← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
'Sabzi' Showcases Vegetarian Dishes from the Mediterranean
00:23:04
Cookbook author Yasmin Khan discusses her latest cookbook, Sabzi: Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes.
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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. In her latest cookbook, food writer Yasmine Khan says if there is one word that defines the food she loves, that word would be sapsi, the Persian word for fresh greens and herbs. And that is also the title of her book, Sabzi Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes. It's filled with more than 80 recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia. Recipes include broccoli and lentil salad with curry tahini and dates and chickpeas with sweet potatoes and avocado smash. Plus some of Khan's favorite family recipes like for her spinach birani and rich desserts like dark chocolate and dried lime tart. Sabzi Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes is out today. And Yasmin Khan joins us. She has an upcoming event at Books are Magic at 122 Montague street in Brooklyn on Thursday, September 4th. Yasmin, welcome to all of it and happy publication day.
- [01:06]
B
Thank you so much.
- [01:07]
A
It's great to be here, listeners. We'd love to get you in on this conversation. Are you a vegetarian? Which vegetables do you like to cook with the most? How do you prepare them? Are you considering a more plant based diet? And looking for suggestions from food writer Yasmine Khan, you can call or text us at 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC or, or you can reach out on social media. LLNYC. All right, how does sabzi, this Persian noun for fresh vegetables and greens, how's it show up when you're cooking at home?
- [01:44]
B
Well, you know, I've got mixed heritage. So as you can tell from my accent, I was born in the UK in London, but my mom's side of the family are from Iran and my dad's side of the family are from Pakistan. And sabzi, as you described, means fresh herbs in Persian. And it really just epitomized how my mom cooked. So whether that was like for breakfast and we would have cheese and eggs and a platter of fresh herbs with tomatoes and cucumbers and flatbread, whether it was lunch when we'd get like sandwiches and, you know, instead of, I don't know, like the greens, like an arugula or an iceberg, she would put fresh herbs in and then, you know, she'd make these brilliant Persian stews filled with, you know, chopped cilantro and parsley and spinach. And, you know, I always say that if like, you know, cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg, the smells of like Christmas or Thanksgiving here, like, for me growing up, like, chopped mint, chopped dill. They're the scents that I grew up with.
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A
There are 80 recipes in this book. They're in six sections. There are salads, like, big salads, mezzy sides and snacks, Soups, the main event, dreamy desserts. How did you organize these recipes?
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B
Well, I really like cookbooks that are quite practical. Like, I'm just like, okay, what do I want to eat? I want to eat a salad. Just turn to that page. When it gets kind of thematic, I think there's a place for it. But for me, I just wanted. I wanted something quite direct. So I've split the book into kind of how I like to eat. We've got breakfast, We've got little snacks. So I feel like sometimes vegetarian food, the snacks, you know, if the ones that we think of, like the hummus or the baba ganoush, you know, like cheese, like cheese board. But I wanted to kind of create dishes that perhaps use familiar ingredients but work had a little twist on them. So there is a fantastic, like, roast carrots dish with a tahini lentil, like, move over hummus. This is like the new dip you need in your life. It's got kind of cumin in it. It's kind of got some, like, lovely paprika. So just kind of these fresh ideas. And I did that throughout the book because, well, you know, I recently became a mom and a lot of my just cooking changed. I had to cook things quicker. I had to make things more efficient. And the book really reflects that. So it's hopefully a really lovely selection of vibrant recipes that with stuff you already have in your store cupboard, you know, you'll probably have some garbanzo beans at the back that you're like, what should I do with this?
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A
What should I do with them?
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B
What should I do with this? So I tried to make it as accessible as possible.
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A
Let's talk about being a kid, because when you were a kid, you describe that your mom. You describe in detail your mom taking you or explaining to you how commercial meat sausages were made. Again, this is when you were six years old. Why do you think she did that and what did that do to you?
- [04:42]
B
So we've always eaten meat in our family and fish, and I continue to do that to this day. But my mom was a professor of public health, but she started off being a nutrition nutritionist. So, I mean, we were on, like, the brown rice salads, like, in the 80s, and she showed me just, like, a little video of, like, what goes into Like a commercial sausage, which guys, it's not good stuff. It's not good stuff.
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A
Why are they talking about when the sausage is made is a bad thing to say.
- [05:10]
B
It's not good. And she was just like, okay, so just so you know, this is what's in this. And it had a really, like, lasting impression on me. And, you know, it's not like I never would eat those things, but I was kind of just naturally drawn to more whole foods. And then when I was in my early 20s, I learned more about the food system and like the environmental impact of stuff. And I thought, right, okay, I'm going to buy organic. And then as soon as I decided that the amount of meat I could afford went down dramatically because it's expensive, right. But actually that opened up a whole new range of being able to cook with vegetables. And even though I'm an omnivore, you know, these days, that's kind of how I like to cook at home. Probably like 70%, you know, vegetable dishes, 80% and then, you know, a bit of meat for special occasions, a couple of times a week if I'm eating out.
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A
And you also, your grandparents were rice farmers? Yes. Tell us a little bit about that.
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B
Yeah, so my family were rice farmers in the north of Iran by the Caspian Sea. It is really this magical kind of memory that I have when I kind of think of the summers that me and my cousins used to spend there. I think anybody who has been around farming or fresh produce, you get such reverence for the ingredients. You know, like my grandmother would like she'd be cooking food and then just send us out into the garden to get fresh tomatoes and cucumber and lettuce to kind of make a salad. The whole farm was filled with these fruit trees, from like pomegranates to kiwis to cherries to, you know, like plums. And I think all of that just installs in me, I think, a real respect for ingredients and the hard work that goes into kind of farming. I think as much as it was idyllic for me as a kid, it's hard work, you know, growing, growing food from scratch. And, you know, as I became older, it became more important to me to make sure that when I'm buying produce that I'm being able to support kind of farmers, you know, directly where I can.
- [07:07]
A
I am talking to Yasmin Khan about her latest book featuring veggie based recipes. It's called Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes. It is out today. Before we get into the recipe part of it, in the front of your books. We have a thing here called what the hack. And you have a section called Kitchen Hacks, things that you have to have in your kitchen or things you can do to make your kitchen run more smoothly. Would you share a few with us?
- [07:33]
B
Absolutely. So I tried to include a few of those tips, you know, like, like things that make you more efficient in the kitchen. So I would say my number one, the one I'm really passionate about sharing with with people is batch cook your onions, fry your onions in batches at the weekends. Now, this is something I got from my mom. You might be thinking, why? Why would I do that? Well, the base of most or certainly a lot of dishes are fried onions. If you're making a casserole, if you're making like a pasta dish, like with a tomato sauce, if maybe you're making a shakshuka, maybe you're making a curry. So properly frying onions takes about 20 minutes. However, if you just fry a few of them at the same time, you can then pop them in the freezer in small compartments. Midweek, you just take out your frozen onions. You've literally shaved off half an hour of cooking time. And actually the rest of it can often be quite quick.
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A
Prioritize umami here. Yes.
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B
So umami is that lovely kind of depth of flavor. It's kind of almost a little bit salty. I guess you would describe it as meaty now. But when you're cooking vegetarian food, often that means you have to just layer your ingredients a bit more. You have to make your ingredients work a little harder. And you know, that means that sometimes, like I'm a mixed heritage kid, so I'm so used to mixing up flavors and being quite comfortable in that. But that means that sometimes, you know, I'm going to put use a soy sauce in a Persian stew if I'm making it vegetarian, because you're going to get that umami hit in it. But Worcestershire sauce can do that, too. Parmesan can do it. There's lots of different ways you can add that.
- [09:09]
A
Listeners, if you want to get in on this conversation about vegetables and vegetarian cooking, if you have a lot of produce from your famous from your farmer's market, you're wondering, what do I do with it? You should call us 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. Maybe Yasmin Khan has some suggestions. All right, we'll start with breakfast. As you said you started in your book, you wanted to keep this in line. First of all. Why is breakfast so important to you?
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B
You know, there's a proverb in the Middle east that says, my grandfather used to say all the time, eat breakfast on your own, lunch with your friends, and give your dinner to your enemies. Now, okay, what that means, right, is breakfast is important. It sets you up for the day. You know, a healthy breakfast can kind of level your blood sugar levels. It can actually help you eat in a healthier way. Kind of more throughout the day. Kind of reduces your cortisol so you don't get that spike. So I wanted to include a bunch of quick, easy twists on things that you might normally make. So let's take an omelet. I've got a great recipe in the book for a masala omelette, which comes from South Asia. My dad is from Pakistan, and this is what he would love to make on a weekend. It's ready in five minutes. You simply chop some, like, red onion, some green chilies. You whisk the eggs with a bit cumin, a bit of salt and pepper. So you've got the fragrance, you've got the chili, and you just, yeah, give it a quick fry. It's so delicious. Works really well with any kind of toast. A lovely sweet chai would be excellent on the side.
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A
How much chili is too much chili in a masala omelet omelette?
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B
Ooh, that's a good question. Well, how much do you like? That is how I would answer it. Yeah.
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A
There's also, I believe there's jalapeno in that as well. Does this. Does this omelette have a kick? Is that the idea? It does have a bit of a.
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B
Kick, but, you know, you can always take the seeds out if you don't want it to be so strong. You know, I always recommend with any kind of chili that you just nibble, like, one bite out of it before you start adding it to a dish. Because, look, we all know sometimes even from the same batch, they can just vary so much from the same straw. It's kind of probably like my number one tip with cooking in general. Like, don't be afraid to test and try ingredients. Look, I'm a cookbook writer. I'm often sharing recipes with people, but I'm the first one to say that, you know, I will never know what the butternut squash was that you bought in your grocery store and how sweet it was and how much liquid it had. And so really, recipes are almost like a map, but you kind of have to follow it based on what you have in front of you.
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A
The other thing you have for breakfast, and you mentioned this earlier in the conversation, was sort of a breakfast platter with all kinds of food is on it. Can you explain to people what the breakfast platter is and when you would serve something like this?
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B
Oh, we eat this like again, at weekends. It is weekends. Yeah. It's so like such a fun thing to assemble. Really colorful. Great. If you've got people coming over for brunch and you're feeling lazy, so you simply get a lovely. You could use like a big wooden chopping board and put some fresh herbs on it. I like mint, I like parsley. I love tarragon. So you just want whatever fresh herbs you have. You want to chop some tomatoes, tomatoes and cucumbers, put some olives on there. You know, this is what I call a Middle Eastern breakfast platter. We've got some hard boiled eggs, we've got feta cheese. You could have lovely little, little kind of pickles. Labneh and hummus would be good as well. And then you just place this in the middle, have some kind of breads, whatever breads you want on the side and everybody just gets to assemble their own plate. I, I love meals like that because they feel so involved and they kind of create this sense of togetherness because you're all sharing from one.
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A
There's quite a bit of few dips in the book. What are. What's special about dips to you?
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B
Well, I love to snack. So, you know, you know, and we've got like Labor Day weekend coming up. So often people are looking for kind of creative or interesting dips. There are a couple in the book that I absolutely love. So I would say my favorite is we just talked about butternut squash, but butternut squash and harissa. So a really good way to get the most out of vegetables is to roast them. I know when the summer it's hot, you kind of don't want to put the oven too much. But roasting vegetables condenses their flavor. So with this, you roast the butternut squash in some cumin and allspice. So you've got this sweet kind of fragrance. And then you kind of blend it with some harissa, which is a North African condiment. Got a bit of a kick to it. It's got paprika, kind of a bit of tomato, some peppers, some lemon juice, olive oil, garlic. It's so great with like tortilla chips, with bread, just kind of anything, any chip you want to dip.
- [14:00]
A
We've got a great text here that says Once a week, I make a large pot of vegetable stew. Beans are the base, lentils and red or black beans. Any vegetables that can survive boiling, go in. Carrots, onions, cherry tomatoes. For spices, I use bay leaves, fresh ginger, garlic, turmeric. Any other vegetables, arugula, broccoli, Brussels sprouts that won't survive. I cook separately for the next week. Everyone in the family can eat it for as long as it lasts. And I use for an omelette filling minus the liquid plus it between two slices of bread. It will eat it any way you want.
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B
That just sounds brilliant. I need that recipe.
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A
That sounds like a great recipe.
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B
It's really good. And that I think, you know, food waste is such a big problem, and sometimes many of us, we all do it. We buy stuff, it starts looking a bit old in the fridge, and so then we kind of get scared of it and we kind of leave it longer and longer and longer until we throw it away. Actually putting everything in a soup or a stew or roasting it up is such a great way to use a kind of vegetables. And it's so flexible as well.
- [15:03]
A
Yasmeen Khan is my guest. Her book is called SABC Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes. It is out today. You have a recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts. A lot of people don't like Brussels sprouts. A lot of people in the UK don't like Brussels sprouts. What was it that turned you off to them at first?
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B
Oh, God. Growing up, they were like soggy boiled, like no flavor. And it was actually as I started spending more time in the States that I was just like, wait a minute, this is a great vegetable. Like, it's just about what you do with it. Again, I like to roast it. I've mentioned cumin a lot in this interview, but I actually love it with Brussels sprouts. In the Middle east, actually, we kind of say cumin helps with digestion. So any vegetables that might, let's say, affect your digestion in a fruitful way, cumin is supposed to help with that, so we use that. But what I love is I chop up fresh cilantro and I mix it through so you get the freshness and then a whole fistful of pomegranate seeds for some crunch and color.
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A
The pomegranate seeds, that's really interesting. What do I need to know about cooking with pomegranate seeds? Because I think every time I seem like that looks beautiful, and I think to myself, I don't know how to do that.
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B
Oh, pomegranate seeds. Are just pomegranates. Honestly, I feel like they're my favorite ingredient ever. When you come from a Persian heritage, they're just part of your life. So the best thing about pomegranate seeds is they add a tart and sweet flavor as well as a beautiful crunch and a gorgeous color. So I use them to top salads. They're really great. You know, if you've got a dip and you want to just kind of again, add that on top for a bit of color and texture. With roasted veg, they're really good. You know, I can't recommend them enough.
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A
What is the simplest way to use them? If I wanted to go out and I wanted to buy a pomegranate and think to myself, I'm going to use this in a recipe tonight, what should I do?
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B
Well, actually, I think I would use it especially at this time of year. Like I would use it for breakfast. You know, if you've got like some, I don't know, some overnight oats, like I often do that at this time of year. There's a good recipe for overnight oats in the book. You know, you just make them at night. It's like got lots of Greek yogurt in it and some cinnamon and then just like fresh pomegranate seeds on top. It's so it's such like a bright and healthy and delicious way to start your day.
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A
In your book you have a tempeh and broccoli salad and it was inspired by your time in Thailand.
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B
Yeah, so I lived in Thailand on and off for a few years. I kind of worked at a kind of wellness resort. It was very, it's very Eat, Pray, Love. I like, you know, I was having like a crisis in life and kind of went off. But you know, I.
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A
That's another book.
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B
But yeah, but I just love Thailand so much and I. Yeah, so I worked in this wellness resort and you know, a lot of the dishes in there were plant based and it was where I was introduced to tempeh, which is actually an Indonesian ingredient originally, but works so well. I actually much prefer it to tofu. I think it's a better carrier of flavors, it's got better texture. And here you just marinate it, which in a really simple marinade of soy, ginger, garlic.
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A
How long do you make?
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B
Well, I personally do the marinade and just leave it all day and then just cook it at night. But at least an hour longer than that is also fine. You could also just leave it for 24 and then you can bake it or fry it. And then you make a lovely kind of slaw type salad with like cabbage and broccoli. And then a gorgeous creamy peanut sauce, which just goes so well with the tempeh. It's that kind of Indonesian kind of vibe.
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A
It's interesting. We're hopping from place to place. Went from Thailand, now we're going to Latin America to your smoky black bean soup. Why did you decide to include this in this book?
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B
Well, one of the things the book is, is, you know, my previous books were all travelogues, whereas this is like a personal book. I know I kind of wrote it. I was pregnant. It's kind of. And I couldn't travel. But through, I wanted to share with readers the recipes that I've loved from all of my travels. And in my 20s, I've lived in a lot of places. In my 20s I spent like a lot of time in Brazil. And when I was there, I. I kind of traveled around Latin America again over a couple of years. And of course, you know, beans are just so. I mean, they're just a part of Latin and Central American diet. But I particularly loved all the black beans and every country has its own kind of variation of it. My black bean soup is kind of leans more towards kind of somewhere between the Brazilian and the Mexican version. What I love about it is that you can kind of eat it as a soup or you can kind of reduce the water a little bit and it's great. Over nachos, over rice, like rice, beans, plantains is one of my, like, heaven foods.
- [19:49]
A
What would you say is your favorite dessert in the book? Because I love a dessert.
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B
I would say this is really hot. I'm not just saying this, but some of the. And I don't have a sweet tooth, but some of the recipes in this book in the dessert section are some of the favorite that I've created out of all of my books. So I absolutely love. This is quite unusual, the rhubarb and cardamom tart. It's like got a crisp, buttery base, an almond frangipine kind of sweet kind of filling, then a tart kind of poached rhubarb on top. So you have like crunchy, sweet, creamy, sour, and then the fragrance of cardamom throughout. So I love that. I have like a really solid carrot cake recipe. Like, I know, like, oh, carrot cake. Like, who needs another carrot cake recipe?
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A
Good. Carrot cake matters.
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B
It's good. And it has a maple cream cheese kind of frosting. So it's again, sharp. But a bit sweet. It's really great as we're kind of going into fall. And then the last one that I really love, love is this. It kind of leans into my Persian influence, which is this dark chocolate and dried lime tart, which is kind of made with a chocolate ganache, a dark chocolate ganache. So it's really creamy and rich, like you literally only need a tiny, thin sliver. But if you have two big pieces, I don't blame you. And that's a really, it's a really decadent but delicious dessert.
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A
What are you hoping that people get out of this cookbook when they're reading this cookbook, when they're reading the recipes, when they're reading about your life story, what are you hoping they're getting out of it?
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B
I hope they're getting joy and I hope they're getting inspiration. I think, you know, it. We don't need to go into all the reasons why for a lot of people, this feels like a very difficult time to be in the world. The news is, let's be honest, fairly horrific on a daily basis. One of the things that food can do, not just kind of the act of sharing together, but the act of preparing it, is it that it can take you into a space where you can be very practical, you can be very kind of meditative almost. You can just lose yourself in a set of flavors and ingredients and scents and create something beautiful that you then can either enjoy on your own or share with others. And, you know, I think food is a conduit to great conversation. I think we live in a time and place in history where we need to be having dinner, difficult conversations. We need to be having powerful conversations. And actually, where better to do that than over a dining table?
- [22:27]
A
The name of the book is Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes. It is out today. Thanks for coming to the studio.
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B
Yasmin Khan, thank you for having me.
- [22:36]
A
Coming up tomorrow on the show, former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin joins us to talk about how she rebuilt her life after being let go from her job as a CNN anchor. Plus bassist, composer, bandleader, that's Christian McBride. He shares music from his new album, Without Further Ado, Volume One. And that is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.
- [23:05]
B
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- [23:35]
A
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