Yasmin Khan:
I think what I try and do in my work is to try and share the sum of the human experience.
Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesquad. You're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, the show that's all about women and food. I'm your host, Kerry diamond. Today, we have a very special guest back with us. It's Yasmin Khan. Yasmin has carved out a very specific space for herself in the world of cookbooks. She's produced a body of work that goes beyond the sharing of recipes. Thanks to her intrepid nature and in-person reporting, Yasmine's books are culinary and cultural postcards from parts of the world shaped by history, politics and strife, but also lots of humanity.
Kerry Diamond:
Her latest book is Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. It's a heartfelt follow-up to her first two books, The Saffron Tales and Zaitoun. Yasmin joins me to talk about Ripe Figs, the recipes she loves from the book and the work that went into producing it. Yasmin is a personal hero of mine and a friend and I'm always honored to talk to her.
Kerry Diamond:
First, a little Cherry Bombe housekeeping. So many of you asked when we would share the videos from our recent Julia Jubilee conference, dedicated to the life and legacy of Julia Child. Well, you can find them all on cherrybombe.com right now.
Kerry Diamond:
From author Priya Krishna in conversation with curator Paula J. Johnson from the Smithsonian, talking about Julia's kitchen to all the women who won Top Chef together for the very first time talking about chefs and representation on food TV to chef Angie Mar in conversation with the fabulous Jacques Pépin and lots more. While you're at cherrybombe.com, be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you can stay on top of all the latest news about our events, conferences, videos, and Radio Cherry Bombe guests.
Kerry Diamond:
Before we start our interview, one thing I would like to note, right before our talk, vogue.com published a piece from Yasmin about her miscarriages that occurred while she was working on her latest book. She and I talk about the story and her experiences. Yasmin is brave to share this as miscarriage is a subject that has been shrouded in secrecy for so long and for too long. I wanted to let you know we'll be discussing this because it's such a personal subject and I don't want to upset anyone, especially those who've experienced this firsthand. Now, here's my conversation with Yasmine Khan, author of Ripe Figs.
Kerry Diamond:
I would love to talk about all three books, but why don't we start with the first book? The first book is called Ripe Figs. Tell us what Ripe Figs is all about.
Yasmin Khan:
Ripe Figs is about my culinary travels through Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, the countries on Europe's inner edges in the Eastern Mediterranean and it's a book that explores the flavors and the ingredients that are eaten throughout the region whilst also using food stories as a way to delve in to issues surrounding borders and migration. Like all of my books, I tend to use food and its wonderful communal value to explore deeper political issues that I think we should talk about. Yeah, that's what the book's about.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did you choose this geographic area?
Yasmin Khan:
There are a few reasons really. I'll start at home. The area of London that I live in, Hackney, is an area which is full of migration from this area. My local grocery stores are Turkish and they're filled with crepes of halloumi and brined olives, shelves laden with pomegranate molasses so I guess over the last 10 years I've lived in this part of London, I've fallen deeply in love with this cuisine.
Yasmin Khan:
And then, the second reason is that that area has seen the biggest movement of people since the Second World War into Europe over the last five years. So just mass migration, mainly as a result of the aftereffects of the Syrian civil war and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's been going on there is increasingly made the headlines here in Europe, namely about how we treat refugees, what the borders mean around Europe.
Yasmin Khan:
In the last five years, certainly in the years that I've been thinking of this book, which is not five, it's a couple, certainly, when Trump was in the White House, migration and borders was such a key issue. We had it here in the UK with Brexit and with the looming climate crisis where the World Bank estimates millions of people are going to be forcibly displaced within the next 50 years, I thought it would be interesting to delve into this issue of how do we, as a species, deal with the fact that migration happens and how can we do it in a humane way? All of that, with some recipes, is what brought me to Ripe Figs.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, you didn't just report on this comfortably from London, you actually traveled to these places. Can you tell us about your travels?
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. The style, I guess, that now has come to represent my cookbooks is that I head off with a note pad and a pen and I spend time in people's kitchens, it could be home kitchens or it could be in restaurants, cooking and eating with people of all walks of life. And it's over the kitchen table, whether we're shopping on the ends and peeling tomatoes that I talk to people about their lives, about their hopes, their dreams and try and collect and share stories of connection through the cookbooks.
Kerry Diamond:
What was one trip or one day that you think about a lot in terms of maybe somebody you met or something you ate?
Yasmin Khan:
One person that immediately springs to mind is this incredible woman called Lena on the Greek island of Lesbos, which is this beautiful island. Imagine turquoise blue waters, beautiful Greek tavernas, sun setting over mountains with olive groves. It's a picture perfect setting. But Lesbos also has had a really troubled past few years and it's had 1 million refugees have come through this island where just 40,000 people originally lived so it's had this huge influx. Lena is this Greek woman, she's a teacher during the day and she was so moved by what she was seeing with all the new migrants and refugees coming that she decided to set up a restaurant which she ran where half the staff were refugees and half were local Greeks and the idea was that in the kitchens, the menu would reflect this melding of influences and the space was just a really great, almost community center.
Yasmin Khan:
I went there originally because I was like, "Hey, that's a great story of solidarity," but just the food was just incredible so I kept going back. The meal I'd always ordered when I was there and there's a recipe for it in the book is for channa masala, which is a spiced chickpeas stew made with lots of ginger and garlic and chili and turmeric and warming spices like garam masala.
Yasmin Khan:
It's a dish that actually reminds me of my Pakistani dad. That's what my dad would cook. And yet, here I was in this idyllic Greek island, eating this food in a restaurant run by a Greek woman. For me, it just encapsulated migration as just an intrinsic part of human existence. We've always traveled as a species and we always will and when we travel, we take our food with us and our food doesn't just share a set of ingredients, it tells the story of where we've come from and where we're going. That's a story that comes to mind.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about a few other dishes in this beautiful book. I don't even know where to start. There are so many gorgeous photos and recipes. Tell us a few things you would love for people to try to make from this cookbook.
Yasmin Khan:
I'm a home cook and that means that the recipes that I tend to put together are things that are really easy to whip up at home. A lot of the dishes in this book are probably even more accessible than my first two books, Zaitoun and Saffron Tales. And they're really good at a time when foreign holidays are currently eluding us, they're a great way to transport yourself to the sunny shores of the Med. I really like my sunshine salad, which is inspired by the flavors of Cyprus, so lots of halloumi and avocados, which are grown there and roasted sweet potatoes and it's in a beautiful citrus and honey dressing with lots of fresh herbs that just evoke the brightness of the Mediterranean.
Kerry Diamond:
That is the best name, Yasmin, did you come up with that, sunshine salad?
Yasmin Khan:
Yes. And then, I really like the smoky Lima beans recipe, which is one of those, get it ready in 30 minutes from store cupboard ingredients and it's flavored lots of paprika and oregano. These are those beautiful evocative Mediterranean herbs. I really also love, well, because we all love a good brownies recipe. There's a really nice date and walnut brownie recipe, which is inspired from a coffee shop that I visited in Istanbul. And then, the dish that I-
Kerry Diamond:
Interrupt you there, that's funny. I would not have expected to see a brownie recipe in this, but I guess if you're doing a cookbook for home cooks, you have to have a brownie recipe in there, right?
Yasmin Khan:
Totally. But the dish that I always suggest people try because it's unusual, but really easy to make is the hot yogurt soup. This is something that's very common in Turkish food, and it's, again, really simple to make, some just good quality chicken broth, some rice goes in there and it's flavored with lots of mint and then a chili butter. It's one of my favorite recipes in the book.
Kerry Diamond:
As we mentioned and you referenced your two other books, Saffron Tales and Zaitoun, you really have a trilogy now of books and they're so beautifully designed. They're so beautiful in terms of the subject matter of the recipes in them, I have to congratulate you on the body of work you have put into the world. It's really remarkable, Yasmin, I hope you, I know you've had a tough year and we'll talk about that, but I really just have so much respect for what you've done.
Yasmin Khan:
Oh, that's very kind and you're making me well up a little bit now, too. Yeah, thank you. I approach my books, I guess, not only because I want to share delicious food, but because I'd like to make a contribution and I used to be a human rights activist for many years and it's been really moving for me to see how well these books are being received, not only seeing all the beautiful pictures on Instagram, but yeah, of trying to just get us all to think about bigger issues. So yeah, thank you, it means a lot and it perhaps makes all my gray hairs slightly more understandable because three bucks in five years is a lot.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a lot. But also when you talk about the reporting that went into each of these books. You did not just sit in a comfortable apartment in London and report these from afar. Can we go back and talk about the other two books?
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Can you walk us through them and how the original concept came about for the first book?
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. I was a nonprofit worker and like many people in many industries, just got a bit burnt out and took six months out and it was during that time, I had this idea for a book that would celebrate my mother's heritage. She's from Iran, she's Persian. I don't know, sometimes you just have to go fate or luck or I don't know, I work very hard as well, but it just all felt so aligned. I suddenly thought, well, that's an interesting idea. And then, I did a Kickstarter and the Kickstarter got funded and then I went to do the research and then I got a bidding war for the first book and it just went off.
Kerry Diamond:
The Saffron Tales was the first one. That's such a good story to tell people because I feel like the impression in the cookbook world is that serious won't sell and you have proven otherwise, that you can have topics that are meaningful and people do care about these things.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah, and that was great because I just traveled all the way through Iran cooking with people and there's recipes from all over the country and it's really celebratory and beautiful. So yeah, I was really proud of that. And then, I did Zaitoun. When I was a nonprofit worker, my beat for a few years was Israel, Palestine so I knew the region really well. I did a cookbook that celebrated Palestinian food. I traveled around Israel and the West Bank and did interviews with people in Gaza. I'm really proud of that book. Again, really celebratory stories, but still not ignoring the key issues that are going on in the region and the human rights issues. Yeah, that was book two.
Kerry Diamond:
I was not expecting this, but I saw your piece in Vogue and when I was getting ready to talk to you, I thought we always have a good time talking to each other and I thought we would talk about food and travel and your piece covered those things, but it was primarily about your miscarriages in the course of reporting your latest book and the article broke my heart, but at the same time, I thought you were so incredibly brave for writing it. First, I just wanted to say, I'm so sorry for what you've been through. Could you tell us about the article and why you chose to write it?
Yasmin Khan:
During the course of writing this new book, Ripe Figs, I did have three miscarriages and they really punctuated the week that I signed the book deal, just shortly after I got back from Cyprus for my second research trip and then, last spring, whilst I was writing up the book at the beginning of the pandemic. I wanted to write, I wrote an article, as you said, in Vogue about it, for a couple of reasons.
Yasmin Khan:
One, having gone through three miscarriages now and seeing how deeply they affected me, I became really aware of how much taboo there is around the subject and how much shame and stigma many women feel. I certainly got a lot of support by the articles that I read on this topic. There's very little written about recurrent miscarriage, when it happens over and over again. So I wanted to write the article, I guess, in a way to help other women know that lots of us sadly go through this, so they're not alone and the article tries to end on a hopeful note about where I've got to with the journey, but I also wanted to write it because we live in this age where so many people like me and you and many others have to, almost now, play out so many of our lives on social media.
Yasmin Khan:
Certainly, if you're an author or if you're any public personality and you're a travel writer, I mean, so much travel writing is just, especially food and travel stuff, it's like, hey, here I am in this amazing market having the time of my life. Life isn't always like that. I also wanted to write it so that I would perhaps just show people that, yeah, I'm really successful. I'm really blessed in so many ways, but almost everyone, we're all going through our personal struggles and in this Instagram age, I think it's just really helpful to be reminded of that.
Kerry Diamond:
How was it for you? You're traveling to these places you've never been before and at the same time, you're going through your own struggles. How did you handle everything you were going through and the people you were talking to and what they were going through and having to work at the same time? It's a lot.
Yasmin Khan:
Two weeks after my first miscarriage, I boarded a plane to Athens and I was like, well, I've got to write this book. I've got to interview people, and it was completely the wrong time to do that. Two weeks was not enough time for me to process this, let alone my body, it can take up to six weeks for your hormones to get back to normal. To bring it back to the food, then the essence of my work, what actually did really help was when, and we've all found this, I think, during the pandemic or some of us have, I shouldn't say all of us, but one of the great things that food can do, it's got such a meditative quality when you're in the kitchen, it can really connect you to people even if they're strangers. Breaking bread with someone is one of the oldest forms of human connection and it's a cliche, but it's true. So I also found a lot of comfort and solace in the kitchen.
Yasmin Khan:
During the pandemic, after my third miscarriage, there's this recipe in this book for stuffed grape leaves and I always was just like, ugh, life's too short to stuff a grape leaf, I'm never going to really get into that, come on. But actually, I learned these recipes in Cyprus and I was like, hey, okay, I've got a bit more time, and I started doing it and I was like, actually, no, this only takes an hour, it's not a long time. These are really delicious and it's just such a beautiful process to get the rice with the tomatoes and the mint and the cinnamon and then roll these little cigarillo shapes and steam them. It was beautiful and I think what I try and do in my work, and I think this book encapsulates this because of what I've gone through, is to try and share the sum of the human experience because life is both joyful and it's really sad and it's really fun and it's really difficult and it's really happy and it's really sad. It's all of those things. We are all of those things and we're all embodying that all the time and food is a place that, for me, represents that.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did you choose the title, Ripe Figs?
Yasmin Khan:
The title of the book comes from a time when I was in Athens and it was just a couple of weeks after I'd had my first miscarriage and I always get up really early in the morning because I love that and I was sitting there on this balcony looking out over the neighborhood as the sun was coming up, my coffee and I had a bowl of figs that I'd just bought at the local market and I was feeling just really tired and stressed about the fact that I hadn't got my head together enough for the interviews I was doing and I just started eating these figs. As I started eating them, they were so sweet. They tasted like honey and treacle and they were so soft and they suddenly reminded me of the fig tree by my grandparents' farm in Northern Iran and it reminded me of my grandmother who'd go and always know which fig tree was ripe and ready, or my grandfather who'd harvest them and bring them for us for breakfast in the mornings when we stayed on the farm when we were kids.
Yasmin Khan:
And all of a sudden, eating those ripe figs on a balcony in Greece made me think of my family, it made me think of community. It made me feel safe and that's what I needed whilst I was writing this book. It was also what so many of the refugees and migrants who I was interviewing needed as well.
Kerry Diamond:
It's such a beautiful title. Let's talk about the design of the book, all your books, for a second. Like I said, they stand together as such a beautiful trilogy in so many ways, the subject matter, the beautiful contents inside, but the outside, they stand together as a trilogy as well. Can you tell us about the design and your influence on the design?
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. Oh, my God. We spent so long on the design. I feel really lucky that I've got a great team. All my books have got illustrated covers, they're graphic. Saffron Tales is gold and turquoise, trying to emulate Persian designs in a more modern way. It's quite opulent looking. Zaitoun, I'm actually staring at the embroidery right now that's framed and is on my wall because Zaitoun is a hand embroidered garden, I guess, filled with Mediterranean vegetables and pomegranates and flowers and it's beautiful. It's now framed on my wall. And then, with Ripe Figs, the thing about Greece, Turkey and Cyprus is that region has got many similarities because so many empires over thousands of years have come through it so we decided tiles would be really special and would be evocative of all three places. And then, of course, gorgeous ripe figs with their juices leaking all over the tiles. Yeah, just from a pure artistic point of view, I'm just always so proud of how those covers look.
Kerry Diamond:
I almost feel bad calling your books cookbooks because they are so much more than ... You're laughing. There's so much more than cookbooks. They're travelogues, they're moments in time. Tell us about the photography and this one and who you worked with.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. This time, I worked with Matt Russell. Matt has actually taken the pictures of the food photography in all of my books, but this time he wanted to come out and join me and he actually also is from this part of London so he was deeply embedded and loving the beautiful Turkish, Greek and Cypriot influences. Yeah, I spent a lot of time on my travels, so he would come out for stints and join me. Yeah. That was mad. I think that photography is just really stunning in this one.
Kerry Diamond:
I want to talk more about how all the recipes came together. I'm guessing a lot of these did not come from recipes that people had written down so you had to convince them to share the recipe with you. You had to then put it into terms and directions that would work for the home cook. Tell us about that whole process.
Yasmin Khan:
My process for recipe inspiration and gathering is another slow one. It might be that I'll go to someone's house and I've met them several times before to try and convince them that that is a ...
Kerry Diamond:
You're not stealing the family recipe.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah, exactly. All of the recipes in this book, none of them are me sitting with someone and saying, "Okay, how much flour did you put in that?" Or, "How much salt?" They're definitely inspired by I was cooking with this incredible teacher in Istanbul and she showed me how to make this beautiful veiled rice cake. It's called veiled because it's a rice cake in-
Kerry Diamond:
It's so beautiful. People have to see the photo of that. Mm-hmm.
Yasmin Khan:
... in a pastry. But what I would then do is I'd come home and I'd go through all my notes and all my voice notes and be like, okay, that was a good recipe. And then, yeah, I make it into a style that I think works for my palette, that translates to my readers who, by now, I know what they like. Then, it's lots of recipe testing in my kitchen before it finally gets good enough to put in a book.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you become a good cook? You didn't go to culinary school. You didn't set out to do things in the culinary world.
Yasmin Khan:
No, I didn't, like many other prominent people, I guess like Nigella or Nigel Slater. I guess maybe in the UK, we do have a tradition of home cooks actually becoming quite good at writing recipes. I'm not really sure how it happened other than the fact that because my family were farmers, I think anyone who's bought up around produce, you develop such an affinity to food and ingredients and you really value them. My mom was a nutritionist, so it was also really instilling in us a real importance of home-cooked meals and cooking from scratch. Yeah, the rest, I just picked up and developed as I went along and of course, now, I just feel so grateful because I've spent all these times in so many people's kitchens and you can't help but get lots of tips as you go along.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about your pantry. What are your go-tos? Well, let's talk about for this book in particular. What's the Ripe Figs pantry? What are the greatest hits?
Yasmin Khan:
Okay. What's brilliant about the Ripe Figs pantry is that it's stuff that is so easy to source. I definitely got, and you definitely want to be getting some lovely dried oregano, some dry thyme. I really recommend sourcing these from Mediterranean or middle Eastern shops if you can just cause they tend to have really good varieties. Yeah, oregano, dried thyme, paprika, both sweet and smoked, pomegranate molasses, which is a go-to of all of my books, actually.
Kerry Diamond:
You've done a lot for that ingredient.
Yasmin Khan:
I know. When am I going to get sponsored by some pomegranate company?
Kerry Diamond:
Why don't you make your own? That's the thing now, right? Everybody does their own condiments.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. It's true. What else? Ooh, and then the other key one, I think, is mainly known as Aleppo pepper in the US. I call it pull biber, the Turkish name, in my book, but that is really fruity, slightly sweet pepper flakes that haven't got too much spice, but bring a lovely flavor. With those five ingredients and a bit of cinnamon and cumin, I think you've set for the book.
Kerry Diamond:
Perfect. I made a dish that actually, maybe I had you on my brain when I made this last night, I had this cod that I wanted to do something nice with, but I had a lot in my fridge and my pantry so I was like, I'm not going out and buying anything, what can I make that I already have? I wound up poaching it in this broth that was half tomato sauce and then some water, some white wine, just heated it up some garlic with some Aleppo pepper and olive oil, then added all the liquids. And then, I had some beautiful saffron from Diaspora that I added and then I poached the cod in that broth and oh, my gosh, it was so good.
Yasmin Khan:
That sounds amazing. I'm like, when can I go get some cod and make that, that sounds great.
Kerry Diamond:
I was very proud of myself for pulling it together from in the pantry, yeah. Absolutely.
Yasmin Khan:
It's so important that actually we all do that when sometimes we're like, oh, we'll go out and get those extra ingredients, but just yeah, using what we have. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I do the same things over and over again. I roast a lot of things with olive oil and salt and pepper and I need to get out of that rut.
Yasmin Khan:
I know, I think we all go through phases don't we, with cooking as well? Especially if you're really busy, but I once read this stat that apparently we all only have something like eight dishes that we basically make all the time. And I was like, eight? That's so ridiculous. Then I counted and I was like, wow, I really just make the same thing all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Roast chicken and roast vegetables. That's my go-to. What's your go-to.
Yasmin Khan:
I had it last night, in fact. It would be rice noodles and then a fridge raid for whatever vegetables are in the fridge and then a protein raid over there. Something Asian-inspired, stir fry, yeah. My sister calls it crap in a bowl. She's like, "Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not." And I'm like, "Come on." But then last night was really good. It was just the fridge raid.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a good name for a cookbook too, but it doesn't sound like a ‘Yasmin Khan cookbook.’ Tell me about the past year. You finished the book. London has had a terrible time and you've been in lockdown most of the year. How have you been dealing with all of that?
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. Well, I think ... How have I been dealing with it? I feel very grateful. I think I've been really lucky in that my work has been pretty consistent. Even after I submitted the cookbook, I've had lots of things coming in so I've been very busy, actually, during this time, which I feel quite grateful for. I really remember at the early stages of the pandemic, just opening up my fridge and seeing all the food in there, all the fruit and vegetables and being like, okay, I'm so lucky that I can even afford to eat well during such a terrible time. I think, yeah, it's been really back to basics on that stuff, hasn't it? London just opened up two weeks ago. Yeah, we were shut down from November until ... It was like five months, which is a really long time.
Kerry Diamond:
Explain to people what shutdown means, because it's been different things in different countries.
Yasmin Khan:
Right. All non-essential shops were closed. I don't know, for us, I guess restaurants, bars, bookshops, clothing stores, anything that wasn't a pharmacy or a grocery store was closed.
Kerry Diamond:
Not even, you couldn't do curbside pickup or take-out or anything like that?
Yasmin Khan:
You could. You could do take out, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. It's been very, an inward time, I guess. I've read a lot of novels. I bought a guitar last year, thinking I'm going to learn how to play guitar and I just haven't picked it up at all. Yeah, I've got to know this city really well. I always have cycled, but I've been cycling so much more because just wanting to avoid public transport and it's been cool to see these new sides of the city and meet friends in the freezing cold, wearing all the clothes that you have to have a mulled wine on someone's front doorstep or head off and have drinks on one of the bridges and yeah, I guess just explore the outsides of the city. It's made me fall in love with it even all over again. Yeah. But yeah, I'm also really looking forward to things opening up a bit more now. I went to a bookstore for the first time in six months yesterday and it was really emotional.
Kerry Diamond:
I was just going to say, did you burst into tears?
Yasmin Khan:
It was and I saw my book there and I was just like, "Wow." Normally, by this stage, my book, because last month, I'd just I'd be on such a big tour.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh. You're so intrepid, you'd be in the States, you'd be all over the place.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I've had a very fortuitous time during this whole 12 months, but yeah, I can't wait to dance again. That's my main thing. I've been dancing in my house, but I can't wait to be anonymous in a crowded room. Oh, that's what I want to do. Who's going to have the first party? I turned 40 last month and I'm waiting till I can have my big 40th birthday party.
Kerry Diamond:
Yasmin, for folks who are fans, where else can they find your work? I noticed you had some recipes on Nigella's website.
Yasmin Khan:
The easiest way is to follow me on my socials so it's Yasmin Khan Stories on Instagram and Facebook and I'm on Twitter, Yasmin Khan. I have a newsletter that goes out very sporadically, but it's a great way to keep in touch with me so you can, Yasmin Khan Stories on my website.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you doing Patreon or Substack or any of those things? Have they caught on in the UK?
Yasmin Khan:
It has, but yeah, no, I'm fine with the stuff that I'm doing, I guess. I just really love writing books and yeah, I'm looking forward to working on my next one.
Kerry Diamond:
Great. We haven't done a speed round in a long time, so I would love to do a little speed round with you. We'll bring it back. I've have to remember all the questions now. Okay. What was your last pantry purchase?
Yasmin Khan:
Oh, it was peanut butter. I just bought some peanut butter this morning. It's not very exotic, though.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the oldest thing in your fridge?
Yasmin Khan:
Oh, God. I dread to think. Oh, but actually I know what it is. It is pickled garlic, which is from Iran and the garlic has been pickled, it has to be pickled for years so this pickled for like six years.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's amazing. What does it taste like?
Yasmin Khan:
It's quite sweet. It's not pungent at all. It's still crunchy. It's sweet and crunchy with just a hint of garlic. Say if you just sauté some garlic in a pan and then get rid of the garlic and you just have that garlic oil, it's that level of subtlety.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. And would you use it in?
Yasmin Khan:
It's a really nice pickle to have on the side of Iranian stews. I do a great Lima bean stew with lots of dill and with rice and I would just have that on the side.
Kerry Diamond:
I need to teach you how to say that like I said it growing up, Lima.
Yasmin Khan:
Lima.
Kerry Diamond:
Lima beans do not, my grandmother made succotash all the time. Well, she opened cans of succotash all the time and they were really dried stad Lima beans and corn so I need to rediscover the Lima bean.
Yasmin Khan:
You do. You do.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Okay. Most used kitchen implement?
Yasmin Khan:
Oh, my pestle and mortar, I think. I am a big advocate of just really trying to encourage people to buy fresh, as in to buy whole spices instead of ground ones. I know that in the US, that isn't very common and we're all a bit lazy sometimes and we just want to Chuck in some ground spices, but honestly, buy yourself a mortar and pestle. It takes 30 seconds to toast and then another 30 seconds to grind your spices and your food will just taste so much better.
Kerry Diamond:
What is a treasured cookbook in your collection?
Yasmin Khan:
Oh.
Kerry Diamond:
It doesn't have to be the most, but just one that you would, if the zombies were coming, you'd grab that cookbook and run out of the house.
Yasmin Khan:
Well, I mean, it's a classic, but we've already mentioned Nigella so I'll just say her book, How to Eat, which I think it was the 20th anniversary edition came out last year. I just love that cook book. It's a great one to read. It's just got every classic dish that you'd want to make. And of course, it's Nigella so you just feel like you're having such an entertaining journey as you're going through the recipes.
Kerry Diamond:
You do have that in common with Nigella, that your cookbooks are very readable. They're not just something you'll scan through for a recipe, but you can actually read it almost like a novel.
Yasmin Khan:
I'll take that. Anything in common with Nigella is surely something we're all going to take as a compliment. Yeah, no, she's amazing and she's just such an incredible woman. I love her recipes, I love her writing and I've been so fortunate, I think, to have met so many people who've been real supporters of my work. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I love her new book. It's so readable and it's a little bit more eccentric.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. It's more personal as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely.
Yasmin Khan:
She was living on her own for the lockdown so I felt it very relatable.
Kerry Diamond:
A song that makes you smile?
Yasmin Khan:
Oh, okay. A song that makes me smile is, well, I've alluded to it already, is Dizzee Rascal, Dance With Me, which just really reminds me of, it's just such a London song. He's such a London artist and it just really reminds me of gatherings and parties, which I hope we'll be able to have soon.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh. What do you wear in the kitchen, when you're cooking? Is there a shoe you wear, aprons or just barefoot and whatever?
Yasmin Khan:
I really need to wear aprons more often. I'm often wearing the nicest outfit and then I'll be like, "Damn it, what am I doing?" Well, actually, my sister got me a great apron, which I started wearing quite a lot. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this because it's got a curse word and let me try and like move around that. It's a pink thing and it's like, "Bitch, I am the secret ingredient."
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, wait, I've seen it. I have it on my Instagram.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah, exactly.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, my God. That's the funniest apron.
Yasmin Khan:
Yeah. It's really good. It just makes me laugh when I wear it. I love it.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Last question. When we can all travel again, where is the first place you would like to go?
Yasmin Khan:
Well, I'm not just saying this because I'm speaking to you, but it would be New York. My sister lives in New York and she's had a baby. I just can't wait. As soon as flights are resumed, I just want to jump on a plane and go and cuddle that kid. That's going to be my first destination because me and my sister are best friends, we're so close and yeah, I can't wait to head over and see her.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, well, we will welcome you with open arms. Yes, it's always so nice to see you when you're here. All right, that's all the time we have today. It was so beautiful seeing you. Again, I couldn't be prouder of you with this body of work.
Yasmin Khan:
Thanks so much, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
And thank you also for just sharing so many people's stories, but really sharing your own story on the level that you never have before, but that will help so many people.
Yasmin Khan:
Thank you, it really means a lot for you to say that.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Yasmin Khan for joining us. I rarely tell you to go buy all of the books by one of our guests, but Yasmin's books really do come alive as a set and her thoughtful work deserves to be supported. Ask your favorite local bookstore for copies of The Saffron Tales, Zaitoun and her latest, Ripe Figs.
Kerry Diamond:
Radio Cherry Bombe is produced by Cherry Bombe Media. Today's show was engineered and edited by Jenna Sadhu. Don't forget to sign up for the Cherry Bombe newsletter at cherrybombe.com. Stay on top of all that Bombe Squad news. And, since we talked about Nigella Lawson, be sure to check out my interview with Nigella from a few weeks ago, if you missed that episode. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the bombe.
Harry from When Harry Met Sally:
I'll have what she's having.