sweet. Asian desserts are good at the not-too-sweet part, like a Japanese or a Korean bakery.
Julia Roberts:
Do you like the strawberry shortcake where they do biscuit style?
Ayo Edebiri:
No, really fluffy shortcake, plain cake, really fluffy cream, and then strawberries in the middle. We do another layer of cake. We close it off.
Julia Roberts:
Okay.
Ayo Edebiri:
Yeah, I like that. I like that. Or, I like a doughnut. I just like getting a doughnut on my birthday, I think it's always really fun too.
Julia Roberts:
Oh, doughnuts are good.
Kerry Diamond:
A doughnut is always an option. Julia, your birthday's next. What's your preferred birthday cake?
Julia Roberts:
My birthday is next. I love the classics. I don't like fruit in cake, but I am going to make you a strawberry shortcake.
Ayo Edebiri:
No, but a chocolate.
Julia Roberts:
A good chocolate cake or even like a good lemon cake.
Ayo Edebiri:
Ooh, yeah, that's nice.
Julia Roberts:
You know what I'm very good at, I've discovered? Making carrot cake.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, but everybody makes a big fuss about your banana bread.
Julia Roberts:
I know. I'm trying to steer the ship to carrot cake, and it just keeps going back to banana cake.
Ayo Edebiri:
Good luck. The people know.
Julia Roberts:
I don't know, I don't even eat it, but I ate this and I could not believe how good it was because everyone that I served it to, they were really going on about it, and I was like, is it? Okay. All right.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. We're going to need your banana bread recipe and your carrot cake recipe.
Julia Roberts:
I will give it to you, but you can't tell anybody where you got it.
Kerry Diamond:
Speaking of cooking and baking, I'm so intrigued by the fact that you all lived together at Julia's house for a few weeks before making the movie, Camp Julia, so to speak.
Julia Roberts:
Well, you can hardly call it Camp Julia because my entire family, well, I think one of my sons was gone, but everybody was in the house. We were all together, which was part of the design for me selfishly wanting this new group of people that were going to come into my life so completely, to share with them the completeness of my life, my husband, my children, my pets, my furniture, my cooking, how much I like to sleep at night, whatever it was, and vice versa. Because I think when you're in somebody's house you are able to put a lot of things down that you don't even know you're carrying around.
Day after day in that kind of environment, I think we all were at our most relaxed, which as an artist makes you the most open and creative, I think, so that started us off in this great, happy way.
Kerry Diamond:
Is this something you've done before for past movies?
Julia Roberts:
I've never done it before, and I've only done one movie since, and I tried to do it and it didn't work. It's very, very hard to get everyone's schedules prior to a movie to align. I think it was a lightning strike. I don't know. We had our hair and makeup camera tests. We did everything in that period of time.
Ayo Edebiri:
A lot done.
Julia Roberts:
We got a lot of good work accomplished, and it was just really something that I wish I could do on every job.
Kerry Diamond:
Ayo, how did you feel when they told you you were going to be living at Julia Roberts' house for a little while?
Ayo Edebiri:
Pretty peachy, not going to lie. Pretty peachy. I think just being able to be together and start that journey of building a world together with a really privileged intimacy. We really just got to create this space with each other, and that was just so nice. It's something that I'm really grateful for and that you do realize, that's so rare. That's just so rare. Then, we went away and I was like, "Wait, I'll miss these people. What?" Then, we got to come together and knowing that we had that, I think there was such a really nice freedom that we had in the work.
Because we built this net of trust with each other, and of play, and of also really digging in with the script and with each other, so it made it, yeah, really, really rewarding.
Kerry Diamond:
Given how heavy the subject matter is in “After the Hunt,” how were you able to navigate that living together?
Julia Roberts:
Well, I think that we were able to navigate it more easily to have a more ferocious approach to what we were doing, because we had created, you were saying at one point, something about these safe little pockets inside of ourselves with each other. I think because we did feel really secure together, being vulnerable, being cruel, being fierce, we knew that at the end of all of those emotions or scenes or days and weeks of shooting, that our friends would still be there for us.
Kerry Diamond:
I have to ask, who did all the cooking?
Julia Roberts:
I didn't. Danny did. I've never washed so many napkins in my life. I couldn't believe. At the end of the day, I was like, "Wow, it is a mess in here."
Kerry Diamond:
Mentorship is such a major topic in “After the Hunt.” I'm curious, what did you two learn from each other on set?
Julia Roberts:
What did we learn?
Ayo Edebiri:
Did we learn? I don't know that this lady's probably going to be in my life for the rest of it, I hope. Yeah, a real sense of kinship.
Julia Roberts:
There's something extraordinary at my age to meet a person, especially not just a friend, like a colleague, a work peer, and discover, oh, I didn't realize I had this space inside of me that was waiting for you all this time. That's an extraordinary thing to discover. It's not to say that we don't make friends throughout our entire life, but to realize, oh, wait, you are the exact shape of this space that I had here, and ah. Learning that about someone else and about myself in this time, everything else, all of this is a bonus round to a discovery like that.
Kerry Diamond:
Given how complicated the world is right now, why did you want to make this film?
Julia Roberts:
Luca.
Ayo Edebiri:
I think Luca, and I think also the honesty of that complexity. I think sometimes as artists, our job is to imagine, sometimes it's to reflect, sometimes it's a bit of both. I think Luca and his honesty and his really deep, earnest feelings and intentions meeting this script and this beautiful group of people, all of that just felt so right.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you so much to Julia and Ayo. “After the Hunt” is in theaters now. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back with Padma Lakshmi. Cherry Bombe is on Substack. Head to cherrybombe.substack.com, that link is in our show notes, to see what we're up to. You can check out stories from our recent Italy issue, snag a recipe from Padma's new cookbook, and get updates on virtual and IRL events, like our upcoming virtual talk with ShopMy Founder Tiffany Lopinsky, and our special evening with author and legendary makeup artist, Bobbi Brown. While you're there, you can subscribe to our free Friday newsletter or our free Saturday baking newsletter. Again, that's cherrybombe.substack.com. I love Substack. I follow and read a lot of Substacks. I love writing for Substack, and I would love for you to follow us.
Our next guest is one of the food world's biggest stars. It's Padma Lakshmi. You know her from “Taste The Nation,” “Top Chef,” her bestselling books, her great Instagram account. She's here to talk about her newest book, “Padma's All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes From Taste The Nation and Beyond.” Padma gives us a little advice for navigating these complicated times. Padma Lakshmi, welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you. I'm excited to be in this very special recording studio.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I remember when we were here last time. I think we talked about Sports Illustrated.
Padma Lakshmi:
Was it Sports Illustrated? Maybe.
Kerry Diamond:
We did something after that. I forget what it was for, but I don't know. You've been on the show a ton of times. You're one of my absolute favorite people in the world and one of my favorite people to interview.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you. Well, likewise, and a special shout out to Cherry Bombe, which I think is a singular voice and a beautiful magazine. It's one of the few magazines I still get in print and save, so that says something.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, thank you for that. I hope you know how much we appreciate.
Padma Lakshmi:
I appreciate the magazine. I appreciate that it exists. I think it's necessary and joyful and a beautiful light in an otherwise bleak landscape at times, at times.
Kerry Diamond:
If we have time, we'll talk about that a little bit, but okay, so mutual admiration society, I love you. You love me.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
But we've got a lot to talk about, so let's get into this.
Padma Lakshmi:
Okay, let's go.
Kerry Diamond:
Monday night. Today is Monday. What the heck are we doing tonight? Tell everybody.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, my gosh. Well, “Padma's All American,” my new cookbook, is coming out. Tomorrow is the official launch pub date. I just wanted to do something a little different that was a little more raucous and fun, to launch the book tour and launch this book. I've invited a few of my friends that I really admire, who are great New York comedians, to come and do some sets. We are at Symphony Space. If you're around New York City, I'm sure we'll still have tickets, so please come on by. The show starts at 7:00 PM tonight. We're having a great lineup of comedians.
It's Michelle Buteau, Ilana Glazer, Jaboukie, Youngmi Mayer, Marie Faustin. It's going to be a great night, and I'm going to do a mini set as well. We're all going to just tell stories of immigrant life and jokes and probably about motherhood and Botox, because immigrants do that too, we just don't make a big deal out of it, and just have some fun. Then, of course, we will do a mini book talk at the end. That's probably shorter than most book talks, but I just want everybody to laugh and have fun. It's a celebration of immigrant food, of immigrant life. I think we all need as much laughter as we can get these days. That was the ethos behind the event, and I want to laugh.
Kerry Diamond:
We all need to laugh right now. All right, speaking of laughing, somehow I am involved in this.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
I am not a comedian. I'm not an immigrant. What am I doing Monday night? What am I doing tonight?
Padma Lakshmi:
You're a descendant of an immigrant.
Kerry Diamond:
That's true.
Padma Lakshmi:
Listen, as a white girl, you too are a descendant-
Kerry Diamond:
Yup, not first generation.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, that's fine. I think I wanted to add some food gravitas, and so you were, of course, on the top of that list. Ruth Reichl already gave me a quote, so I didn't feel like I could ask more from her. You're on. You're going to host the event. You're going to introduce everybody. Hopefully, by the way, if you guys have any questions you want answered, just write to Cherry Bombe on their social handles in the comments. If Kerry reads it, maybe she'll read it out loud at Symphony Space, and you can get it answered.
Kerry Diamond:
You did not think about me for one of the stand-up portions?
Padma Lakshmi:
Listen, you're the first person on the stage, so if you want to tell a joke or two, I know you've got some up your sleeve.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my God, I have zero jokes up my sleeve. You're the one who went to stand-up school, which we need to talk about. Why did you go to comedy school?
Padma Lakshmi:
I didn't go to comedy school. There's no school for this, so that's a lie. I have been doing improv for a couple of years. I did improv in college. I did improv before I had a kid, mostly after college at UCB. I went through their program, and I'm going through their program. I just put myself back in school because I needed to brush up.
Kerry Diamond:
So I shouldn't call it comedy school?
Padma Lakshmi:
No, please don't. People will be cringing. No, it's not comedy school.
Kerry Diamond:
Cringe is very in today, just FYI.
Padma Lakshmi:
Great. Okay. I can't keep up, but I love comedy and I love stand-up and I have great admiration for it. I think it is the rawest form of creativity because there's nothing between you and the audience. There's a mic, there's maybe blinding lights, which I hate, because I always like to see the faces of the people in the audience. Over the years, just by coincidence or serendipity, I managed to make friendships with really great comedians like Michelle Buteau, like Chelsea Handler, like Chris Rock, and Ali Wong, and so many others. I really admire them, and Mike Birbiglia as well, and Hasan Minhaj.
By the way, I am nowhere at that level, nor am I even calling myself a comedian. I'm something adjacent. I'm between stand-up and The Moth. The Moth is also an organization that I love and I've been involved with for the last 17 years. I wrote the foreword to their wonderful book, “How to Tell a Story.”
Kerry Diamond:
I love The Moth so much.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, so if you don't have that book and you want to be a better storyteller, not even in your writing, just to cocktail parties, that's a great book to get, and it's a great organization to support as well.
Kerry Diamond:
You are doing stand-up.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
I've been to your stand-up nights at The Bell House. It's been hilarious. What made you want to take it beyond just being a funny person and being friends with comedians, to actually being on stage and doing stand-up?
Padma Lakshmi:
Think I was so burnt out creatively and intellectually after all those seasons on “Top Chef” that I really wanted to shake up my life, so I left “Top Chef.” That was-
Kerry Diamond:
Your persona on “Top Chef” was not, “She's the funny one.”
Padma Lakshmi:
Exactly. No, it was not. Yeah, exactly. It was not what you call the one of being a jokester, but that's not what's required to do that job well.
Kerry Diamond:
You were the “pack your knives and go” lady.
Padma Lakshmi:
I was, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
And so much more.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, but it's fine. I'm very proud of the legacy I helped build with “Top Chef.” I just was frankly over it. I don't think that's hard to understand. I was there for 17 years. Everybody could see, I have no poker face, so I don't need to say much. You can tell what I'm feeling at any given moment. I do love all the alumni from “Top Chef.” I'm still very close to many of them as you know, but I wanted to shake myself up and I wanted to give myself a jumpstart creatively. I thought what would be the most scary thing that I could do that was also in my control? As an actor, you need somebody else to cast you in something, a director or whatever.
In many mediums, unlike writing, you need other people to collaborate, and that's one thing I love about television is that it's this big collaborative process. Filmmaking is that, and that's certainly what it was on “Top Chef,” but even more so on “Taste The Nation,” and now with this new show, which we'll get to, but I just wanted to do something. I felt like I was dead inside, not dead inside, but creatively just stagnant and I hate that. For the first time in my life I had some freedom of time and space, and my kid was older, and I could make sure she got to bed and then go out and do a set at Caveat.
Kerry Diamond:
I've met so many comedians through you and I didn't realize how many nights they go out and just do secret sets in these places. Were you out doing secret sets?
Padma Lakshmi:
Not as many as I'd like, but I've also at the same time been a guest performer with different improv groups like RaaaatScraps and Asssscat and Second City.
Kerry Diamond:
RaaaatScraps and Asssscat, okay.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, I love the names, and other ones. Basically, you go there and you tell a story, but it has to be true and it has to be in the moment, because you get a word prompt from the audience and you have to go with what you hear. It can't be something pre-written in your head. I like that free song. It's the same reason I like live television. It makes your brain go into emergency mode and reach for things in your subconscious that you wouldn't if you had time to edit yourself on the page or rehearse, and I needed that. I think my well is deep, but it had just felt dry and so I really wanted to again, just... You know that thing that those pads, those electric pads that they put on someone when they're almost dying?
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, yeah. That would be, "Clear."
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah. I wanted to do that for my brain and my creativity and it was something that I was always curious about. I had these comedy shows at The Bell House, where I would just host it with Bowen Yang or Roy Wood Jr., or Matt, or whatever. I did that and I didn't really tell any jokes. I just introduced the comedians and stuff, and I've done that for five years. We also did that at Dynasty Typewriter, and we've sold out every time in L.A., Dynasty Typewriter. Two years ago, I wasn't even sure until the day of whether I was going to do it. I had it in my mind and I had some stories in my pocket, but they were not very polished.
I just tried it, and I did a four-and-a-half-minute set, and then I did a six-and-a-half, seven-minute set, and then the next year I did an eight-minute set. Then, I did a 15, 16-minute set, and so I now have about probably 18, 20 minutes of material.
Kerry Diamond:
A lot of it is about Krishna, your daughter.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yes, some of it is.
Kerry Diamond:
She provides a wealth of material.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, my god. Every day there's something new, and I have to just parse it out and see what she feels okay about, but she doesn't go to my comedy sets, so she doesn't know.
Kerry Diamond:
It's on a little too late. Has Instagram helped? I feel like people didn't really know how funny you were until you started letting loose a little bit on Instagram.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, I think it did help because for so many years the version or the slice of me that people got to see on “Top Chef” was so limited compared to what you got if you were at a book talk with me or at my house for a dinner party or you saw it in late-night interviews. When I would go, say on “Colbert” or “The Daily Show” or something, or “Jimmy Fallon,” you would see that. I've always been doing it on the slide. I was on “Whose Line Is It Anyway” years ago, and every time it reruns I get a flurry of emails like, "Oh, I didn't know you did this." I've always been doing it for myself.
I didn't think it ascended to anything professional, and it still doesn't, by the way. I've made mid three figures as a comedian. I frame some of the checks because they're a hundred dollars. It's cute.
Kerry Diamond:
Got to start somewhere.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about this book. It's out tomorrow. I know you have worked for so long on this.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh my God.
Kerry Diamond:
I know how much the TV show “Taste The Nation” meant to you personally.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about this book.
Padma Lakshmi:
“Taste The Nation,” the TV show, started off as this book idea. Even the book proposal for it, which I sent to my editor over seven years ago was called “Padma's All American.” The title has stayed the same. I worked on the proposal, did a whole bunch of research, went down all kinds of rabbit holes on Pew Research and Migration Policy Institute and all this stuff. I showed this proposal to my producing partner who was developing a show on immigration with me separately. That came out of my work as an advocate for the ACLU on immigration rights. All this stuff that I have been carrying around and that I had learned, really I wanted to put it somewhere in my professional life, because I thought it was valid.
Then, when he saw that proposal he said, "We should merge our show with this idea because you've spent the last umpteen years on TV talking about food. It is the language that people are used to hearing you speak and it's also a great icebreaker." It's a great way in to start with and then go to topics that are much more serious and maybe more difficult. That's how “Taste The Nation” was born. At that point, I got so busy with the show, and like I've said to you before, I want to say six or seven people turned it down. I would come back with my little suitcase, and Krishna would be like, "Did you sell it?" I'm like, "I don't know."
Kerry Diamond:
I remember and we were so shocked because at that point in your career, a lot of us thought you could get anything greenlit.
Padma Lakshmi:
No one can get anything greenlit. Maybe if you're Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman. I'm a brown woman on television, and I know my place in the world. That doesn't mean I try to ascend that position or grow larger than it. I have been one of the most well-known women in food around the world. “Top Chef” is in 175 countries. I'm about to publish my eighth book, and yet it took me until I was 50 years old, almost before anyone would let me make all the decisions. Once I got that opportunity, I wasn't going to squander it. I was going to make the show that I wanted to exist in the world. However well it did, I wanted to feel proud of it, and I do. I think that show is beautiful.
I think it showed a lot of people my taste level and my perspective and how I would do things. I think it really did take me to another level in my career. I was always that person. Even when I published my first cookbook in 1999, I cringe when I think about the title, “Easy Exotic.” Again, cringe may be a good thing, but I do cringe when I hear that.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm guessing you were pushed into that.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, it was a publisher's idea, but it did encapsulate what I was trying to do and what I'm still trying to do, which is make the unfamiliar more approachable. To say, "Hey, to my readers or my audience, there's a world of wonderful food out there. It's not as other as you think it is. It's more similar to you. It just feels foreign or different to you. But let me show you how it'll enrich your life." The things I was doing in a very small and humble way in that book are the same things that I was doing in say, “Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet,” and also, certainly in the “Spice Encyclopedia.”
I've just grown as, hopefully, as a writer and as a thinker about food and people that I can do it in a deeper way that's evolving with our times. It's funny, we reissued “Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet.”
Kerry Diamond:
Which is a great cookbook.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
For people who don't realize how good your recipes are, they need to get that book.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you. That book came out in 2007, and then it was reissued 14 years later in 2021. I was all prepared to write a new introduction and I read the introduction and I was like, "I wouldn't really change anything I would say. Which felt vindicating but also like, "Don't have anything new to say." I also have a touch of Groucho Marx.
Kerry Diamond:
You always have something new to say. Come on.
Padma Lakshmi:
We reissued that book and the funny thing is that Apple picked that as one of their best new books of the year and I was like, "Somebody should tell them it's not a new book, but okay, I'll take it."
Kerry Diamond:
“Taste The Nation” comes as a TV show. So important, so timely, things have gotten harder, which is so shocking.
Padma Lakshmi:
I know.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm so happy the cookbook is coming out now because we need part two of that work that you started. Tell me about the title, “Padma's All American.” You're definitely pushing some buttons there.
Padma Lakshmi:
Well, I realize that, but I don't think I am.
Kerry Diamond:
In the picture.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, in the picture. The jacket has me in front of a giant American flag. All the pictures that you see in “Padma's All American,” other than the still lifes of the recipes were taken on the road. For the last five years, before I quit “Top Chef,” I was doing both shows and I was on the road, literally road by road, community by community for eight months of the year. We'd always travel to a new town for “Top Chef” and park it there for six weeks. Then, do the finale somewhere else, but also with “Taste The Nation,” I was in a different place. We embed ourselves for a whole week in every community for every episode. I really got to meet Americans of all kinds, gas station attendants, dance teachers, Michelin star chefs, the gamut.
It gave me hope in our country and it showed me how beautiful our country is, how textured and diverse and how that's a great thing. That is not a thing to thwart or discourage, and the people who are threatened by that are just ignorant because they benefit from it too. Yes, it's a much more dire and dark period with ICE. I just don't know what else to say. I hear stories of people dying in ICE detention, of women being raped or forced to have abortions or forced to be sterilized. Every permutation of that, and it's just feeding the private prison industrial complex and it's just so nefarious. The people who are forwarding that policy actually invest in those detention centers.
It's about as dirty as it's possible to be. I had to really be disciplined and tune a lot of that out because I didn't want this book to be reactionary. I wanted it to be a positive thing. That was the ethos of the show too, which was I was tired of getting on my soapbox and wagging my finger. I did that a lot at ACLU rallies and op-eds for the New York Times or the Washington Post. But I really wanted it to be just not tell you what to think, but show you maybe how your thinking could change. Whether it's teaching Americans that Puerto Rico is really American. We call it a territory but it's actually a colony of America and they pay taxes and they don't get to vote. Bad Bunny is American. P.S. Many people don't know that.
Kerry Diamond:
The Puerto Rico episode is one of my favorites.
Padma Lakshmi:
Me too.
Kerry Diamond:
Of “Taste The Nation.”
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah. That's why this cookbook has a lot more prose in it. It has, I think, 125 recipes all told. I can't remember now. Every chapter between the chapters there's a long-form essay, which is a profile about a person I met on the road who is an immigrant or a child of an immigrant, who moved me in some way. Whether it was the origin story of what brought them to America or what happened to them once they got here, or what they faced from their families and why this country is so important to them. It is a celebration of everything that's right with our country, and so I wanted it to be a positive thing.
I hope that people who don't think like me will pick it up, and I'm sorry if you're pissed off that I am in front of the flag. It's my flag too. I pledged allegiance to it every day in school with my hand on my heart. I've paid a shit ton of taxes in this country. I have given hundreds of Americans employment through my shows and my other business endeavors. I'm just as American as everybody else, including the President of the United States, and Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon. I don't care if you don't think I am, I am and I'm claiming that flag is mine because it is, and it's everybody's.
That's why it's called “Padma's All American,” because it's not just that I'm American, it's that this is my all-American America and American food. It's not apple pie or meatloaf. It is, but it's not just that.
Kerry Diamond:
Amen, sister. All right. I feel crazy asking you about a recipe now after that, but we do need to talk about a recipe as part of the show.
Padma Lakshmi:
It's good, it's yummy.
Kerry Diamond:
Of course it is. You are one of the best home cooks I know.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
I know it's hard to pick just one, but pick one recipe that's especially important to you.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, geez, let me think.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm sure everyone's going to ask you the same questions.
Padma Lakshmi:
Well, Thanksgiving's coming up, if you want some great sides.
Kerry Diamond:
The rice stuffing.
Padma Lakshmi:
Oh, yeah, that's a great recipe.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about that one.
Padma Lakshmi:
Meeling Wong, who is a friend of mine and who was a consultant that we relied very heavily on when I had a fine jewelry company. She makes that recipe for Thanksgiving every year and it'll be very familiar to Chinese people or Chinese-Americans. It's beautiful. It has Chinese sausage and mushrooms, and it's savory, and some chicken broth. It's very easy to make. It's very forgiving and it's so yummy. She makes it as Thanksgiving dressing. I actually just make it all year round when it gets cold. I just make a little cucumber salad on the side of it, and that's all you need.
Kerry Diamond:
Comfort food?
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah. You can also add dried shrimps. I say that I think in the note, I just left them out to make it more approachable, and that was the real hat trick. That was a really important thing that I was worried about a lot with the recipes. I had to tow this very fine line between preserving the essence of what made that recipe beloved by the community from which it came, but also writing it and developing it in a way that would make it more accessible for someone who didn't grow up eating it to make even on a weekday. Not every recipe in that book is a weekday recipe like the Fatteh Batinjan, which is this beautiful seven-layer eggplant dip that my friend Kamal, who's Lebanese, gave me.
That is not a weekday project. I call it Ramadan eggplant because you need a special occasion like that to make it. There are other recipes that are weekday meals or weekday dishes like the Suya blackened corn. That is a mishmash of a Nigerian recipe that's normally served with grilled meat. But I use the suya spice, which I cracked the code of. Nobody would share their recipe with me and I was like, "You know what? My nose is a bloodhound and so is my palate so I can suss this out." It's pretty close. In India, I grew up having grilled corn on the streets when I would visit my grandparents, so I just do the same blackened corn.
It's basically just putting the corn cob over your flame of the stove or a grill if you have it. Then, just putting the spice with butter and that's it, and it's beautiful. That would be great and easy to serve. There's a squash recipe that's calabaza con mojo, which is a Cuban recipe that Ana Sofía Peláez showed me in Miami. She works with the Miami Freedom Project, I think it's called. She and her sister had me over to their house. It's really easy, it's really forgiving, and that mojo sauce can go on grilled fish, it can go on roast chicken.
It doesn't have to go on that calabaza, but it's basically just slicing and roasting squash in the oven and then making a really easy sauce with garlic, citrus juice, oregano.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, my gosh. It all sounds so good. The book is such a treasure. I really, really hope people pick it up and put it in a set. If you're in New York, come hang out with us on Monday night at Symphony Space. You can get tickets symphonyspace.org. One last question. I know this might be the hardest question I'm asking you, but one of the things I love about you is you just always seem to know how to respond to what's going on in the world. A lot of us look to you for just what to do. Today's a particularly hard day. We recorded this little early.
SNAP benefits might be disappearing for millions of people across the country. Everything that's going on, like you referenced, with ICE. For somebody who's feeling all this deeply but doesn't know what to do, do you have any advice?
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, by the way, it's a hard question and a lot of times, as I said earlier, I just don't know what to say or do, and it just all seems futile. But I think being really local and being really fundamental and simple with your movements is helpful. What I mean specifically about that is, yes, we are losing a lot of SNAP benefits. If you have extra in your pantry, please Google and find a food pantry or a shelter that you can donate to things you wouldn't think of. We all have so many bottles of hot sauce in our fridge door or in our pantry that we'll never use.
Hot sauce and spices and things like that are the things that get donated least to the Bowery Mission. My friend Susan Sarandon works there all the time and she's like, "The food is so bland and what do we do?" The things that you think of as maybe paltry, to someone else are really useful. That's one thing you can do on a regular basis. Thanksgiving is coming up, volunteer to serve at a shelter or a food bank. But another thing you can do also is just find some issue, and there's so many, that affects you personally or that you have a connection to.
That is how I started my Women's Health Foundation in 2009, the Endometriosis Foundation America, because I suffered from it. I had a lot of fully formed opinions about how it affected my life and my family's life, and so I could speak to it very deeply, and I didn't know what I was doing. I'm certainly not a doctor or scientist, let alone a math or science person.
Kerry Diamond:
But you really kick-started a conversation.
Padma Lakshmi:
Yeah, and I'm very proud of the work we did. Find something that is resonant with you. Also, education is being cut left and right. Whether you have a school-age child or not, whether your child goes to a public school or not, you can always donate to teachers. There's a great organization which I work with called Donors Choose. It's wonderful. You can go on and you can just see different things that teachers need all over the country or in your neighborhood, and you can just donate. You can donate $25. You can donate $2,500. I worked with Kamau Bell, and I donated $25,000 that he won on Jeopardy. He won a million bucks.
He said, "Here, you give some of it away." I was like, "Yes, I know who, I know where." Those are two things. The food, the shelter, when everything seems so big and so insurmountable, you have to just take each day at a time and bite off as much as you can chew. My grandfather and I were really close. My daughter Krishna is named after him, and I remember he said, I'll just leave you with this. He said one thing when I was growing up and he say, "When you go to sleep at night, just ask yourself, what did you do today to water the tree of life?" It doesn't have to be some grand gesture that you publicize. It can be helping your neighbor upstairs with her groceries.
It can be offering to take a friend some soup. It can be anything. Do a thirty-day challenge. There's always these challenges that I see online. Do a thirty-day challenge where you do an active random kindness every single day.
Kerry Diamond:
Think local, think small. Padma, you are the best. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to see you tonight.
Padma Lakshmi:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
And to celebrate-
Padma Lakshmi:
Thanks for doing it.
Kerry Diamond:
... “Padma's All American.”
Padma Lakshmi:
It makes me a little calm that you're going to be there.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, it makes me very not calm to be there with you and all these comedians, but I'm going to pull it together by tonight.
Padma Lakshmi:
It'll be fun. It'll be fun. You'll see. We'll have a ruckus good time.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Padma Lakshmi. What a trio. Don't forget, Jubilee early bird tickets are on sale now through December 31st. Don't delay. If you're a Bombesquad member or a paid Substack subscriber, check your inbox for your special discount. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu. Our executive assistant is Brigid Pittman, and our head of partnerships is Rachel Close. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.