full interview_asma khan_4.mp4
Asma Khan [00:00:01] I think it's a great idea to look at a thali and try and see how art, science, and creativity is all there in that thali. Because it's just visually, it's a beautiful piece of art. You know, there are various colors, there are textures, and also there are stories. But also, I mean, from Bengal, where I come, there is a method in the way you eat it. Following the principles of Ayurveda, you know, it's about stimulating the palate. So you go for bitter, releasing the salivars, which also allows you to be able to fully appreciate the richer, more precious dishes, usually in Bengal, it's meat or very rich fish, that's going to follow from when you start off. You start off simply. You know, there's also a process of cleansing the palate, and this is all very scientific, but for me, I've never looked at this as science. It is about the way it tastes good. This is simply about how you enjoy this so much that you're not overwhelmed. Because, of course, the thing with Indian spices is it's not complementary. It's contrasting. They work against each other. And it can be a lot to deal with. But these in-between things that you have in your thali, like the raita, the kachumar, which is a salad. It's got cucumber. In our family, we don't have that much chutney, but if they have chutneys and they have pickles, they've got a little bit of vinegar and something, all of that cuts through all the fat and prepares your palate for the next thing that you're going to eat. And it's just an exciting, interesting way to have a food, a cuisine, which actually, if it was not in a thali, we also eat this way. We don't this kind of, the first time I saw this meat and two veg. My mind was blown. That you know, what is this? Where's the texture, where's the flavor, where's kind of differences that you're going to have and every mouthful should be different. The fact that you have that same piece of meat with the same two vegetables that are on your plate just seemed bizarre. Because our food is not that. Our food is really about variety. And you go through this, it's a spice journey, spice odyssey, whatever. You go through these things of you know. Where the cumin suddenly overtakes, then the saffron comes in, the turmeric plays a part, then you've got the kind of sweetness of beetroot coming in, and it is that kind of whole spice journey. So yes, the thali is, it encapsulates all of this in that one little tray.
Speaker 2 [00:02:49] How does it work? How does a tally work? Walk us through it.
Asma Khan [00:02:53] Well, a thali is traditionally meant to be a tray or a platter in which there are different portions of food served out to you in containers. They are usually the same size, they can be different size as well. And you either have a bread or rice, or you have both, depending on, again, regional. There's a regional, there's a lot of regional variations. Thalis are not necessarily only vegetarian or only vegan. You have all kinds of varieties, you know. You've got thali with fish in it, with meat in it. Some with, you now, only lentils. In other places, especially if you stop in a roadside, it says eat as much as you want thali. They will keep topping up your bowl, or whatever you're finishing off faster, because they know you like that the best. It is really, every region has a specialty, but the interesting thing about the thali is that it is a complete meal. You don't share it. You, this is, everything is for you. You eat it the way you want it. Of course, in Bengal, they would all look up at you if you ate it the wrong way. That you have to follow the certain traditions. And it is also something that is, I think, extremely economical. If you call a large number of people to feed, you know, in most Indian weddings, you'll find that this is given in a disposable leaf plate or something you eat and you get rid of. They're not washing up huge numbers of plates. You don't have cutlery, you eat with your hands. So it's an efficient way to feed large numbers of people. This is the way that people are fed on trains. They'd come and put a thali in front of you, you don't make a mess, you eat in that assigned little platter, you finish your food, it's not spread everywhere, they pick it up and they take it. So there's a huge practical element to a thalli. It is also... There are also religious ceremonial connotations to a thali, where you will have certain festivals, certain occasions where a thalai is produced, which is supposed to have certain items on it. And that also is quite unique. And some families, even today, have a thale every day. This is everyday food. The food is just portioned out in that. So there are, there's no one way that, you know, if you told me, you What does a thali mean to someone in India? You have to first ask them which region are they from? What is their family? It's really literally your family. The thali really is your family food. It's your family for weddings, family food for ceremonies, and everyday food. And it is a very emotional thing because you pick those items. There isn't anything that has to be, it's not prescribed. That you've got to have this or that. It's not your Sunday roast, where you would expect it to have your potatoes and your Yorkshire pudding in England. This is really about you representing your family and your culture, your region, even your city in the food that you produce on the Thali.
Speaker 2 [00:06:05] How did you choose the fortale that you made today and what was in them?
Asma Khan [00:06:09] OK, let's start with the one that had lamb and prawns in it. It is a combination that I like. My father doesn't eat prawns because he grew up in the middle, a landlocked state, where they never saw prawns and fish. So he's very, very suspicious of them. He will never eat them. So whenever we had prawns, in the house, we had to make lamb for him or meat. And then again, the consumer was something. Which, you know, it is a salad, there are very few salads that we have in India traditionally. The kachumar is a, is a salad that we've always had in my family. It is, so you would always have that, the raita, always something that, the pink raitar from my father's family, there they have a lot of beetroot, you know in season, and that's the raiata of, of my father family. The luchi, which is the puri, the fried bread, very Bengali, very Calcutta, where I grew up. There's the aloo dum, which is the spicy potatoes. That's my favorite combination. So it is literally me picking things that I ate as a meal, not necessarily as a thali at home. So this is the kind of combination that we would have. And my father didn't like puris. He liked, somehow, even though he never grew up in a rice growing area, loves rice. So he would have the rice and lamb. So it was really all of that combination. And for the vegetarian, the... The Uprashin is very Hyderabadi, which is from the south, in its flavor, because that's, you know, in my family, with arranged marriages, and if you're a royal family, no one really cares which region you come from. Because traditionally, when you had arranged marriages people arranged your marriage with someone local, you know whose family they knew. But when you're Muslim, royalty doesn't matter. The royalty overrules everything. So we had a lot of girls getting married into our family who were from. The royal family in South India. And that's where all the South Indian flavors came in. And I remember this aubergine being made for the girls because something to remind them. Same as the tempering of the dal, again, very South Indian. It had curry leaves in it. It had a bit of tamarind in it, so not from my region. So I literally picked things that I remember was always on my table to satisfy different people. I just thought it was really cool to put it all together, everything that I imagined, this is what I ate at home, I'm gonna put it in a thali, I'm going to serve it. So I don't call it anything, I just call it a royal thali because it's my family heritage from my mother's side and father's side, and it's what I like eating.
Speaker 2 [00:08:56] So you're a cook, you're very accomplished, you have this enormously rich heritage to choose from, not just your own personal heritage, but India generally. And all these spices, how do you possibly know what to do? Because it seems like you're an alchemist to bring all these disparate flavors together.
Asma Khan [00:09:19] When you cook with spices, they kind of, they talk to you. Not just in the crackling of the cumin and the popping of the mustard seed, which is also a very important element of this. And you know, that smoky aroma that comes out when you burn the dried red chilies in oil. There is a difference between how people cook who have been around the kitchen as children. And I've watched it, I've heard it. I've, you know, I watched it and I also kind of, the aromas, they recognize the aromas. That's how you know how to use spices. I'm not saying that those who learned in culinary school, which isn't almost all the male chefs, because in patriarchy and feudalism, boys were never in the kitchen. Boys and men were served first. Women and girls ate last in my culture. You never saw a boy helping in the kitchen. I've never seen a boy in any of our families even clearing up. They sat and they ate. So I think that, you know, for us who actually hung around the kitchen, even when we couldn't see the spice, years later, the moment you put in cumin into oil, that nutty aroma that comes out, you recognize that, and you know a dish in which it went, because you remember the flavor. So this is... You know, cooking with memories, with just being immersed in the aroma of spices. This is why a lot of people, you know, when they ask me, you know, why do you have an all-female kitchen? I can easily be, you know, be smart and give that answer that I always wanted to be, you know have an old female kitchen. This is about a female collective, this is about politics. It's not. I had an all female kitchen, and I began with an all female kitchen because they would tell me what was cooking. Without seeing it, because they grew up in the kitchens. They understood aroma of spices. And even though half my kitchen is actually vegetarian, and they never ate the royal food that they're cooking, they know the spices, because spices are the great leveler. Of course, there are some spices that are very expensive, like saffron, cardamom, more expensive and more elevated, but still is used in small quantities for special dishes, irrespective of your income. You would make these special dishes, these pulaos, or celebratory halwas with really good ingredients. You'll always find families spending a bit of money extra. It's like everybody would do for Christmas or a special occasion. So that is why I wanted women to cook with me. Because when you understand what's happening with the spices, being able to cook a dish It's very simple after that. Because that is the absolute, your battle is won if you know how spices behave. And you know that, you know, if you've got to put in the bay leaf and you cannot, which we call the tezpatta, not confused with Mediterranean bay leaf, completely different, but tezpata, which is the Indian bay leaf which is olive and long. And you think that it's not playing any role. Let me put in more, let me put, no. It is really after it has boiled through the pulao and the rice. That's when you can taste it somewhere here. It hits you there. This is a thing that you know because you've watched it. Just because it's not filling up your whole kitchen with aroma doesn't mean it hasn't worked, that you haven't used enough. Because some things take time. Some things are instantaneous. You put it in, the chilies, your coffee, because it is there, but then after that, that chili infuses in that oil. And I tell everybody, it's there in all my cookbooks, that we don't use chili powder. Chili powder is a modern invention. It came up because of convenience of people being able to powder chilies. The way chilies was infused in our cooking is we put in dried red chilies in the oil, and we tossed it, and we let it burn through. We let all the flavors come through. Remove the chilies, then we put it in the meat, and we toss the meat and sealed it in that chili oil. And then the chili doesn't, you know, it's not burning your mouth. It's not that it's... Chili is just one spice. People misunderstand Indian food. For us, for me, if you tasted only chilies in your food, I failed as a cook. And all of this, you know, this layering through the whole oil, that is part of how we cook. And so everybody who's in my kitchen understands this layering. This is how our food is made, has traditionally been made, and will be made for centuries afterwards. As long as people continue to tell their stories. This is oral history. This you cannot write. I cannot sit and describe to you in words what is happening to that chili. You need to stand next to me. You need actually watch it and feel that whole place filling with the chili aroma. Take out the chilies and put the meat in and then you can smell the meat and the chilis mixing. It is science. We don't even recognize this as being science. It is so intuitive to us. We cook in a traditional way, in a rhythm. But now I recognize more. I'm still very ignorant. I'm Still learning on the science of the food. But I know that this is a sequence that I must follow, almost like experiment, that you have to follow steps. You can't just do it randomly. I don't cook randomly. I cook in a rhythm and a sequence, almost like I'm doing, I'm following instructions for an experiment, then it will be the same every time. That's when you're successful. Yes, so that is scientific. Every time my dish tastes the same, not because of fluke and not because I'm following instructions, but I'm following the steps in an old rhythm that I have watched and seen and smelled and felt and tasted. I just replicate that.
Speaker 2 [00:15:44] It's like a folk science.
Asma Khan [00:15:46] Yes it is. It is a folk science and it is, you know, there is, it's very, very hard. For me to stop and tell someone what I'm doing. I stand and I cook. And I don't know what the steps are. I'm going it. But if you tell me what comes after step two, I cannot tell you. I need to get there to tell you what I am gonna do next. It's really crazy because I'm do it, but I'm almost like muscle memory. I'm just picking the spices and I'm adding it, I'm add it and I am cooking. And I'm not thinking, I am not thinking. I'm following a rhythm that I have seen for so many years with my mother cooking, my grandmother cooking. I follow a beat and then the food is cooked.
Speaker 2 [00:16:36] So you said it was a little bit like doing an experiment. Experiments sometimes end in failure. Is that your experience with cooking as well? Is failure a part of it?
Asma Khan [00:16:47] I'm probably unusual. I've not had disasters. I think because I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen before I cooked. And I came to this country in 1991 not knowing how to cook, thinking I didn't know how to. I actually knew how to, I had just not done it. So I think that I was in a very good position because I had already spent so many years watching it, observing it, testing it. Being there when it was being done, and also being there when disasters happened, so I knew what not to do in the kitchen. I didn't make those mistakes. It's not saying that I will not make them now. Of course, a day will come when I will make a mistake and get it wrong. I have not had that experience as yet because I just watched it for a long time and I watched it being perfected by my mother again and again and I think that you know I almost when I cook I almost feel my mother's presence next to me it is that so much part of my being so for me cooking is not something I separate from myself it's very personal You know, my fingerprints are unique to me. When I cook and I never use measuring spoons or weights, it's always my eyes and my touch. I wave with my hands. That's why it doesn't go wrong, because I know the feel of what something should feel when I pick it up, and I guess that's why its a lot easier to follow the rhythm.
Speaker 2 [00:18:32] Can you enumerate the dishes that we saw today, okay, but just kind of sort of quickly and what their function is? I mean, this is to cut the salt. You know, this just enumerated that that would be great.
Asma Khan [00:18:44] So the kachumar is really a kind of mixed salad with cucumber and the only dressing that you have in there is salt and lemon. Salt and lemon play a very big part in atali. You find that served separately in some cultures, but here we added to the katchumar. The tangra prawns, which is like the prawns really just cooked with garlic and chilies, again, bringing out the sweetness of the flavors of the prawn. And it's just fabulous. The kebab, I've always used shami kebab because I think it's the texture, the softness. After the spiciness of the prawns and the cucumbers, you need to have a smooth texture. And then we move to the main thali, where the dal and the raita are traditionally always served in thalis. Of course, we have rice. We have luchi. Luchi is a Bengali word for puri, the puri. Always a potato dish. Here is the aloo dum, which is quite spicy. Then two options of meat, meat or prawn, meat and fish. This is because the fish comes from Bengal, where my mother's, you know, we are near the coast. The meat comes from my father's side of the family, where they're landlocked. So that combination, that is why we've got, you know, the way it works in my family. So literally that's the thing. And for the vegetarian, we had the bhel puri, which was something that normally people would ever put in a thali. But because nobody would eat papad and chutney in my father's family or mother's family, we had the bhel puri, which is crunchy, brings in this crunch of a papadam. And the chutney is actually mixed in that puffed rice. And we've got these aloo bondas, which is really spicy street food, again, soft, as a shami kabab was soft. So that softness texture. The aubergine and the chana, again, two different textures, two different stories.
Speaker 2 [00:20:39] Just say aubergine or eggplant, because Americans don't know.
Asma Khan [00:20:42] Okay, the eggplant and the kala chana, which is the black chickpeas, two different regions, two different stories, pretty much like the prawns and the meat. And I think that that is why I think it's always about a journey, textures, flavors, spices. So that's basically the hali.
Speaker 3 [00:21:03] Anybody have something? Yeah, there's a, you'd spoken about this actually during our meal, but that some of the things, the flavors are very often, in Western food, it tends to be more complimentary. Yeah. Whereas in Indian food, not necessarily.
Asma Khan [00:21:23] I have said it once here, but I just want, I can say it again. I can say it again.
Speaker 2 [00:21:27] Yeah, we're just getting it. Yeah, yeah.
Asma Khan [00:21:31] What you see in that thali really is we're not putting together a selection of food to be complementary and work with each other. They work against each other, that's a very important part of Indian food and also of how spices work. You know, spices work against against each, you've got to move from one spice to another and in a contrast because you know spices are different, there's not two spices that similar. It doesn't work that way. So you're gonna use very contrasted, so you know, cumin and turmeric. Then they work together, they work against each other. It's really fascinating. So literally we pick, you know the items because you look at what is the dominant spice in this and it should not be the same as somewhere else. We do not want things to be similar in flavor or texture and definitely not in spicing because they need to work against other. That is really the kind of perfect way to stimulate your palate, constantly changing from one to the other.
Speaker 2 [00:22:31] Nick said something, and I hope I'm not misquoting him, that when you're eating Indian food, it's a masala or whatever, you don't know what went into it, really. It's just, it's the whole experience.
Asma Khan [00:22:43] Yeah, I mean the thing with, you know, masala, which is a word, a generic word that's used for a mix of spices, it is very personal, and you don't know what has gone into it. There may be a dominant spice, there may not be. There's also very fascinating dishes where, especially in dal you see this, where the first bite or taste that you have, the second one you suddenly start tasting the and then you taste the chilies. And that is the best way to cook, where it is so layered that every bite has a different taste or texture or you think. It leaves you with that feeling that it is changing as you're eating. As it cools, spices, some become stronger, some become, like sugar, you know? Sugar changes completely as it cools. It becomes, you now, sweeter. So there's that thing of, you know, actually changing temperature. What are you eating it with? Are you eating with your hands? Are you eat with rice? Are you doing with roti? So it's very hard to actually pinpoint. Some people can guess accurately all the masala that has gone into a dish, but I can bet you one thing, that aubergine dish, no one has ever been able to guess. Because I've had this with lots of guests, because this is a recipe I've not written down. And I've told a lot of people that if you can guess with all the spices, I'll give you the recipe. And they have not managed. They've always missed out on one or two. And I would give it to them, but they actually got it all. So it is really very personal, but it is an art. You're an artist. You're playing with, it's like a painting. You look at the painting as a whole. You don't know what the brushstrokes are. You don't know where they started from. You don't know where the layering came. You didn't know what light they were painting in. And what light are you watching it in? What are you seeing it in. So this kind of light and shade, different strokes, all of this, this really, if you imagine painting. And cooking Indian food, it's the same thing. So when people ask me, you know, that it's very complex, yes it is very complex but it's not something that is so disparate that it all hangs together. It is a beautiful melody at the end of it. But getting there, it is about using things that are very different to get to that whole in the end.
Speaker 3 [00:25:02] So there is a harmony in that disharmony, effectively. Yes.
Asma Khan [00:25:09] So I can use that word. Yeah, so there is a harmony in the disharmony and it is what, you know, makes our food quite unique. You know, and I'm sure that there are different other cuisines in the world that use the same kind of, you know, process of getting to the dish by using different spices that work against each other. And in the end, you come up with this beautiful. If you just looked, and you didn't hear them, if you just looked at the orchestra and saw all these random instruments, you wonder what they're doing. It's pretty much like that. But they all play, and it sounds beautiful. So it's pretty like that, you've got different things doing different elements at different points. Some stuff really comes in, kicks in towards the very end, when you're tempering the dal, you're adding this flavor at the very last minute, with the puri as well, you know, you are puffing it out. Very soon it will deflate. This is part of the whole process. You know, how you serve food as well, at what temperature you serve it, when do you serve it. So everything plays a role, not just the spices that go in, also how you serve it. At what point you serve, what you serve with.
Speaker 4 [00:26:16] You have a kitchen full of marvelous women for whom cooking this food is in their DNA. What happens when somebody comes in with a brand new idea? I've tasted such and such. I've been to can we put this in our doll? What happens?
Speaker 2 [00:26:40] Do they didn't.
Asma Khan [00:26:43] The kitchen that we have right now are women who have only eaten in their own homes or cooked. This was to do with the fact that they could not afford to go anywhere else. Many of them have had very difficult, very deprived childhoods and not really been exposed to a lot of food from other people, cooked by other people. Who would invite them? So I think that Now they do eat a lot of different kinds of food. But I think that they are still very keen to still explore. I haven't even touched the kind of, you know, that I can go so deep down in my cuisine. There are things that I still want to cook that are so beautiful, part of my childhood and my upbringing, I haven t presented. So none of us are even ready to look beyond our own food history and culture because I have only, and in these few years I've only presented a fraction of the food. That is part of my heritage. So I think that that is what keeps us going. And when we want to bring in new stuff, it is an exciting time. We have been introducing dishes one after the other. So every season, we bring in something new and something seasonal, something British. So we use pumpkin, we use beetroot, whatever is British and seasonal. And it's fun, it's exciting. And we keep trying to innovate on... Whose food we have, we have someone right now on our menu doing something from Bombay. I have no links to Bombay, but her food was so amazing. It's sold on the streets of Bombay it's about our power. I told her, put it on the menu. She's the only one who knows how to make it because she grew up on the street of Bomba and she sold it on streets of bombay. Her father sold it in a street food cart and her entire childhood was spent living on the streets. And today, it's a very, very popular dish in our menu. So we do add, bring things in from their culture, but it is really stuff that is very traditional. So we don't innovate on trying to fuse and bring in truffle oil and seaweed, heaven forbid, into our food. I think we are very far from doing, as I call it, fusion, confusion. We don't do that. We're still discovering. We're Still discovering ourselves. And in our culture, when we are women who are after their 40s, they look at us as if this is the autumn of our lives. And I tell people in our group and also other women who come that this is the spring of our lives, this is when we're growing, we're thriving, we are discovering things about ourselves.
Speaker 5 [00:29:41] Who? Yeah, yeah.
Asma Khan [00:29:44] So this is the spring of our lives. This is when we're discovering who we are. This is not the autumn of our life. And I know that many Americans would not understand cricket terms, but they don't understand one thing, what a final innings is, that you hit every ball out of the park. That's what we're doing. And with food, we are telling our story and wanna leave a legacy so that people know that this is what our food is meant to be.
Speaker 2 [00:30:13] Chris, you had a question?
Speaker 5 [00:30:14] Yeah, I got a couple of things. What do you, thanks. What do broadly speaking suppose is creativity?
Asma Khan [00:30:24] What do I think is creative? Sorry. Sorry.
Speaker 2 [00:30:26] No, what is creativity? Because that's one of our, the linchpins of our space. So how would you describe it in terms of what it is? Yeah.
Asma Khan [00:30:32] For me, creativity is actually something very personal. It is, as you know, it is this unique touch that you bring to things. And I think a lot of people who cook don't understand how creative they're being because the most expensive ingredient you are putting into a dish is your time. You can never buy that back. You can buy back every ingredient, but that, that you're putting in of yourself in that dish. Your creativity is unique to you. And to say that I am not being creative when I'm cooking, you haven't actually understood what you're doing. You are being creative, because it is literally, if I stood next to my mother and I cooked, and this has happened to me, much to my embarrassment, where we both cooked, my son could identify the dishes my mother made and that I made. He picked up my touch. He said, this is what my mom made. And that is... I think really says everything that, you know, this was my creative energy. We made the identical dishes, and yet he could recognize my touch. It's like my signature. I think you need to be, you step back and take pride in who you are. Because when you're creating a dish, even if I stood next to you and told you every step and guided you through it, who is doing the work? Whose senses decide that this is... I'm going to take it off the oil now. That my onions are brown enough. That this looks perfect. My puri will plop now. Yeah, so for me, creativity is this. Is that added value in every time that you cook.
Speaker 5 [00:32:14] And related to that, I'm curious, food is such a unique art form in that it really democratizes, it's democratized for people. Everybody has to eat. So what do you feel elevates one food, your food, over just getting a granola or something? What is that X factor that takes it to another level?
Asma Khan [00:32:37] I'm always very hesitant to talk about food that is sophisticated, elevated, food that is simple. I'm very aware of the fact that I come from a country where people die of hunger, and I'm also very aware that there's food poverty in this country, and that there are children who come to school without having eaten. And I know this because I was a school governor for ten years, and we had to set a breakfast club so that the children could eat. Complicated because I hate that, you know, when people judge people on the food they eat That you can for one pound get you know a huge amount of stodgy food Which you know yes people perceive as being unhealthy and it might be unhealthy For one pound you cannot buy a lot of very high-end Organic sophisticated, you, know farmed you know in in this country. It's very complicated. So I just think that Food is very personal, food is also a blessing. It's not your birthright. I think COVID was great for a lot of people to recognize. Everyone had a meltdown in this country. We couldn't get flour and you couldn't gets eggs. And there was this panic, panic buying of everything. This is a generation that has not seen war and has not see rations and riots and closures. And everybody suddenly understood the value of food. People were making their childhood dishes. Banana bread was like, oh my god. Social media was this. So I think it's fascinating. I think that the emotion of food is what elevates it to something valuable. If you recreate a dish, which is what you ate as a child, it reminded you of loved ones who may not be there anymore in your life. Or that. Of siblings, of a happier time, a time of innocence. I think it is as elevated and as sophisticated as something made by a chef in a stainless steel empire to impress. I think that the real value comes from when it hits an emotional chord. And if that impressive looking food with foam and edible flour and micro-herbs ticks your box, good for you. But I think that that is really what makes food. Special. It is when it hits you here, when it tells you something about yourself, that makes you remember something. That is what makes food different for each person.
Speaker 2 [00:35:19] You know, you mentioned the micro-herbs and the foam and all that, but when we talk about art and science and food, people say, oh, are you going to do molecular astronomy and all that sort of stuff. And we say, no, we're doing something more sophisticated. We're doing Indian food. I mean, it can totally give this kind of scientific food-making a run for its money, Indian food, it seems to me.
Asma Khan [00:35:47] Yes, absolutely. I think that, you know, molecular cuisine has had its day and people are fascinated by little dots of things on plates. I was just horrified when I saw it. But I was thinking like, what are you going to eat after this? Why is the food, it looks so small. Looks pretty, but very small. It is, I think, great that we're having this conversation about Indian food. I think there's a little known element about Indian Food. I think a lot of Indians themselves don't understand the science behind their food. There's not enough conversation. And I'm really excited because I just hope lots of Indians watch this. Because we still need to learn. Because these are conversations that we don't have. Because we don't actually think that there is this great complex reasons why stuff is made this way, that you're following this rhythm in a particular way. On a very, you know, political term and is, I feel that we suffer from the fact that there is a lot of racism with food. And some foods are seen as more advanced and sophisticated and scientific and following certain rules. Other cuisines are seen as cheap and cheerful. Unfortunately, people who are the color of skin that I am. Accented immigrants. When we move to the West, it is seen as if our food is not as sophisticated. And science is always linked to sophistication and education. And I think that this is one reason why your normal person would react like, you know, where's the science in Indian food? Because there's an element of racism and there's of ignorance. And I think that, you know, it is so nice to be able to present the true story of why we cook this way. And it is important that these discussions happen because food is part of our DNA. It is who I am. And even, you see this a lot with immigrants. You know, they change the way they dress. They change a lot of things. The next generation are accented. Both my kids have London accents. They don't sound like me. They don't eat like me, you know, they don't know how to use their hands and eat Yet there is an emotional thing about food and long after I'm dead I know my sons will recreate dishes and remember me So this is an important part of you know storytelling of heritage and I think that it is also time for us to actually Talk about the science behind our food because I think a lot of people you know, think that this food is not sophisticated. But also many of us, and I am also one of them, still don't know a lot about my cuisine. I'm still learning, I'm learning. And one of the things that I hope that I will at least do in my lifetime is tell the stories about the science behind our food. It's important to tell these stories.
Speaker 2 [00:39:05] So, it's 4.30, okay? Can you just introduce yourself? Yes, that's the one thing we need, which we ask everybody, you know? Yes. Just look at me in a short second.
Asma Khan [00:39:15] Yes. I'm Asma Khan. I am a restaurateur and my restaurant is Darjeeling Express in London.
