Latest / Cookbook Love Podcast / Episode 375: A Conversation with Mother–Son Authors Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji of Heartland Masala

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Episode 375: A Conversation with Mother–Son Authors Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji of Heartland Masala · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  You are listening to the Cookbook Love podcast with Maggie
• 0:05
  Green, episode number 3 75.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Cookbook Love podcast.
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  A podcast that celebrates cookbook readers, buyers,
• 0:16
  collectors, writers and clubs.
• 0:19
  And now your host cookbook author, culinary dietician, and cookbook
• 0:23
  writing coach, Maggie Green.
• 0:31
  Hi everybody.
• 0:32
  Welcome back to another episode of the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 0:35
  How's everybody doing today?
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  I'm doing well and did just return this morning from a trip to Kroger.
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  Got my Turkey in the freezer.
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  I stocked up on some seafood specials.
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  I did resist buying my favorite Chobani peppermint Mocha, and
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  I have not bought any eggnog.
• 0:56
  I didn't buy any Great Lakes Christmas ale.
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  I haven't bought any fresh pine Christmas decor, although it
• 1:03
  was certainly all available.
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  I'm really gonna dig into, uh, Thanksgiving.
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  Over the next few weeks, we're smoking Turkey and I'm baking some
• 1:11
  pies for a dinner that we're, um, sending to a place here near where
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  we live called the Welcome House.
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  And then we have a birthday before we can dive into Christmas.
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  So, um, the grocery store is a great place to kind of see what's coming in.
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  Um, I'm sure they switched over to Christmas right after Halloween last week.
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  I hadn't been back since Trick or Treat Night, but there you go.
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  Christmas is in full swing at Kroger.
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  Today I am excited to have an interview with Jot and Oyen Muji.
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  But before I dive into the interview, I do want to let you know that I have a
• 1:48
  special Black Friday bundle available.
• 1:51
  So let tell you about it first by telling you a story.
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  When my kids were seven, nine, and 11, I had not at that point
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  written my first cookbook.
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  And as I've told you before here on the podcast, I'm committed to
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  home cooking and cooked dinner every night here for our family.
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  And the idea in this dream of writing, this cookbook
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  lived in the back of my mind.
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  And as I was standing at the stove, I kept thinking about the
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  cookbook, but I did what we often do.
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  I'd say, well, I'll just work on the cookbook when things get a
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  little bit quieter, when, um, I don't have as many young children
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  at home when I have more time.
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  And I was standing there stirring something on the stove that night,
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  and the kitchen timer went off.
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  And for some reason that timer going off really annoyed me that night.
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  And I realized that that timer was dictating more what was going on
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  in my life than my dreams were.
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  It certainly wasn't because I lacked the ideas or the skill to write the book.
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  It was the clock and the noise from a, what I thought was a
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  busy life, stealing my dream of writing a cookbook away from me.
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  And that's when I decided that I was no longer going to be someone who was at
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  the mercy of my clock, at the mercy of my timers, at the mercy of my no time
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  life, which I thought I had and 'cause.
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  That's where so many cookbook dreams go.
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  Quiet is we live at the mercy of our clock and the mercy of our timers and
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  at the mercy of our schedule, you guys have so much talent and so much ability.
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  Not claiming the time that we have that is our life right now
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  is stealing our dreams from us.
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  And that's why I created the Creative Cookbook Blueprint.
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  I've heard you all say recently that you love a way to start your projects,
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  organize your recipes, learn how to write recipes, and that is exactly what
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  I have put together for you because over the next several months, there is
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  going to be a lot going on in kitchens around you that will never be duplicated
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  again until this time next year.
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  So if you would like some support.
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  And learning about starting your project, organizing your recipes, how you can
• 4:36
  get family members to contribute recipes that they're cooking this time of year.
• 4:40
  Head on over to cookbook writers academy.com/blueprint and take
• 4:45
  advantage of this very special bundle.
• 4:49
  It will be available through Saturday, November the 15th.
• 4:55
  This could be the perfect way for you to start moving toward your dream, even in
• 5:02
  the midst of the life that you have, and not being a slave to a clock and to a
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  brain that tells you you don't have time.
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  We are busy.
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  I'm not saying we're not busy, but we have to decide if we are going to
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  live at the mercy of our clocks or if we're going to live walking toward the
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  dream we have of writing a cookbook.
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  So it's www cookbook writers academy.com/blueprint,
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  and the link below is in.
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  Show notes.
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  So now onto our wonderful interview with Mother and Son cookbook
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  author, team Joti and Oyen Muji.
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  They are the authors of Heartland Masala, an Indian cookbook
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  from an American kitchen.
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  Heartland Masala is a vibrant and richly illustrated cookbook by
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  Kansas City based mother, son duo.
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  They blend traditional.
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  Diasporic Indian recipes with lively essays and historical context.
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  This unique collaboration offers a flavorful journey through Indian cuisine,
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  from Punjab to Bengal and beyond, all with an American Midwestern twists.
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  The recipes are drawn from over 14 years of Jo Tea's popular home cooking classes,
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  and the book includes beloved dishes like so panier and Vindaloo, as well as lesser
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  known gems like Bengali, merg Rosala, and Anglo Indian spiced liver toast.
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  There are even creative new in inventions such as masala, Brussels
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  sprouts, and spiced watermelon, plus a couple of cocktail recipes.
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  Today on the show, the three of us talk all about the inspiration for the book.
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  The publication of the book, the illustrations and photos for this book,
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  as well as what it's like to work on a cookbook with your son or from her,
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  from um, Jo's perspective, I mean from, um, Ian's perspective with his.
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  So without further delay, let's dive into this interview with Jot and Oyen Muji.
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  Hello, jot and Oyen.
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  Welcome to the Cookbook Love podcast.
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  Thank you for having us.
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  Yes, such a pleasure to be here.
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  Thank you.
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  Yes, very excited that you're here.
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  Talk all about your beautiful new book, Heartland Masala.
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  But before we get started, let's start with you, uh, Joti.
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  Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
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  So I am actually a physician by trade.
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  I, I trained as a physician.
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  I did my residency and my, uh, fellowship here in the United States.
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  And then I decided to quit medicine in 1987, uh, 1986 because, uh, our
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  oldest son, older than Oyen was diagnosed with an offshoot of autism.
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  And I felt I needed to be home with him to be on his team
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  than to be in the workforce.
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  So that is my past.
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  And then I have always cooked at home, uh, for, um, our three boys and
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  my husband who all loved good food.
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  And in fact, our youngest one always would bring a cookbook from the
• 8:19
  library for his mom to cook from those international cookbooks.
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  So that's how much how passionate our entire family is about food.
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  Then, but just by fluke, it so happened that I came on this journey.
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  Uh, I used to donate at an, uh, auction at, and I used to volunteer at Head
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  Start, which is, um, for underprivileged children, for the inner city kids
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  to give them a, a boost, uh, for their kindergarten, uh, since they
• 8:51
  couldn't afford to go to preschool.
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  And, uh, one of the fundraisers they did at the time was a golf tournament and,
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  uh, they had a silent auction with it.
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  And I decided to donate an Indian dinner for eight.
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  I did it for four years.
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  We'd raise the price, the same people would buy it every year.
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  And the fourth year we were doing it.
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  One of my friends who I was always there at these dinners, she said,
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  you know, this is so much fun.
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  I'd like to donate a Greek dinner.
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  That was the end of those cooking dinners because she went and told, uh, the, the
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  board member who used to do the auction, that she wanted to donate a Greek dinner.
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  So this board member came to me and said, instead of doing two dinners,
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  why don't you do a cooking class?
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  That is where my journey began.
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  This was October of 2009 when my class sold.
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  I did my first class with these people on February 6th, 2010.
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  And you can imagine what an impression it made on my mind because I remember
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  that date and that scene so vividly.
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  And that day I realized I had achieved nirvana.
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  I, my passion to cook, uh, to cook as a mother, and my passion to teach
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  as a little girl just came together.
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  And my husband who came out later on and, uh, from his hiding, he said,
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  why don't you do this as a hobby?
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  And the rest is history.
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  I have since had, uh, 6,500 people through my kitchen.
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  This is right at the beginning of our tour in September.
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  I do not advertise.
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  I do not, um, have any presence on social media as a, as a culinary instructor.
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  Uh, I teach in my own kitchen and, uh, I, since 2019, I've become a not-for-profit.
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  So all my profits from my cooking classes go towards charities
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  that I support in the city.
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  Amazing.
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  And so, three, four years into, uh, my, uh, teaching, my students, um,
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  said, why don't you write a cookbook?
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  We would love for you to put out a cookbook.
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  So, and they said, but we have a requirement, and that every
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  recipe should have a picture.
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  So I, my vision of course, for the cookbook was so different
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  from what Oyen has, the level that which Oyen has taken it to.
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  And so I, um, uh, you know, Oyen used to do my ghost
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  writing because I love to teach.
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  I love to talk, but I do not like to write.
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  So when the magazines here locally, who did the advertisement for me, I guess
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  when they wrote articles, I would ask, uh, some of them would write it themselves,
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  but then others would say, can you give us a little writeup about yourself?
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  I would ask Oy to write for me.
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  And um, so when this book cookbook thing came up, I told aa, I said, would you
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  like to help me write the cookbook?
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  And I will let Ian take it on from, from there.
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  Or if you have Yes, I do have one question.
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  So the 6,500 people that you've taught, you've taught in your own home.
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  Yes.
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  And all word of mouth, no advertising.
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  Yes.
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  What's it like to teach cooking classes in your home?
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  It is absolutely divine.
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  There is nothing, you know, it brings so much love.
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  It brings so much, um, um, um, such an intimate feeling.
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  And you feel so res, you know, the, the, my, my students feel so respected.
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  They feel so, uh, so warm.
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  And the fact that I have opened our home to them just talks volumes in terms
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  of, um, their, their, um, sentiments.
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  And I get.
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  So many, um, um, mailers in the, or cards in the, in the mail
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  from people who have been into my kitchen and who are thanking me.
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  Yeah.
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  For the fact that I have, I was so warm and I was so nice to have opened our home.
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  Yeah.
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  And I know to a lot of our Western, um, um, homes, home is a very
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  personal place and you don't want anybody to kind of get into it.
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  But that's the culture where I come from in India.
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  A home is for open to everybody and it is to share, it is to love and
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  it is to, uh, if you were to go to an Indian home, you would never be
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  allowed in India, you would never be allowed to leave without a cup of tea.
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  Yeah.
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  You wouldn't be standing and talking at the door.
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  So that's the kind of culture I come from.
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  So having people in our own home.
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  Has never been a problem.
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  It has always been a joy.
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  And like I always say to me, food is love.
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  Yeah.
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  This is my way of showing my love to my community.
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  Yeah.
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  Amazing.
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  Very good.
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  I think that's fascinating and I think that I can see that, uh, even just
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  their desire to have you capture what you've done in a book that they can
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  enjoy, um, is, is a, is a great thing.
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  All right, Ian, you can pick up now where your mom left off with your, uh,
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  background involvement in the project and a little bit about yourself.
• 14:38
  Sure.
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  Totally.
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  So, um, hello everyone.
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  My name is Ian.
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  Um, I am, uh, Jyoti's Middle son.
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  That's one of the first times I've said my mom's first name, just
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  as though I know her like that.
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  But my mom, I'm, I'm MA's middle son.
• 14:51
  Yes.
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  And, uh, uh, I, um.
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  Uh, I'm a musician by trade, so, uh, since, uh, 2009, 2010, um, my main gig
• 15:05
  has been songwriting and, uh, touring with a folk band called Darling Side.
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  Uh, we're based in the, uh, in New England, but, uh,
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  have toured internationally.
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  And, uh, that remains my, my main gig and, um, something I, I love doing.
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  So I'm, I'm a, I play mandolin, violin, and guitar and sing, um, and song
• 15:24
  right with, with a group of friends.
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  And, uh, yeah, so my mom asked me if I would, uh, and, and before that I,
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  I'd studied, um, I have a, a degree in biology from a liberal arts college, but
• 15:35
  a degree from a liberal arts college.
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  A science degree from a liberal arts college is, is, is a lovely thing, but
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  uh, also feels sort of a little bit insubstantial these days with, uh, with
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  um, how many, how many other things one is doing while at a liberal arts college.
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  But, uh, had, had at least have some research experience and I
• 15:50
  think that translated towards the cookbook in a big way for me.
• 15:52
  Yeah, yeah.
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  Um, but my mom asked me if I would help her to write this book and
• 15:58
  at the time, uh, darling Side was touring probably 120 days a year.
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  Uh, so it sounded like a terrible idea to work with my mother.
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  On the, first of all, working with one's mother on a cookbook is also a crazy idea.
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  There are very few, I think, uh, other mother son cookbook duos out there,
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  and I think that's because those other mothers and sons have a much.
• 16:18
  Stronger sense of self and know what they're doing more so like
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  they know that it's a bad idea to get into this kind of thing.
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  But my mother and I did not, so we, we sort of plunged directly in.
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  But, um, so my mom asked me if I would help her, and she is
• 16:30
  a very powerful woman, so it's not someone you wanna say no to.
• 16:35
  Uh, even though I, at that point I wanted to say no.
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  So what I said was, yes, but first you need to send me all the
• 16:40
  recipes you want in this book.
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  Um, and my mom has a lot of recipes.
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  I knew that that was a pretty big ask for her.
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  Uh, and there was a chance that she would never actually get it together
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  to send me those recipes because she has so many other balls she's juggling.
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  So I, I, I sort of thought that I did a nice job of saying yes while also saying
• 16:57
  no by putting the ball back in her court.
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  Um, and it took her at least a year, year and a half to get me those recipes.
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  But then she eventually did, and by that point it was too late to turn
• 17:06
  around and we sort of just forged ahead.
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  Um, and I think early on I realized too that, uh, so my mom's vision
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  for this book was, was, um.
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  Quick and dirty, like spiral bound gets the thing done in
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  a year, maybe year and a half.
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  Uh, take some like mediocre to bad iPhone photos, slap those things
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  in there and get that puppy out.
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  Was that was her vision for it.
• 17:28
  Um, which I ruined.
• 17:29
  Uh, I think early on I, it became clear to me that, um, doing any kind of
• 17:34
  project that I was gonna be satisfied with, uh, as far as a cookbook was
• 17:37
  going to take a very long time.
• 17:39
  And also I recognized that writing yet another, um, Indian cookbook or
• 17:45
  cookbook of Indian recipes from an upper middle class Indian American
• 17:48
  household was not a thing that was at all of interest of me in that.
• 17:50
  It's a lovely genre.
• 17:51
  There are many, many wonderful books in it already.
• 17:54
  And the idea of adding another one was not of interest.
• 17:56
  So, um, I spoke to a lot of friends and, and did, did a lot of reading
• 17:59
  and eventually landed on, um, history and cultural context as an addition
• 18:03
  that I, I could get excited about.
• 18:05
  Um, which is where that research again comes back in.
• 18:07
  Um, not in the thing I had not a, uh, a field of study that I was
• 18:11
  familiar with, but, um, one that I was excited about diving into.
• 18:14
  And so that's.
• 18:15
  This book ended up taking eight years to put together.
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  And, um, a lot of that was me, um, doing a lot of its research that was, uh,
• 18:22
  was such a pleasure and really edifying and, and connecting me to, to my, uh,
• 18:25
  ancestry, which otherwise was a, a little bit of a, a tenuous connection, I'd say.
• 18:29
  Um, uh, I, I was born in Virginia, grew up in Kansas City.
• 18:32
  So, um, my relationship with Indianness has was, was a, was a sort of
• 18:36
  very, very much mediated by family.
• 18:38
  This was one of the first times that I was, um, getting
• 18:40
  to explore it on my own terms.
• 18:41
  Um, and that's, that's the way the book ended up coming together was the backbone.
• 18:45
  My mom's recipes.
• 18:47
  Um, and then our head notes are split between, um, my mom and me
• 18:51
  and a lot of mine deal with, uh, history and cultural context.
• 18:53
  And then we have a lot of these standalone essays also that,
• 18:55
  that deal with some of that.
• 18:56
  And, uh, o over the course of it, my mother, um, at some
• 18:59
  point threatened her own death.
• 19:01
  Um, it was taking long enough that she was ready to sort of, she was like,
• 19:04
  I could die before this comes out, so maybe you should hustle a little bit.
• 19:07
  And I don't think that actually sped anyone up at all.
• 19:09
  It just stressed us both out.
• 19:11
  But um, yeah, those are some, there, there were many tactics both of us employed,
• 19:14
  uh, over the course of this writing, um, that I'm sure we can dig into to later.
• 19:17
  But, um, but we had, we, I'm very pleased that we, we finished it
• 19:20
  and that it, that it came out.
• 19:22
  That was really the big goal.
• 19:23
  And that, and the fact that it is done is, is a huge pleasure.
• 19:25
  Yeah.
• 19:26
  And the, the vision for what.
• 19:29
  You originally wanted Jot versus what we have is completely different.
• 19:34
  Completely.
• 19:34
  Um, this is not a spiral bound book with photos just slapped into the recipes.
• 19:38
  So let's start with a little bit about, um, the cultural context for this book and
• 19:44
  also tie it, um, either of you can answer this, but how what you did in your cooking
• 19:52
  classes ended up, you know, becoming this.
• 19:55
  But I think there's still a connection.
• 19:56
  It's not like they're two totally separate things.
• 19:58
  No, yeah, no, they're not separate things.
• 20:01
  In fact, those, uh, 96 of the recipes are from our mine.
• 20:08
  Three are oils.
• 20:11
  Uh, he claims it's a hundred percent cocktails are his
• 20:15
  and, uh, the, the sesame, uh, brittle is his recipe for sure.
• 20:21
  So, uh, the rest of it was all recipes from my cooking classes
• 20:27
  that my students had enjoyed and that I wanted to, um, um, put forth.
• 20:35
  So, so we had, I think we started out with maybe a hundred or maybe
• 20:42
  slightly over, and then we did need to, um, take out a few that we felt
• 20:48
  might be, um, you know, a little similar or maybe the, the, the, the.
• 20:57
  The procedure might be a little tricky.
• 20:59
  So we just, I think it was, it was also those out once we started looking
• 21:03
  at what chapters were gonna look like once we decided that the chapters
• 21:05
  were going to be relatively standard.
• 21:07
  So there are of course, so many ways you can organize a cookbook.
• 21:09
  Yeah.
• 21:09
  Um, and people are getting more and more experimental with that in
• 21:12
  such a beautiful way these days.
• 21:13
  Yeah.
• 21:13
  Um, but what, once we realized that we were going to probably do it as far as,
• 21:16
  uh, like with, with there would be like a dolls chapter, uh, a meat chapter
• 21:19
  of vegetables, then filling out all of those, um, was, was part of it too.
• 21:23
  And, um, I didn't mean to cut you off by the way, do you No, no, that's fine.
• 21:26
  No, no.
• 21:27
  And I think, uh, I love that question, Maggie, about like, what's, how
• 21:31
  this relates to my mom's classes, because that, for me was a big
• 21:33
  part of how to make this book.
• 21:35
  How to put this book together, and I think maybe some context for how my band thinks
• 21:39
  about our recorded music versus Star Live show is, was is a useful, um, uh, yeah.
• 21:45
  Analog here.
• 21:45
  Yeah.
• 21:46
  So, you know, my band, we, we are a folk band.
• 21:48
  Uh, there are three or four of us on stage often, and, um, everything
• 21:52
  we play is coming out through our instruments and our voices.
• 21:55
  We're not playing any recorded tracks with our recordings.
• 21:57
  However, uh, our recordings will sometimes have like three or four,
• 22:03
  uh, of each of us singing in order to make things feel more filled out.
• 22:06
  We'll sometimes have like four or five violins playing on a track, um, even
• 22:09
  though there's only one violinist me who's actually doing anything on stage.
• 22:12
  So, um, it's not the exact same, but the, the idea we, and, and there are
• 22:16
  a lot of different ways to play this.
• 22:17
  Of course, there are some bands that when they record, they go in and
• 22:19
  they just play it exactly the way they do live and they have live cuts.
• 22:23
  For us, it's more of a, uh, an iterative process in the studio, and we don't think
• 22:28
  of it as, it's not the exact same thing.
• 22:29
  The idea is that our recorded music as a compliment to our live show.
• 22:33
  Like, when I go to see a band, I'm not looking for them to, to play it
• 22:36
  exactly the way they play it on album.
• 22:37
  I'm looking for them to be having a really good time on stage.
• 22:40
  Uh, and if there's a way there, there, there are a lot of different ways you
• 22:43
  can think about capturing that same spirit, but it's a different art form,
• 22:46
  truly like the art of recorded music versus the art of live performance.
• 22:50
  Um, one of them is closer to theater and the other one is, is like, uh,
• 22:53
  an experience that you're taking in that where, where you have no,
• 22:55
  since you have no visuals, it's just a wildly different thing.
• 22:57
  And I think with cookbooks, there's a similar thing where my mom has a
• 23:00
  beautiful spirit when she's teaching.
• 23:02
  It's welcoming.
• 23:03
  It is generous.
• 23:04
  Um, it's also sometimes a little bit snarky depending on where she's at.
• 23:07
  Um, and like, and, and that's part, like her sense of humor is part of it.
• 23:10
  And so when thinking about what product we could make, and this is much more
• 23:15
  marketing speak than I try to ever, uh, speak in or talk about, but I'm,
• 23:19
  I'm doing it now, um, or something, something, a piece of art rather.
• 23:22
  A piece of art that compliments the art that is her classes.
• 23:25
  What could we do?
• 23:26
  And um.
• 23:28
  I think part of that was having some of my mom's stories come through in the text.
• 23:32
  Um, part of it was having, uh, an extremely, uh, even though a lot
• 23:36
  of the recipes in the book are a little more complicated, have it be
• 23:39
  so that if someone wants to come in with zero experience, we are holding
• 23:41
  their hand the whole way through.
• 23:42
  And so there's a pretty extensive bit of front matter where we talk about
• 23:46
  these are, this is the way that frying onions is different in Indian cooking.
• 23:49
  This is this, uh, art of the, the, the process of DACA or tempering
• 23:52
  spices and hot oil and really holding people's hands all the way through.
• 23:55
  It's gonna be complicated for a beginner, but all the resources are there.
• 23:59
  Um, and then I think having it feel that like my contribution with the, the
• 24:03
  history and context also, um, I think my, my mom does a beautiful job of
• 24:08
  making people feel very welcome again.
• 24:09
  And so having those.
• 24:11
  Cultural and historical essays be presented in a way where the research
• 24:15
  is as locked, tight and sort of, um, uh, uh, and, and carefully done
• 24:19
  as possible, while also having it feel accessible but not like, um,
• 24:24
  not condescending or patronizing.
• 24:26
  Like we're sort of trying to bring everyone in, like we are talking to
• 24:28
  people as though we are hanging out in a room and assuming that you're like,
• 24:31
  ready to be on the same page or like, uh, introducing things as though, um,
• 24:34
  we're all equals and not from sort of like a on high or from down low.
• 24:38
  And so I think the spirit of my mom's classes was a thing that I was trying
• 24:41
  to capture a lot in the writing.
• 24:42
  Um, it's definitely not like e exact thing, like when you, the,
• 24:46
  the stuff that you read about in the book is different from what you'll
• 24:48
  experience in my mom's classes.
• 24:49
  And that was an important part of it too for, for me to have it be not a direct,
• 24:53
  um, like it's not a direct transcript.
• 24:55
  So, uh, but a, a lot of this has Yeah, the, the way the different.
• 24:59
  That like an energy or a spirit, uh, can be translated in different art forms,
• 25:03
  um, is such a fun thing to think about.
• 25:04
  I think there are a lot of different ways that a band you love or, uh, a speaker you
• 25:08
  love can sort of write a book or create a piece of recorded music and, um, and,
• 25:13
  uh, a lot different ways that those can feel, um, resonant with, with their, with
• 25:17
  the, another form of art that they do.
• 25:18
  And so that was a big part of thinking through how we, how we present this book.
• 25:21
  Yeah.
• 25:22
  So what about the historical context then outside of the classes?
• 25:26
  How did you, uh, what was your goal and what were you trying to capture
• 25:31
  in these essays that you added to, uh, the book that made it so different than
• 25:39
  the one that was originally envisioned?
• 25:41
  Yeah, so that's, that's an excellent question.
• 25:43
  I think, so one of my favorite, um, touchstones for writing, uh,
• 25:48
  or thinking about writing is, um.
• 25:50
  An author named Jose ot.
• 25:52
  Do you know Jose at all?
• 25:52
  Maggie?
• 25:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:53
  No, he, so he, this man has an incredible job.
• 25:56
  He, last I checked, uh, is the taco editor of Texas Monthly Magazine, which
• 26:00
  is a job you can have if you're Jose ot.
• 26:02
  Um, and he also wrote a, a book that's wonderful called A
• 26:06
  Field Guide to American Tacos.
• 26:08
  And it is a field guide.
• 26:09
  It is not, uh, a recipe book.
• 26:11
  So, uh, it's not that this is what, nor is it prescriptive about
• 26:15
  what tacos should or shouldn't be.
• 26:16
  It's when you wander out into the world, these, like, just as with a field guide
• 26:20
  for trees, there's nothing that says like, this is what a tree should be.
• 26:22
  It's more that these are the trees you see, these are the
• 26:24
  tacos you see according to Jose.
• 26:26
  You see Kmx tacos, you see, um, like Tex-Mex tacos, you see California tacos.
• 26:30
  You see, um, like all of these different versions and, and it's a kind of a
• 26:35
  revolutionary way to think about food.
• 26:36
  Um, in, in the current culture where there's a lot of accusations of cultural
• 26:40
  appropriation and who owns what.
• 26:41
  He's not talking about that.
• 26:42
  He's talking about this is what you see because food is dynamic,
• 26:45
  tacos are dynamic, right?
• 26:46
  Um, it's, it's, and.
• 26:49
  He, he has this, uh, phenomenon he refers to as abuelita syndrome, which
• 26:52
  is this idea, uh, that there are many Mexican grandmothers out there and
• 26:56
  a lot of people with Mexican abita means a little grandmother in Spanish.
• 27:00
  Um, a lot of people with Mexican grandmothers will sometimes
• 27:03
  say, Hey, that doesn't look like the way my grandmother cooks.
• 27:06
  Therefore it's inauthentic.
• 27:07
  What is authentic is the way my grandmother cooks.
• 27:09
  And he goes on to say, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having
• 27:13
  a grandmother you love who sort of establishes how your family cooks, but.
• 27:17
  The issue is that there are many, many abita out there
• 27:20
  doing all sorts of crazy stuff.
• 27:21
  Some have gone rogue.
• 27:22
  Uh, and the idea that any one of them is an arbiter of the Mexican
• 27:25
  culture at large is insane.
• 27:27
  That's just a ludicrous prospect.
• 27:29
  Yeah.
• 27:29
  And, um, and I love that way of thinking about it.
• 27:33
  Um, and the idea, uh, a complimentary, um, a complimentary thinking that
• 27:38
  sort of goes with this is a lot of, uh, Indian cookbooks out there now
• 27:43
  are family books of family recipes.
• 27:46
  And there's nothing wrong with the book of family recipes, of course.
• 27:48
  But when that makes up, and this is not an original thought, by the way, there's
• 27:51
  a, um, an an excellent writer named Arnab, Chuck Lidar, who writes under
• 27:54
  the, the blog Maya Annoying Opinions.
• 27:56
  Beautifully, beautifully titled, um, where he, he has a, a, a, a wonderful
• 28:00
  post called Against Family that I think was really, really well done.
• 28:03
  Uh, and so I'm, I'm paraphrasing some of his thoughts here, but
• 28:05
  when most of the literature.
• 28:08
  A given genre is family oriented.
• 28:10
  Um, oftentimes, especially with Indian immigrants, you're coming from a very
• 28:14
  narrow, uh, socioeconomic band of writing, of, of writers, uh, and you're
• 28:18
  not doing much research out of talking to your family members, which is totally
• 28:22
  fine, but if that's makes up the bulk of the literature, you're, you're missing
• 28:24
  a lot of contextual history there.
• 28:26
  Um, that is fascinating and also has hugely affected the culture.
• 28:30
  And so this isn't like, there are many books, of course, where there's,
• 28:33
  there's excellent historical writing on Indian food, but some of those,
• 28:36
  most of those tend to be more encyclopedic, more history oriented.
• 28:39
  So our, my goal with this was to, um, sort of, because our book is sort of, uh, was
• 28:45
  going to be certainly part of the problem in that it's a, a book of family recipes
• 28:49
  from an upper middle class Indian family.
• 28:50
  How do we correct for some of that?
• 28:52
  How do we sort of, uh, uh, uh, or, or at least like temper some of
• 28:56
  that family orient orientation.
• 28:58
  And the way to do that was by presenting research or like his
• 29:01
  history, cultural context that takes it outside of just our specific family.
• 29:05
  Um, and that was a lot of fun to read about.
• 29:07
  And the way that I did that was reading as many culinary histories
• 29:09
  of India as I could get my hands on.
• 29:10
  Reading a lot of other cookbook authors, reading a lot of cookbook criticism.
• 29:13
  Um, but that's sort of the framing of the book, uh, of like, or how I was
• 29:16
  thinking about the book was basically like, we are going to be part of this.
• 29:20
  Minor problem.
• 29:21
  How do we make it a little bit bigger?
• 29:22
  How do we broaden it beyond that?
• 29:24
  And uh, and so that was where I think the inspiration, um,
• 29:27
  and desire to, to dig into the history and cultural context came.
• 29:30
  Yeah.
• 29:31
  Were you focused, um, on any particular region when you think
• 29:35
  about India or was it like trying to hit a larger swath than that?
• 29:39
  And maybe even in your classes also joti what you focus on or how you, uh,
• 29:45
  translate, which is true of any large country, like the regional variations
• 29:50
  that are sometimes very, uh, much even within a certain state or a certain area.
• 29:55
  There's still differences in that based on, you know, mountains and water and
• 30:00
  the way people over here eat it or cook it the way the people over there do it.
• 30:03
  How did you, um, tackle that from such a, a, a big country with so many
• 30:09
  people and I'm sure so many different ways of doing things in the kitchen?
• 30:15
  Go.
• 30:15
  Um, okay.
• 30:17
  Um, you know, I, uh, do teach.
• 30:19
  Cooking from all over India.
• 30:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:22
  And like you said, it is, it is so varied and, and, and, you know,
• 30:26
  we, I always try to, uh, kind of divide it into four distinct
• 30:30
  regions, north, south, east, west.
• 30:33
  We are not only cuisine wise, different culturally too,
• 30:37
  we are very, very different.
• 30:39
  We are all one country and, but our, our food, our clothing, our religious
• 30:46
  holidays, our reli, our um, uh, deities that we worship very, very different.
• 30:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:53
  And we all respect each other's, uh, uh, form of culture.
• 31:00
  But it is very, very varied.
• 31:02
  So, because it is so varied, our cuisine obviously is, is miles apart.
• 31:08
  And I did not, so I'm from the northern part of India, which is right.
• 31:13
  Under the Himalayas.
• 31:15
  And then my husband is from the eastern part of India.
• 31:17
  We met in medical school when we were 17.
• 31:20
  He is from Calcutta.
• 31:21
  My mother Teresa lived.
• 31:23
  Yeah, they, we are so distinctly different.
• 31:27
  I did not experience his cuisine till I was 19 years old when I
• 31:32
  first went to his house, and that was when I first ate his cuisine.
• 31:36
  So we are that distinctly different.
• 31:40
  But uh, you know, because of travel and, and, and especially now when
• 31:46
  the world is a much smaller place.
• 31:49
  Everybody is traveling and everybody's picking up things and so there is
• 31:53
  a little more variety, but, uh, but especially when we were growing up.
• 32:00
  Travel was not as intense at that time.
• 32:02
  And so, but if you have, your neighbors are from a different part
• 32:06
  of India, maybe, uh, because my father worked for the, um, central
• 32:11
  government, uh, federal government.
• 32:13
  So we were in Delhi and in New Delhi, you know, you have people from all
• 32:17
  over India working for the government.
• 32:20
  So our neighbors were all from different parts of India.
• 32:23
  And so we would, you know, exchange dishes and my mother
• 32:27
  would learn dishes from them.
• 32:29
  They would learn dishes from my mother.
• 32:31
  And so there was quite a, a mix of cultures and, and when I was growing up.
• 32:37
  And so that is where, and plus I think also I have an interest, even though
• 32:42
  it was not, um, if I can use the word flamboyant, interest in cooking.
• 32:49
  Because when I, before I came to the United States, I did not, I. Cook at
• 32:54
  all because we had, at home, we had cooks and, uh, we were never expected
• 33:00
  to cook because our, my parents' focus for us was on our education.
• 33:06
  So they said, you don't need to be doing all that.
• 33:08
  You need to focus on studies.
• 33:10
  And so that is where I never did, did, uh, um, get my hands dirty in the kitchen.
• 33:19
  But when I came to the United States, you were, everything rolled into one.
• 33:23
  Yeah.
• 33:23
  Right.
• 33:24
  From a cook to a laundry woman, to a everything, um, um,
• 33:27
  cleaning lady to everything.
• 33:29
  And that is when, but I probably did have an innate desire to cook and that that
• 33:39
  passion was there, which kind of helped.
• 33:42
  And I now see how it helped.
• 33:46
  Um, all these years when I have been teaching, it is just been such a joy.
• 33:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:51
  I had never thought or dreamt that I would be doing this.
• 33:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 33:57
  But it has been a terrific journey.
• 33:59
  Yeah.
• 33:59
  Just, and just to follow up on what my mom was saying, I think a way that
• 34:02
  I like to describe, or a way that I like to frame the cooking of India,
• 34:06
  when you're talking about something that broad, it's like talking about the
• 34:09
  cooking of Europe, which is quite broad.
• 34:12
  Yeah.
• 34:12
  Uh, and that analogy works well too.
• 34:14
  Uh, you know, from, from country to country, when you move
• 34:16
  through Europe, you are often encountering different languages.
• 34:19
  The same thing when you go from state to state in India.
• 34:21
  Um, so it's sometimes even different scripts, uh, wildly
• 34:24
  different scripts, in fact.
• 34:25
  Uh, and, uh, that is, um, yeah.
• 34:29
  So, so the, the, the breadth of Indian cooking is huge.
• 34:31
  Like you were, like you described Maggie.
• 34:32
  And, um, my mom, uh, initially started teaching Punjabi
• 34:37
  food from where she grew up.
• 34:38
  Uh, and Bengali food from my dad grew up, but as a result of these
• 34:41
  classes, she was teaching things from all across the subcontinent.
• 34:44
  Um, and so in really like figuring out what, where are our, um.
• 34:51
  The ba since the backbone of the book was just going to be
• 34:53
  stuff that my mom was cooking.
• 34:54
  Um, and that was sort of the premise.
• 34:56
  And we, we, we framed that at the beginning of the book too, with
• 34:58
  a, a brief essay on authenticity, which is such a slippery word.
• 35:01
  And for me, like, uh, a quote that I, I quite like from my, my great uncle is
• 35:05
  there are many Indias and there are just as many authentic samosa rep recipes.
• 35:09
  Uh, and so our book is not the last word on any cooking.
• 35:12
  It's just like one snapshot within this huge, constantly changing universe.
• 35:17
  Um, and so that makes it, that like loose lighten the load for me because
• 35:22
  even though we do have recipes from across the subcontinent, most of
• 35:25
  them are from Punjab and Bengal.
• 35:27
  Uh, and we are not claiming that this is a comprehensive anything.
• 35:29
  This is just the way we cook in our kitchen.
• 35:31
  Um, and that I think helped me process.
• 35:33
  And so the history therefore is also not super comprehensive.
• 35:37
  Uh, we're not looking at like things, there's no, uh, like narrative history
• 35:41
  that, that threads through the book.
• 35:42
  Instead, it's sort of snapshots of things that.
• 35:44
  I think are very interested, interesting as an eater, uh, and
• 35:48
  as an enjoyer of, of Indian food.
• 35:49
  I should also say too, one thing that was important to me, my mom mentioned
• 35:52
  that within India we respect each other's cultures, which sometimes
• 35:55
  is true and a lot of times isn't.
• 35:57
  Uh, there's a lot of, a lot of, uh, overlooked and alienated
• 36:00
  populations within India.
• 36:01
  And so highlighting some of those was a very important
• 36:03
  part of the history for me too.
• 36:04
  And so, um, we have one essay on beef eating, um, because there are millions
• 36:08
  upon millions of beef eaters within India, in spite of what the right-wing,
• 36:12
  uh, Hindu nationalist government in India would like you to think.
• 36:15
  So that, that, that essay verges into, into the political, um, similarly making
• 36:19
  any broad steer like the, the more our research Indian cooking, the harder
• 36:23
  it is for me to make any stereotype.
• 36:25
  For instance, a lot of spice usage across India, but there are tribes in India where
• 36:29
  they historically did not have access to cooking oil, where therefore spices
• 36:32
  were not tempered and used in the same way as they are in the rest of India.
• 36:35
  So just it's so broad that to make any sweeping generalization
• 36:39
  is, is a very tricky thing.
• 36:40
  Um.
• 36:41
  And so we, that, that, that was I think, a helpful context for a lot of the
• 36:43
  history and writing in the book too.
• 36:45
  So this isn't like the only way it's done, this is just
• 36:48
  one, one way to think about it.
• 36:49
  Yeah.
• 36:50
  And then when you layer on top of that American food preferences
• 36:53
  raising a family in the us, balancing your culinary traditions with
• 36:58
  the microculture of your family.
• 37:00
  And I'm sure that played a role also in what you were perhaps cooking or
• 37:05
  maybe wanting to talk about in the book.
• 37:08
  But I think, you know, I don't know how any cookbook author can try to escape any
• 37:13
  of that because unless there really, uh, in pursuit of something that's authentic,
• 37:22
  I think the best books are written from the experience that we have and then
• 37:26
  we, uh, bring in other perspectives.
• 37:29
  Um, it's true.
• 37:30
  Even if you decided to write a cookbook about Kansas, it
• 37:33
  would be the very same thing.
• 37:35
  It's.
• 37:36
  The people of Kansas, what they eat in Kansas.
• 37:39
  But there's so many crossroads that have probably happened there that maybe you did
• 37:44
  or didn't experience, but it's still worth telling that story still there as well.
• 37:48
  Yeah, exactly.
• 37:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:49
  Exactly.
• 37:50
  Yeah.
• 37:50
  So, uh, what about when the boys were young American food preferences?
• 37:55
  Um, oh my, how was that?
• 37:59
  So, you know, the, uh, Oyen and our youngest, they went to a private school
• 38:05
  and in that school they were not, uh, allowed to bring their lunch from home.
• 38:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:11
  They had to eat at the school, and guess what?
• 38:14
  It was always, um, um, it was, um, of course pastas and peanut butter,
• 38:22
  jellies and ham sandwiches and hot food.
• 38:25
  They had quite a display of hot food.
• 38:27
  So, uh, our oldest and oil were very, they were very.
• 38:33
  Easy to please.
• 38:35
  But our youngest was always a challenge and he was that
• 38:37
  meat and potato kind of guy.
• 38:39
  And he would say, so when he would come home and he would ask,
• 38:44
  what are we eating for dinner?
• 38:45
  And I initially would, you know, I had started with, we are gonna have
• 38:49
  rice and lentils and chicken curry and this and, and, and then after a
• 38:54
  while he started saying, again, Indian.
• 38:57
  So one day my husband sat him down and said, and all the boys, and he
• 39:03
  said that, you know, this is not gonna work because we have to, you cannot be
• 39:07
  fussing every night at dinner because we like Indian, you like Western.
• 39:12
  So we have to come up with something that mom can cook so that we can all enjoy.
• 39:17
  So they came up with the decision that we would have one day Indian and one day
• 39:21
  Western, and which is what I actually did from the time that our youngest was
• 39:28
  maybe in fifth grade, fourth or fifth grade, till they were in high school.
• 39:33
  I was cooking one day Indian, one day Western, and even though my Western had
• 39:38
  an Indian twist to it, they did not figure it out till they were in high school.
• 39:43
  That, but they would enjoy it so much.
• 39:45
  I mean, my pasta sauce would have, uh, chili pepper in it and I would
• 39:50
  put, uh, put vegetables in it and I would, but, uh, or make pork chops
• 39:55
  in a, a beautiful veg vegetable.
• 39:58
  Um, um, and, um, you know, um, cook it with vegetables so that it was more like
• 40:06
  a stew and they would enjoy that so much.
• 40:10
  And it was like, but it wasn't really we, we could, we would do that with
• 40:15
  chicken in India, but here I was doing it with just different meats and, um, it
• 40:21
  was only in high school and especially when our youngest one was after he had
• 40:26
  graduated from his, uh, sophomore year.
• 40:30
  Because he had that, uh, ceremony called, um, uh, it is called in our
• 40:35
  language, and it is the equivalent of a bar, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah.
• 40:41
  And, uh, so he had had that in India.
• 40:43
  And one of the stipulations of that ceremony is in my husband's
• 40:49
  family, is that you have to be a vegetarian for a year.
• 40:52
  Now this was, and he was the only one who wanted to have it done.
• 40:55
  He, he himself wanted to have it done.
• 40:58
  So we told him that, do you realize that you will be a vegetarian?
• 41:01
  He said, yes, I can be a vegetarian.
• 41:04
  You won't believe it.
• 41:05
  We were there in India and he had this ceremony.
• 41:08
  My mother-in-law was so happy because of her five grandsons.
• 41:11
  He was the only one who wanted it.
• 41:13
  It's like a mini wedding.
• 41:15
  Yeah.
• 41:15
  And, uh, but you know, in India.
• 41:19
  Having vegetarian food is a delight because you don't have
• 41:24
  to make anything yourself.
• 41:25
  You just tell the cook, you know, to this morning we are going to
• 41:28
  have this for breakfast, that is for lunch, that is for dinner.
• 41:32
  So it was a feast.
• 41:33
  Every meal was a feast.
• 41:34
  It was a vegetarian feast, but it was a feast.
• 41:37
  Then we come back home and reality hits.
• 41:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:41
  Because, uh, for the first week it was okay.
• 41:44
  Then he school started, and when school started, he was eating PB
• 41:49
  and j, PB and j, PB and J because there was nothing else to eat.
• 41:54
  So he came home and he said, uh, and then at home I was trying to do the same thing.
• 41:59
  But you know, with vegetarian Western food, what do you do?
• 42:02
  Saute, ve pasta.
• 42:05
  It, it's gotten better.
• 42:06
  It's gotten better since then.
• 42:08
  I'm sure it has.
• 42:08
  But, but originally, like people would think I can have dinner
• 42:12
  rolls or I could have macaroni.
• 42:14
  It's 25 years ago.
• 42:16
  Yeah, totally.
• 42:17
  This is 25 years ago.
• 42:17
  Yeah.
• 42:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:18
  And so, so I, he came home and, uh, after about a week and he said, ma,
• 42:25
  can we have Indian food every night?
• 42:29
  That was when that tradition broke and we ate Indian because he realized
• 42:36
  there weren't so many choices for him, and all of us were having
• 42:41
  good stuff while he, poor guy was having to eat, uh, vegetarians.
• 42:46
  But, um.
• 42:48
  But even in the vegetarian, there's so many more options.
• 42:51
  Yeah.
• 42:51
  So much more variety in the, it is a treat to be a vegan and a vegetarian.
• 42:56
  Yes.
• 42:56
  With Indian cuisine.
• 42:57
  Yes.
• 42:58
  We went to, uh, my two sons live in Chicago and we've been to, uh, what's
• 43:03
  the name of the Devon Avenue in Chicago?
• 43:05
  Yes.
• 43:05
  Oh yes.
• 43:06
  And there's, um, not hard to find a vegetarian restaurant
• 43:10
  along that, that street.
• 43:11
  It's very easy, as a matter of fact.
• 43:13
  And so it, but, but yet the, you know, and it's, I think that oil is right.
• 43:19
  I mean, the breadth of vegetarian cooking has grown so much and it's
• 43:23
  absolutely part of our nomenclature now.
• 43:26
  And people talks about plant forward and, you know, vegetable
• 43:29
  based things, but Right.
• 43:30
  To think that you could cook with the everything that you cooked with as
• 43:36
  vegetarian, but that was part of the Indian cooking even, you know, for.
• 43:42
  For a long time.
• 43:43
  I mean, it was so easy to do.
• 43:45
  It was just part, part of what you did, which makes me think about
• 43:48
  this word that people often think of when they think of Indian cooking.
• 43:52
  If you all wanna talk about the word curry.
• 43:55
  Oh, yeah, sure.
• 43:58
  And what that means, I let on, and yes.
• 44:00
  What that means and what you want people to know about it.
• 44:05
  Yeah.
• 44:05
  So I only, uh, start with one thing and I, if I can just say one thing, are you
• 44:09
  gonna say something that's gonna upset?
• 44:11
  Are you gonna say something that's gonna upset me right now?
• 44:12
  No, no, no, no.
• 44:14
  That adding curry powder to something does not make it a curry.
• 44:17
  Okay.
• 44:18
  That's what I want.
• 44:19
  Say.
• 44:19
  That's the first thing.
• 44:20
  Okay.
• 44:20
  That's the first thing.
• 44:21
  All right.
• 44:21
  So I, I'm gonna back up a little bit more, and I think when
• 44:24
  talking about the word curry.
• 44:25
  You have to be very careful with what culinary, what, what cultural
• 44:28
  context you're talking about.
• 44:29
  It is because the word curry in the UK is different from the, what curry means
• 44:34
  in India, which is different from what curry means in Japan, which is different
• 44:37
  from what curry means in Jamaica.
• 44:38
  So in Thailand.
• 44:39
  Thailand, Thailand, yes.
• 44:40
  All of these.
• 44:41
  So in, in India though, is it always the same thing or not necessarily?
• 44:44
  So within, within India, the word curry.
• 44:47
  So, um, the word was first used by, by a Portuguese travel writer in like 1498.
• 44:52
  Uh, and then after that was used by the British to describe a broad
• 44:55
  range of things in the subcontinent.
• 44:57
  So the word curry definitely has colonial roots.
• 44:59
  Now in Indian English, which is a, a a, a form of English of course, but,
• 45:04
  but one that has slightly different, um, a slightly different vocabulary
• 45:07
  from American or, or British English.
• 45:09
  Um, the word curry means a dish that has a spiced gravy.
• 45:14
  That's all it means.
• 45:14
  It is a genre of dish.
• 45:16
  So the same way that you have salads, you have soups, you
• 45:18
  have curries, you have desserts.
• 45:19
  So the same way that you wouldn't describe something as being
• 45:22
  salad flavored or soup flavored.
• 45:23
  Right.
• 45:23
  You wouldn't say curry flavored.
• 45:24
  Yeah.
• 45:25
  So it is not, there's not one, there's no single, uh, mix of spices that is,
• 45:31
  uh, representative of curries at large.
• 45:33
  The same way that there's no single dressing that is representative of
• 45:35
  all salads, or there's no single, uh, soup base that's represent
• 45:39
  representative of all soups.
• 45:40
  So that's specifically within Indian cooking, though?
• 45:42
  Um, within Britain.
• 45:44
  Curry is an Anglo Indian curry.
• 45:46
  So the curry powder that you find, it's a flavor.
• 45:48
  It's, it's more of a flavor profile.
• 45:50
  It's a it's a flavor.
• 45:50
  Yeah.
• 45:50
  Exactly.
• 45:51
  And that is, and there's, and I say that with no shade.
• 45:54
  Like I think, um, there are many, there are many different Indias, Anglo Indian
• 45:57
  cooking is its own form of cooking that it has beautiful bits and Right.
• 46:00
  It certainly has a problematic history of course.
• 46:02
  But as, so do many things in Indian cooking.
• 46:04
  Yeah.
• 46:04
  Uh, independent of the British.
• 46:05
  So that's not the only, that's not the only source of, of problem.
• 46:08
  Um.
• 46:09
  But within like Japan, the way that the Japanese got ahold
• 46:13
  of curry was English sailors.
• 46:15
  Uh, during the Maji restoration area, which is, uh, era, which is 19th century,
• 46:19
  um, in Japan, they, uh, these British sailors arrived, presented Anglo-Indian
• 46:23
  curry powder, and the Japanese loved it.
• 46:26
  And now it is like an iconic part of Japanese gastronomy, like the,
• 46:29
  the Japanese Navy loves curry.
• 46:31
  And it's, again, a flavor and specifically a flavor with a mix.
• 46:34
  Like the, the typical thing is you have these cubes or, um,
• 46:37
  you can make it from scratch.
• 46:38
  But, so within Japan, curry is a flavor within the uk Curry
• 46:41
  is a flavor within Jamaica.
• 46:42
  I think it, I I was recently reading about that.
• 46:44
  Um, similarly, there's, it's a flavor profile within India.
• 46:47
  It is a group of it, it is a, a type of dish.
• 46:50
  Um, there's no, there are many different curry powders.
• 46:52
  Many.
• 46:52
  And you, you said, said a spiced, like a spiced gravy might be great.
• 46:55
  You're really like a sauce.
• 46:56
  Totally, exactly.
• 46:57
  Type of sauce.
• 46:57
  Yep.
• 46:57
  Yeah.
• 46:58
  Yep.
• 46:58
  Exactly.
• 46:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:59
  And so we have a couple essays, uh, illustrated essays in the
• 47:01
  book that I, I quite love.
• 47:02
  Um.
• 47:03
  One of them, uh, describes sort of the equivalent of curry powder in India, which
• 47:07
  would be like a jar of American sauce, which is a, a a, uh, our illustrator
• 47:11
  drew a a, a jar that has America on it, uh, and has a bunch of like, American
• 47:16
  ingredients you'd recognize, like peanut butter, ketchup, and dill pickle juice.
• 47:19
  And it just like a mix of a bunch of things.
• 47:21
  And like as soon as you put this on anything, it becomes American
• 47:24
  is the equivalent of, uh, like the ridiculousness of like, the idea
• 47:26
  that anything, yeah, any, you just add something, it becomes a curry.
• 47:29
  Um, so yeah, I think, um, the, and there, there's, there's also, it's become
• 47:35
  somewhat political as a term too, in the, in the late, uh, 20 teens, there
• 47:38
  were a bunch of Indian American writers who were saying that no one should ever
• 47:41
  use the word curry because it's dumbs down the cuisine and this and that.
• 47:45
  Um, and no one at Idio uses the term.
• 47:47
  Um, I'm on board with the idea that you should learn the
• 47:49
  names of specific dishes, but.
• 47:51
  The truth is that people in India do use the term, um, there are many aspects of
• 47:55
  Indian culture that are, are derived from, uh, British, the British colonial era.
• 47:59
  The fact that Indians drink tea at all is because of the British.
• 48:02
  The fact that English is one of the official languages of the Indian
• 48:05
  government because of the British, the fact that Indian people use the word
• 48:07
  curry because of the British, that doesn't mean that we should erase all of those
• 48:10
  things or that none of them are true.
• 48:12
  It's just that there's a history there that is should be recognized.
• 48:15
  Yeah.
• 48:15
  Um, so that's sort of the, the, the point of a, of a couple of those essays
• 48:19
  in the book that, that I described.
• 48:20
  Yeah.
• 48:20
  And then that added these essays on top of the recipes and the
• 48:24
  things that, uh, you were using for the, the recipe base of the book.
• 48:30
  But what about, um, adaptation for people who are shopping in the US and adaptation
• 48:37
  for the, the type of cooking that people might wanna do when it comes to investment
• 48:42
  of time, um, and effort in making, uh, things that they might find in the book.
• 48:48
  Totally.
• 48:48
  Yeah.
• 48:49
  So I think, yeah.
• 48:50
  Um, in, in the outline, Marty, do you mind if I take it or are you good?
• 48:53
  Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 48:53
  Go ahead.
• 48:54
  No, I think, uh, there are, of course many, um, I think the, the, the
• 49:01
  reality of our book is if you are looking for a quick and easy way to
• 49:03
  cook Indian food, um, our book is, uh, not going to be as useful for you.
• 49:09
  And I think that's, that's a thing that we're saying, um,
• 49:11
  without judgment or apology.
• 49:13
  Um, we totally understand that.
• 49:14
  Like for some people, getting a meal to the table as quickly as
• 49:16
  possible is the most important thing.
• 49:18
  And if that's the case, we hope you find some essays and some recipes in the book
• 49:21
  that you love, uh, or that you enjoy.
• 49:23
  But, um, our goal is to represent how we cook in our home.
• 49:27
  Uh, and sometimes that takes more time for sure.
• 49:30
  And we try to be clear-eyed about that with, with, uh, times, uh, for
• 49:33
  all the, for all the recipes, um, and how long things will take, uh.
• 49:37
  And, uh, and, and we also don't discourage, like if you need to
• 49:39
  take a shortcut here and there, like using, um, canned beans or
• 49:43
  this or that, like, totally fine.
• 49:44
  But the way we're laying it out is how we cook in our home.
• 49:47
  Yeah.
• 49:47
  That said, our hope is that this book isn't just like a a, an instruction
• 49:52
  manual for you to cook out of and just do the same thing over and over.
• 49:55
  Once you get the hang of a, a dish, like, please riff, change things up, go hard.
• 50:00
  In fact, one of my favorite bits to, to write in the book was, um, was our spice
• 50:03
  glossary, which is in the back matter of the book following the final recipe.
• 50:07
  And for that's, uh, some histor historical and cultural context
• 50:11
  for a lot of the spices and ways to use them outside of Indian cooking.
• 50:14
  Because our hope with our book is you acquire a spice cabinet as a result
• 50:18
  of, of buying this book and making a few recipes or any Indian cookbook.
• 50:22
  Um, and then you use those spices outside of Indian cooking because
• 50:25
  that's the best way for you to develop a vocabulary and develop a, um, a uh,
• 50:29
  uh, some facility of these spices.
• 50:31
  And I, I do think that like there are, you know, different.
• 50:35
  The idea that, uh, any cookbook is one size fits all, and that
• 50:38
  like, it's good for all people.
• 50:39
  I don't agree with.
• 50:40
  I think there are some books that are designed for the cook
• 50:42
  who's trying to get a meal to the table as quickly as possible.
• 50:44
  There are other ones that are a bit more of a deep dive where the hope
• 50:47
  is that by investing more time, you will, and also like being a little more
• 50:51
  vulnerable because you're investing time.
• 50:53
  Things aren't necessarily gonna come out perfectly in the first time because
• 50:55
  cooking is a, is a physical art form, uh, and, and takes, takes time to learn.
• 50:59
  And, um, even working within a new cuisine will take some time, but
• 51:02
  that the reward is greater, um, there because you are, you are getting
• 51:05
  to splash around in a new world.
• 51:07
  Um, and that's exciting.
• 51:08
  And so our book is firmly in that latter category.
• 51:11
  Um.
• 51:12
  Uh, and I think that was an important thing for us to recognize too with
• 51:15
  our writing, with writing the book is, um, we can't have it all in
• 51:19
  terms of like, there are some quicker and easier recipes for sure, but
• 51:22
  that is not the point of our book.
• 51:23
  There are many other wonderful books that I think will, will do a
• 51:25
  better job of, of, uh, of guiding someone who's looking for that.
• 51:28
  Yeah.
• 51:29
  And in your classes, uh, Joti, do you find that people that come to the classes are
• 51:33
  willing to embrace this style and this way of cooking that, um, just described?
• 51:39
  So I'll have to send you a small story.
• 51:41
  Sure.
• 51:41
  A short story, uh, about three, four years, 3 0 2 and a half, three years into
• 51:47
  my cooking classes, the boys insisted I teach fusion and there's a lot of
• 51:53
  fusion recipes that I can teach because there are so many things that are that,
• 51:59
  that resemble what we do here in the United States or in the western world.
• 52:04
  So I started advertising fusion classes as well as traditional
• 52:09
  classes, and I realized.
• 52:11
  That my fusion classes wouldn't sell out the way my traditional classes did.
• 52:16
  And I then that was when I said, why am I teaching all this
• 52:20
  when nobody wants to learn it?
• 52:22
  Heck with it.
• 52:23
  So I discontinued and I just have always focused since then on my
• 52:29
  traditional classes and people just come for the real thing.
• 52:34
  Yeah.
• 52:34
  They don't want to know all about, you know, how you can make the Indian pancake,
• 52:40
  uh, a fusion pancake and serve it as a sa.
• 52:42
  And we have savory as well as sweet both, but they want to know the authentic stuff.
• 52:49
  They don't want to know the InBetween.
• 52:52
  And so yes, there is a hunger for traditional authentic cooking, which is
• 53:00
  what I have been teaching in my kitchen.
• 53:02
  Yeah.
• 53:03
  Yeah.
• 53:04
  And something I think too is that the, the format of a book, um, I
• 53:07
  think there, there are a lot of ways you can access the course.
• 53:09
  There, there are many folks who love, uh, looking up recipes on the online,
• 53:13
  and, and you have, there's less of a, a background with that often because it's
• 53:16
  just, it's not, it's not in a book form.
• 53:18
  I think the, the, the, the form of a format of a cookbook
• 53:21
  lends so well to a deeper dive.
• 53:23
  Um, and there's so many excellent versions of that that I can, I could,
• 53:26
  that we could all cite right now, um, especially listeners of your podcast.
• 53:29
  Um, yeah.
• 53:29
  And so if you have, if you have the space and time in a book to, to like really
• 53:33
  give people an introduction or a, a a, that, that feels like such a, um, yeah.
• 53:38
  I feel like it lends itself well to it.
• 53:39
  So, um, that felt like the right move for us with, with, with our book, but,
• 53:43
  um, especially, yeah, especially in the context of how quickly you can
• 53:47
  find quick and easy recipes online these days that, that require maybe
• 53:51
  less cultural context or historical context to, to, um, to make sense of it.
• 53:55
  Yeah.
• 53:56
  So.
• 53:57
  When we start getting in then and taking a look at your book and looking
• 54:02
  at what's in it, one thing that I noticed off the bat is that it's
• 54:05
  a combination of illustrations and photography and primarily illustration,
• 54:11
  but there's also photography inserted in the middle of the book.
• 54:15
  There's photographs of every dish.
• 54:17
  How did you choose the balance of this?
• 54:19
  And also just the visual aspect of the book, because, you know, the way the
• 54:24
  art direction's done, the way it's laid out is something that a lot of people
• 54:28
  that love cookbooks really enjoy.
• 54:30
  So let's talk a little bit about that.
• 54:34
  Totally.
• 54:34
  Yeah.
• 54:34
  Um, well, you wanna talk or should I, uh, go ahead.
• 54:38
  Okay.
• 54:38
  Yeah.
• 54:38
  So I, I, I should let listeners know too that if folks are interested in reading
• 54:43
  or hearing more about this, um, I, uh, forsook social media for this, uh, from
• 54:47
  our release process and instead have been writing a newsletter since January.
• 54:51
  Um, a series of essays on, on the book.
• 54:53
  So, uh, we have a deeper, deeper dive into photography and illustration
• 54:56
  and the publication process.
• 54:58
  And that is that, um, if you look up Heartland Masala HQ on Substack, which
• 55:02
  is a newsletter platform, you can find all these essays for free along with
• 55:05
  a map that was missing from, that's missing from the book, that you can
• 55:08
  print your own because, uh, due to international, um, border, uh, disputes
• 55:12
  we were not able to include in the book.
• 55:13
  That's a whole story into itself.
• 55:15
  Um, but, um, yeah.
• 55:17
  So as far as this book, my mom, I think earlier in, in
• 55:19
  this interview mentioned that.
• 55:21
  She, uh, one of her students' first requests was that we include photos in
• 55:26
  the book just because it's important to know what, what the dishes look like.
• 55:29
  So that was a given because my mother, when she asks for
• 55:31
  something, she gets what she wants.
• 55:33
  Uh, for me, uh, illustration was really important for a few reasons.
• 55:36
  Uh, one is I'm, uh, remain deeply inspired by Wendy McNaughton
• 55:40
  excellent work in salt, fat acid heats, I mean RA's, uh, debut effort.
• 55:44
  Yeah.
• 55:44
  Um, which is a spectacular book of course.
• 55:46
  Um, but Wendy Ton's illustrations in that especially are so well done.
• 55:50
  I think the balance of humor and instruction and levity that those, that
• 55:54
  those illustrations provide to what is otherwise a pretty text heavy book.
• 55:58
  But when you pick that book up, it is just a joy to read.
• 56:01
  And of course part of that is Sam's excellent writing, but a
• 56:04
  huge part of that too is how.
• 56:06
  How, uh, well designed and, um, beautifully the, the, uh, the
• 56:10
  illustrations sort of weave through that make you just wanna like turn to the
• 56:13
  next one and, and how, how, uh, evenly distributed they are through the book.
• 56:16
  And so for our book, knowing that a, my mom and I were gonna be different
• 56:19
  characters, so having our, each of our visages sort of present in that way I
• 56:22
  think was important to have the split headnotes for us to, to have us each
• 56:26
  feel like different people, real people.
• 56:28
  So there are a few illustrations of us in the book.
• 56:30
  Um, because of the academic orientation of some of the writing, I knew that
• 56:34
  having some levity and humor through the illustrations was an important part.
• 56:37
  So for all of the standalone essays in the book, I had a vision for what
• 56:41
  I wanted those illustrations to look like as I was writing the essay.
• 56:44
  Um, and then.
• 56:46
  Yeah.
• 56:46
  And for instruction, I think illustration often does a much better job than
• 56:49
  photography when, like showing how to roll a flatbread or how to fold a samosa.
• 56:53
  And so, um, and I, I think, I think visually, very often in general, a
• 56:57
  huge fan of comic books, et cetera.
• 56:59
  So in balancing those two, um, I would, I should also mention our publisher.
• 57:04
  We, we signed a hybrid published deal publishing deal, which is one we're in.
• 57:08
  We, as authors took on the risk, but we got to work with a fully stacked
• 57:11
  company, um, which meant for us, we had an immense amount of latitude in determining
• 57:16
  how we wanted this book to come out.
• 57:17
  So we truly got to make the book of our dreams.
• 57:19
  We paid for it, but we got to make the book of our dreams and had to compromise
• 57:22
  very little in the process, which we're extremely grateful to our publisher,
• 57:25
  the collective book studio for, um.
• 57:28
  But that's all to say that it was, uh, yeah, I, I, I knew that having photography
• 57:32
  and illustration on the same spread is a very tricky thing to pull off.
• 57:36
  I've seen it done in a couple books, but most of the time the two art forms take
• 57:40
  away from one another when they're facing on, on, on facing sides of a spread.
• 57:43
  So, uh, what I had was inspired by was, uh, the retro cookbooks or older
• 57:48
  cookbooks where they had color plates of just like all the photos in the middle.
• 57:52
  And that was a, a way for them to save money so that all the, the, um, the color.
• 57:56
  Pages were right in one in section.
• 57:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:58
  And the rest of the book was black and white, was what we were
• 58:00
  hearkening back to with our, uh, book.
• 58:02
  So we have all of our photos in a 32 page spread that covers
• 58:05
  all the dishes in the middle.
• 58:07
  Uh, and then the rest of the book, the primary visual currency is illustration.
• 58:11
  And so that allows both to coexist.
• 58:13
  Um, but, uh, but with some isolation from one another.
• 58:17
  And, um, yeah, we're so pleased to have stuck the landing with that.
• 58:19
  And a huge credit goes to our photographer, Kevin Zaki and our
• 58:22
  photo stylist, uh, and, um, Trina who, um, call who was wonderful.
• 58:28
  And, um, because, you know, having a 32 page spread of, of multiple dishes per
• 58:32
  page can be over, could, like, one could see how that could be overwhelming, but
• 58:35
  the way that they did it was so beautiful.
• 58:38
  Um, and, and, uh, of course to our illustrator, Olivia Kugler,
• 58:41
  who was just a dream to work with.
• 58:43
  But this was a lot of, like, I, I did a lot of the, the project management
• 58:46
  for both illustration and for photography, which I write more about
• 58:49
  in that newsletter if you're curious.
• 58:51
  But, um, yeah, we, we basically got two, um.
• 58:54
  Do an experiment with this book.
• 58:56
  Um, and I'm grateful to our publisher for allowing it, and I'm really glad
• 58:59
  that we, uh, we stuck in the landing too.
• 59:01
  Yeah.
• 59:01
  And with the photography then all set in signatures at the middle of the book,
• 59:05
  were you able to use those to instruct in terms of like maybe menus or groupings
• 59:10
  of food, whereas chapters might break them out into separate categories?
• 59:15
  Yeah, somewhat.
• 59:16
  Yes.
• 59:16
  We did.
• 59:16
  Like we, we have a few menus, set menus at the end of the book and some
• 59:19
  of the photos like correlate to that.
• 59:21
  Other ones like, you know, we have a drink spread and a dessert spread.
• 59:24
  Yeah.
• 59:24
  Whereas necessarily Right.
• 59:26
  Totally.
• 59:27
  Yeah.
• 59:27
  So we did do some of that.
• 59:28
  Um, we sort of like it, it was, it's a combination.
• 59:30
  I think we did some complimentary things, some things you'd eat with other things
• 59:33
  and other ones where it's just like, these are a bunch of the flatbreads.
• 59:36
  That's fun to see.
• 59:37
  Yeah.
• 59:37
  Also, I think we had grouped our dishes according to the, uh, ease and difficulty
• 59:42
  of, of cooking because we cooked.
• 59:45
  All these hundred, uh, or 99 dishes in those 10 days or nine days.
• 59:51
  And, uh, so we would have a morning session, a late morning session,
• 59:56
  and then an afternoon session and everything was cooked and eaten.
• 1:00:01
  Yeah.
• 1:00:01
  Uh, there was nothing from, no, none of the photographs are from stock.
• 1:00:05
  And, um, so also the difficulty of cooking, the ease of cooking and how
• 1:00:10
  quickly we could get these ready to get on, uh, the table for photography.
• 1:00:17
  Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  So that also came into account.
• 1:00:21
  Yeah.
• 1:00:21
  I think stock photography is very problematic in cookbooks because
• 1:00:26
  you can't guarantee, unless it's an maybe an ingredient photo, that it's
• 1:00:30
  going to be reflective of the recipe.
• 1:00:32
  Oh.
• 1:00:33
  It really screws the author over as far as we've heard, like we've heard so
• 1:00:35
  many horror stories from Don't, don't.
• 1:00:37
  Right.
• 1:00:37
  Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  I've written cookbooks on my own and, um.
• 1:00:42
  I don't know if they tried to pull a stock photo in once and I
• 1:00:45
  said it isn't gonna work because I don't garnish my soup with that.
• 1:00:48
  I don't even cook anything that looks like that.
• 1:00:50
  The answer is no.
• 1:00:51
  I would rather not have the photo in the book than choose
• 1:00:54
  a stock photo for some things.
• 1:00:55
  Totally.
• 1:00:56
  So, um, I think that, yeah, people who are writing books need to
• 1:00:59
  stand up for that kind of thing 'cause it does, it does matter.
• 1:01:02
  And of course with your hybrid publishing situation, you were able
• 1:01:06
  to, um, have a lot of say in it because the financial responsibility
• 1:01:11
  was yours and that means that you probably had a little bit more say.
• 1:01:15
  But, um, there probably are horror stories out there of people, you know, stock
• 1:01:18
  photography, things that don't match.
• 1:01:20
  But I think if anybody wants to write a book and then you're working with a
• 1:01:23
  traditional publisher, you just have to have some, um, very clear guidelines about
• 1:01:29
  the kind of stock photos you maybe would even accept if it's cinnamon sticks and
• 1:01:33
  you got a photo, you know, I mean, that's.
• 1:01:34
  What it is maybe, but it also has to fit the style of the book.
• 1:01:37
  'cause don't you think different photos have different settings?
• 1:01:41
  Absolutely.
• 1:01:41
  They have different mood to them.
• 1:01:42
  Right, right.
• 1:01:43
  It's gotta all fit together in my opinion.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  Totally, totally, totally.
• 1:01:47
  So I love how you settlement signature in the middle.
• 1:01:49
  I have to say.
• 1:01:49
  I haven't seen that done in a while, but it totally makes sense for
• 1:01:54
  what you were trying to achieve.
• 1:01:56
  Um, I like it.
• 1:01:58
  Very good.
• 1:01:58
  Really nice.
• 1:01:59
  Thank you very much.
• 1:02:00
  Really nice.
• 1:02:00
  Thank you.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  So, um, I'm sure you all realize then, as you're working on a book,
• 1:02:05
  we're moving, like you said, we're moving the photos along, we're
• 1:02:08
  moving the illustrations along.
• 1:02:10
  We're both writing, contributing, um, Joti.
• 1:02:14
  What kinds of things were you largely responsible for in the writing
• 1:02:17
  and putting together this book?
• 1:02:19
  So, of course, uh, these were all recipes from my classes.
• 1:02:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:23
  So they were recipes that are, uh, my family recipes, uh, from both my, uh,
• 1:02:30
  parents as well as my in-laws and, uh, then friend recipes that I have
• 1:02:35
  learned along the way with from friends.
• 1:02:38
  And so all that of course, and then the photography was part
• 1:02:43
  of my, um, responsibility.
• 1:02:47
  Uh, not, uh, uh, you know, the cooking for the photography was my responsibility.
• 1:02:53
  Uh, so we cooked 10 dishes every day for nine days.
• 1:02:58
  Yep.
• 1:02:58
  I mean, I was totally exhausted.
• 1:03:03
  Exhausted by the end of it.
• 1:03:04
  Uh, some are.
• 1:03:07
  Some are simpler, but then there is a lot that is more involved and
• 1:03:12
  those meat dishes take a long time.
• 1:03:14
  So those, uh, how they looked and how they tasted, of course, because my
• 1:03:21
  photographer are, I mean, our photographer are, uh, um, a, um, prop artist.
• 1:03:27
  Our, uh, uh, stylist, everybody.
• 1:03:31
  And our, we had our art director from the publishing company.
• 1:03:35
  Everybody was eating lunch here at our house.
• 1:03:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:03:38
  Some of them were even staying here.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah.
• 1:03:40
  And so we needed to have food.
• 1:03:42
  And so this was the food that was consumed.
• 1:03:45
  So this is all authentic.
• 1:03:47
  It is.
• 1:03:48
  And, uh, um, it was all cooked by me.
• 1:03:52
  Uh, we did also learn a few, uh, photography tricks that
• 1:03:58
  we had never, ever imagined.
• 1:04:00
  To be, to, to exist.
• 1:04:04
  But they did the flatbreads that are in the pictures where we make the
• 1:04:10
  roti, you know, the, and then we have a deep fried bread to make them stay
• 1:04:16
  puffed for as long as it took them to photograph was a challenge because, you
• 1:04:22
  know, within a few minutes, uh, after a few minutes, they will collapse.
• 1:04:27
  So our uh, food stylist, who was absolutely a wonderful, wonderful, lovely
• 1:04:34
  lady who's now become a friend, she put paper towels underneath, uh, split them
• 1:04:43
  inside, split it into an inside puffed up.
• 1:04:46
  Keep it puffed up.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  It was just, we would in hysterics when we.
• 1:04:51
  When, when she was doing all this, but it was wonderful.
• 1:04:54
  Yeah.
• 1:04:54
  So yes, those were my two big responsibilities.
• 1:04:58
  The writing was all oyen.
• 1:05:00
  Uh, a lot of the decision making, even though oyen, uh, most of the
• 1:05:06
  times would, would, would, uh, ask me.
• 1:05:09
  And of course I had, uh, I rarely said no to anything that he asked.
• 1:05:15
  Uh, that was all his department.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah.
• 1:05:18
  Now I'm a mother.
• 1:05:19
  Is that true Oyen?
• 1:05:21
  Did you rarely say?
• 1:05:23
  Yeah.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah.
• 1:05:24
  So my, my mom, um, my, my mom also, like my mom also held the purse strings.
• 1:05:28
  So the, the, uh, the, the financing of this whole thing.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  I, again, I'm a musician by trade, so Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  Um, the, the hybrid publishing model model would not have worked for me.
• 1:05:35
  Yeah.
• 1:05:35
  Um, no.
• 1:05:36
  My mom allowed me a massive amount of agency with this.
• 1:05:39
  Um, I mean, there, there was one phase of our, this process that was
• 1:05:43
  violent, which was our recipe testing.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Um, we're in, uh.
• 1:05:48
  I mistook myself as a, as a, um, equal of my mother's.
• 1:05:51
  And I, I have one, uh, which I'm, I'm not and will never be in the kitchen.
• 1:05:55
  Um, but there's a, the, the relevant newsletter installment that I wrote
• 1:05:58
  about this was called At Noon We Fight and it's how we built in time for
• 1:06:01
  altercations during our recipe testing in order to just get through the thing.
• 1:06:04
  Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Um, a lot of screaming, a lot of crying, a lot of very rude
• 1:06:07
  things said to one another.
• 1:06:08
  Uh, that has mostly been forgiven at this point, although, although
• 1:06:11
  we've come up with new ones while on tour, uh, that's been good.
• 1:06:14
  But, um, yeah, no, I, it is my mom.
• 1:06:17
  I, I otherwise, uh, fully agree with what my mom's saying.
• 1:06:19
  I, she, she allowed, like, I, I got to see through a vision that I had, and that's,
• 1:06:22
  I think a thing that I'm very grateful to my music background for, like my band.
• 1:06:28
  We are very protective of our creative agency.
• 1:06:31
  So, uh, we've been offered major label deals in the past and have opted
• 1:06:35
  not to take them so that we could make exactly the record we want to.
• 1:06:38
  We are also, however, not Coldplay, so, or Taylor Swift.
• 1:06:41
  So maybe, maybe we, we could be doing, maybe we could be making
• 1:06:44
  more money doing things another way, but we, we have chosen not to.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Uh, and very happily so and so with this book, I think I had a pretty
• 1:06:51
  specific vision for what I wanted it to look like or, uh, that developed as
• 1:06:54
  I was writing and coming up with it.
• 1:06:56
  And my mom was great.
• 1:06:57
  Like, I really got to do what I, what I wanted.
• 1:06:59
  Um, the, the, the friction that occurred was really in, in the,
• 1:07:01
  uh, writing of the recipes part of it, which, um, is I think just an
• 1:07:05
  inevitable thing when there are two, two very strong creative visions there.
• 1:07:09
  Um, but anytime the hierarchy was clear, which was the case with our touring, I'm
• 1:07:13
  the tour management, my mom is the talent.
• 1:07:15
  Very clear.
• 1:07:16
  Um, the writing of the book, I was writing my mom, I like, I let my mom sort of
• 1:07:20
  sign off on things, but otherwise I had.
• 1:07:22
  Freedom to do what I wanted photography.
• 1:07:24
  My mom ran the kitchen.
• 1:07:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:25
  I was spreadsheet all fine.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  It's really only in, in the recipe testing where, uh, we both thought
• 1:07:30
  of ourselves as sort of like top dog.
• 1:07:31
  That that was very much not the case.
• 1:07:33
  Um, but yeah, otherwise it was pretty, pretty, pretty smooth I'd say.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  And the neat thing about a cookbook project is it's, it is a finite project,
• 1:07:42
  but the book has infinite potential to reach people and to talk to people.
• 1:07:46
  And so your time and effort that you put into it is now able to be
• 1:07:52
  multiplied, you know, over and over again through the life of this book.
• 1:07:56
  And I think that's one of the things that, um, is different from a food blog where
• 1:08:00
  you would be investing time every day.
• 1:08:03
  And you're probably even learning that with substack if you gotta
• 1:08:06
  feed the beast, so to speak.
• 1:08:07
  Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  One of my favorite things about, one of my favorite newsletter, bits of
• 1:08:11
  newsletter advice that I took was.
• 1:08:13
  Make it a limited edition.
• 1:08:14
  Like have a, have a, have a, um, an end date.
• 1:08:16
  So really the, the Substack as far as I'm concerned, ended on
• 1:08:20
  the release date of the book.
• 1:08:21
  I wrote pretty religiously every two weeks from January through September.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  And now when I write, it's like when I want to.
• 1:08:26
  Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  Um, it's just giving updates.
• 1:08:28
  But truly, like for those of you out there and listen, our world who are
• 1:08:30
  thinking about starting a newsletter, but you're not sure you wanna make the
• 1:08:33
  commitment, have it be a project where it's like a, have have a defined end date
• 1:08:38
  so that you can have some time to reflect afterwards as opposed to just getting
• 1:08:41
  into the Feed The Beast issue that you described just now, Maggie, which is Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  Tricky thing.
• 1:08:45
  Especially in today's content of Obsessed World.
• 1:08:47
  Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  So what's it like being a writer?
• 1:08:50
  Um, for, you know, for reading's sake and not writing for music's sake?
• 1:08:56
  Oh, such fun.
• 1:08:57
  I mean, I, I do think, um,
• 1:09:01
  I, I think of.
• 1:09:03
  Writing for music, writing, uh, like prose writing lyrics, um, even
• 1:09:08
  writing emails, uh, correspondence.
• 1:09:10
  All of it is like, uh, can, can be an art form and can be a thing that weighs on
• 1:09:14
  you, depending on how you think about it.
• 1:09:16
  And, um, but all of it has to do with sort of expression.
• 1:09:19
  And for me, especially, uh, when I'm writing with the band, I'm getting to
• 1:09:23
  play with words with my friends that we're gonna go sing with the cookbook.
• 1:09:27
  I'm playing with words with my mom for a thing we're putting together.
• 1:09:30
  It's like I'm getting to splash around in language with someone I
• 1:09:33
  love, or groups of people I love.
• 1:09:35
  So it all feels like not that far off.
• 1:09:37
  I think, um, for perhaps if I was like very virtuo in one of those, uh,
• 1:09:41
  I would feel differently about like, oh, I'm, I'm not as good in this,
• 1:09:45
  or, or this doesn't feel as as easy.
• 1:09:46
  But, um, they all sort of feel similar and it's just like I'm
• 1:09:50
  getting to have a really good time and I'm very grateful for that.
• 1:09:52
  Yeah, and I think I've, I dunno if I've talked about this on the podcast before,
• 1:09:55
  but you know, music has pretty much eight, eight notes, sharps flats, but you know.
• 1:10:01
  A variety of, uh, ranges of the notes, but they're all pretty of those, there's
• 1:10:06
  a limited amount of notes, right?
• 1:10:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:09
  Same for the English language, 26 letters.
• 1:10:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:10:13
  And how in the, but we've barely even scratched the surface is an infinite
• 1:10:17
  potential of both of those combinations of not just letters turning into words and
• 1:10:22
  how they're combined, people's stories.
• 1:10:25
  And then music the same thing.
• 1:10:26
  You know, what, how the notes are put together, how the music's put together.
• 1:10:30
  And, um, I find.
• 1:10:33
  The similarities with cooking too.
• 1:10:36
  I think of ingredients like words or like notes.
• 1:10:40
  Yeah.
• 1:10:40
  And then we put them together in a recipe and we orchestrate that
• 1:10:45
  into a meal and we feed people.
• 1:10:47
  The human experience on the end of all of those is, uh,
• 1:10:51
  experience, hopefully, of joy.
• 1:10:52
  It's an experience of, um, maybe enthusiasm.
• 1:10:55
  If people taste something new or hear something new or read something new, it
• 1:10:59
  can touch us in, in our soul, really.
• 1:11:02
  I believe food and music and words Absolutely.
• 1:11:04
  Can all, all do that.
• 1:11:05
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:05
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:05
  And I think it's fascinating that both of you came together to write this book
• 1:11:11
  and bring both of your backgrounds to it.
• 1:11:14
  And, um, Jody, we didn't even touch on the food as medicine
• 1:11:18
  part of all of this, right.
• 1:11:21
  Right.
• 1:11:21
  That is so much.
• 1:11:23
  I believe if people would cook at home more, we would be a lot healthier.
• 1:11:27
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:28
  Society and people without a doubt.
• 1:11:30
  Yes.
• 1:11:31
  Yeah, without a doubt.
• 1:11:33
  What you were describing just now about that, that, um, the different ways of,
• 1:11:36
  of, or those different art forms, there's a, a German concept of Laben kunstler.
• 1:11:41
  Are you familiar with that?
• 1:11:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:11:42
  Concept.
• 1:11:42
  So laben kunzler means life artist in German.
• 1:11:45
  And the way it's used in the German language is like, oh, like
• 1:11:48
  Maggie's a real laben kunzler, like her car got broken into.
• 1:11:51
  But she handled it very gracefully.
• 1:11:52
  It's sort of how she lives her life, how Maggie lives, her life
• 1:11:54
  is very graceful and artistic.
• 1:11:55
  And a corollary that I like thinking about is like, all
• 1:12:00
  aspects of life are art, is art.
• 1:12:01
  Like how you, how you wake up, how you interact with your friends,
• 1:12:04
  how you, um, how you cook, um, how you take care of yourself.
• 1:12:08
  Sometimes that art is less artfully done, of course.
• 1:12:10
  And then whatever outlet you choose to be, to be.
• 1:12:14
  To be putting out into the world, whether it's poetry, whether it's musical
• 1:12:17
  writing, songwriting, whether it's, um, writing for a blog, whether it's emails
• 1:12:20
  to friends, conversation, cooking.
• 1:12:22
  Those are different outlets.
• 1:12:23
  And oftentimes it's the, the, the same artist is going to be
• 1:12:26
  expressing very similar sentiments through those different outlets.
• 1:12:29
  And you might be more or less well practiced in, um, in any one of them.
• 1:12:33
  But it's the same thing.
• 1:12:34
  It feels like truly.
• 1:12:34
  And so, like right to me, all of those things feel like, uh, when it's
• 1:12:38
  coming outta the same person, it's, it's sort of, um, there's a resonance
• 1:12:40
  there that's really beautiful.
• 1:12:41
  I think so too.
• 1:12:42
  And a lot of it then depends on the input, like what, where the
• 1:12:44
  input you're getting comes from.
• 1:12:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:46
  Because I think that's actually recycled through what we do as well.
• 1:12:49
  Totally.
• 1:12:49
  Why I call the podcast cookbook Love.
• 1:12:52
  It happened to stem from my love of this genre of book, but it was more than that.
• 1:12:58
  It was, it was about.
• 1:12:59
  The people behind the recipes, the structure of the recipes,
• 1:13:03
  the way that dishes go together.
• 1:13:05
  And then of course, it blossomed into this whole world of meeting people like
• 1:13:09
  you who are creating a single book.
• 1:13:12
  But that together we have this whole, uh, all these stories being told about people
• 1:13:18
  and their food and, um, often like we kind of go back their, their family story, but
• 1:13:23
  I think it's still important to, um, tell that story and to have people meet each
• 1:13:30
  other through, uh, cookbooks and Totally.
• 1:13:33
  Um, so in talking about the book and like my, for my listeners, when people, um,
• 1:13:40
  maybe can get a copy of Heartland Masala or they can check it out from the library
• 1:13:45
  or they can in investigate it somehow, um, how would you steer them into this book
• 1:13:50
  and what would you recommend that they do to really get a great experience of it?
• 1:13:57
  I would recommend starting with the front matter.
• 1:13:59
  Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  And, um, reading that just to get it, like, I think we, uh, I'm, I'm
• 1:14:03
  very pleased with how we were able to frame what we're doing with the book.
• 1:14:06
  Um, and it's not, it's not a terribly long read, but I think starting there
• 1:14:10
  and then choosing recipes based on your comfort level and experience within
• 1:14:14
  Indian cooking, there are plenty of recipes in there that are, uh, very
• 1:14:18
  beginner friendly, I think are lemon rice.
• 1:14:20
  Um, our masala, Brussels sprouts, um, are, uh, bacon, hot corn shot, uh, corn shot.
• 1:14:26
  Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  The, that's, um, yes, I think it is the vegetable session, watermelon
• 1:14:30
  section, spiced watermelon.
• 1:14:31
  If, if, if you're in summertime, then those, those, the corn
• 1:14:34
  and the watermelon for sure.
• 1:14:35
  Um, and if you're feeling a little more plucky, uh, jump into the flatbreads,
• 1:14:39
  uh, go for some of the meat dishes.
• 1:14:41
  Yeah, I think those, those are, those are a lot of fun.
• 1:14:43
  Um, and, uh, but I think the, uh, the, yeah, starting with the front
• 1:14:47
  matter is where I, I I would go.
• 1:14:48
  And then also if, if spices are at all intimidating, that back matter, uh,
• 1:14:52
  which is the, um, the spice glossary is a great place to poke around
• 1:14:55
  just to get comfortable with the idea of playing around with spices.
• 1:14:58
  Um, so yeah, that's my recommendation I think.
• 1:15:00
  Yeah.
• 1:15:02
  What do you, what do you think?
• 1:15:03
  You know, I totally agree with Oyen and I also think giving somebody this
• 1:15:08
  book and telling them this is for you to read, for you to take, which in
• 1:15:14
  whichever way you want to make it as is in the book or do a riff on it.
• 1:15:20
  And we have had restaurants, uh, that have actually done rifts on
• 1:15:25
  this and had have done dinners, uh, in, um, uh, in honor of the book.
• 1:15:31
  And they have just, they created magnificent dishes.
• 1:15:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:15:36
  One of them had done, um, a saffron risotto and put an
• 1:15:42
  Indian Rogan, Josh on top of it.
• 1:15:44
  It was to die for.
• 1:15:46
  It was so good.
• 1:15:48
  Another one had, um, combined two recipes together of our desserts.
• 1:15:53
  One is a fruit cream.
• 1:15:54
  They're both very simple recipes and the other is a fruit chart.
• 1:15:58
  Which is basically cut fruit with this spice blend on top.
• 1:16:02
  And he had taken both those and combined it and, uh, made it into a
• 1:16:08
  bouquet of fruits, sliced cut fruits with a little, uh, bowl in the center.
• 1:16:15
  Like you have the statements in the kale, uh, statements and, and
• 1:16:20
  put some um, um, uh, cream and um, cu custard kind of a thing in it.
• 1:16:27
  And you could dip your fruit in it if you wanted, or you
• 1:16:29
  could have your fruit as is.
• 1:16:31
  It was just so beautiful.
• 1:16:32
  So we want everyone to get inspired by it and take it to whichever
• 1:16:40
  level they want to, because anytime you are adding good things to a
• 1:16:47
  dish, it'll always taste wonderful.
• 1:16:50
  Yep.
• 1:16:50
  That's great.
• 1:16:51
  And so that's where I would.
• 1:16:54
  Okay.
• 1:16:55
  And what's next for you?
• 1:16:57
  Two for me, and I don't know, together separate.
• 1:17:02
  I told, I told Oen I have 500 more recipes.
• 1:17:06
  Let's get on with another one.
• 1:17:08
  I, I think he says You find another co-author.
• 1:17:11
  Yeah.
• 1:17:11
  I'm so, I'm so excited.
• 1:17:12
  Those of you in listener world, if anyone who wants to work on a cookbook with
• 1:17:15
  my mom, know that she is on the hunt.
• 1:17:18
  She has five more books.
• 1:17:19
  Um, yeah, I feel, I feel, um, I think there's a, there's an element
• 1:17:23
  of, um, I'm very pleased to not be, uh, a professional, uh, anything
• 1:17:30
  in co in, in, in the world of the, the, uh, like in culinary world, um,
• 1:17:35
  just because I think there's often a pressure to, like, you release and
• 1:17:37
  you do another thing and you release.
• 1:17:38
  And, um, this was an eight year project.
• 1:17:42
  I feel like I got to, I don't feel like I left anything on the
• 1:17:45
  cutting room table, like it was, I I got to sort of make the book.
• 1:17:49
  Uh, there, there's, there's, I, I said what I wanted to in the book, I
• 1:17:52
  think, and I'm very pleased with that.
• 1:17:53
  Um, I like, feel like I have a lot of cookbook related knowledge that is
• 1:17:58
  otherwise use useless, so I'd be psyched to, to serve as like a cookbook doula
• 1:18:02
  for some friends, cookbooks or, you know, friends around restaurants who are
• 1:18:05
  interested in putting something together.
• 1:18:07
  Um, have, have a lot of interest in forage and wild foods that I'm excited
• 1:18:10
  to, to dive into a little more.
• 1:18:11
  Yeah.
• 1:18:11
  But truly this has been such an, um, a beautiful but also all consuming project,
• 1:18:17
  uh, that to have some time away from it.
• 1:18:19
  Um, and as much as I love my mother also spending time with my mom where we aren't.
• 1:18:23
  Working on something, uh, is gonna be great.
• 1:18:25
  Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Uh, so yeah, no, no vision on my end.
• 1:18:28
  I think taking some a long time away from anything related to cookbooks
• 1:18:31
  is my, is my hope and dream and I'm very excited to pursue that.
• 1:18:34
  Sounds great.
• 1:18:35
  And you've both got different visions of what's next, 500 more recipes.
• 1:18:39
  Is that really true?
• 1:18:41
  Yeah, it's true.
• 1:18:42
  She's not right about that.
• 1:18:43
  I have about 600 in my Wow.
• 1:18:45
  That I have taught in my class.
• 1:18:46
  Yes.
• 1:18:47
  Over the years.
• 1:18:47
  Yep.
• 1:18:48
  Yes.
• 1:18:48
  In 15 years.
• 1:18:49
  That's, well, I got an idea.
• 1:18:50
  Just put slap 'em in a spiral bound book and put the photos in.
• 1:18:53
  How about that?
• 1:18:55
  Excellent idea, Maggie.
• 1:18:55
  Excellent idea.
• 1:18:57
  Like, oh no, I can't do that now.
• 1:18:59
  No, that's great.
• 1:19:01
  Alright, so my last, as we're wrapping up, I have love to ask this question
• 1:19:05
  to all my guests, and since we're talk about cookbooks, I'd like to know
• 1:19:09
  if you all have a favorite cookbook that has, um, been an inspiration to
• 1:19:14
  you or something you turn to, or just a favorite cookbook for any reason.
• 1:19:19
  And if you both have one, that's great.
• 1:19:21
  Um, I'm, I love to hear.
• 1:19:23
  Question.
• 1:19:23
  So I have one that I have, you know, since I was a young mother that I have been, um,
• 1:19:30
  um, cooking from it and consulting it just to, um, and it is, uh, it's a cookbook
• 1:19:39
  that is, uh, I don't think would be familiar to the American audiences because
• 1:19:43
  it is, uh, a, a paperback and I had bought it because my mother recommended it to me.
• 1:19:51
  And it is by Pritham, ob, oily, and it is called, it's just called Indian Cookery.
• 1:19:57
  That's all that it's called.
• 1:19:59
  Published in 1986.
• 1:20:00
  Hmm.
• 1:20:00
  A good while ago.
• 1:20:01
  Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  But I, was it the original or I, oh, I'm not sure.
• 1:20:04
  It was, I'm wondering if it was, uh, way before, because my, was
• 1:20:08
  it that ENG English language book?
• 1:20:10
  Yes.
• 1:20:10
  Yes.
• 1:20:10
  Yeah, it's, it looks like this.
• 1:20:12
  Oh yeah, India.
• 1:20:13
  Okay.
• 1:20:14
  Yeah.
• 1:20:14
  This is what it looks, likeI spelled U-B-E-R-O-I.
• 1:20:17
  Uhhuh.
• 1:20:18
  Yeah.
• 1:20:19
  And it was for 25 rupees at the time, which is like 50 cents.
• 1:20:23
  Yeah.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah.
• 1:20:24
  Maybe 25 cents.
• 1:20:25
  And did you use that to read or to inspire you to some recipes?
• 1:20:30
  Yeah.
• 1:20:30
  This is not, it's recipes.
• 1:20:32
  There's no reading here like that.
• 1:20:34
  Yeah.
• 1:20:34
  That is a much newer concept.
• 1:20:37
  Yeah.
• 1:20:37
  Than, although some people like to, I mean, I was kind of geeky and
• 1:20:40
  like I love to read the recipes.
• 1:20:42
  Like, I don't know.
• 1:20:44
  Yeah.
• 1:20:44
  I mean, I could have sat down with a and Lisa.
• 1:20:46
  Yeah.
• 1:20:47
  These have no history.
• 1:20:49
  It just says ingredients, the straight recipes, name of the recipe,
• 1:20:52
  ingredients, and then procedure.
• 1:20:54
  That's it.
• 1:20:54
  Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  Very simple.
• 1:20:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:20:56
  Interesting.
• 1:20:56
  So that's what wa was my go-to when I was a young cook.
• 1:21:00
  And I still will off and on, uh, look at it because I, if I
• 1:21:05
  need some help with the recipe.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah.
• 1:21:07
  Very good.
• 1:21:07
  Yeah, I think my, the resp or the, the book that I, um.
• 1:21:13
  My favorite Indian cookbook and, and one of my favorite cookbooks period
• 1:21:16
  is, um, called My Bombay Kitchen by Nila for IIA King, which, uh, I, my
• 1:21:21
  mom and I had the, the great pleasure of getting to hang out with Nila
• 1:21:24
  for, at her, um, at her home Nice.
• 1:21:26
  In, uh, San Francisco, uh, while we were on our book tour, which was like one
• 1:21:30
  of the highlights of the tour for sure.
• 1:21:32
  Um, that book is just beautifully done.
• 1:21:34
  Uh, she's such a good writer and it is absolutely a book that I can read
• 1:21:39
  through just like cover to cover, um, without any being anywhere near
• 1:21:43
  a kitchen and have a great time.
• 1:21:44
  So, uh, she's just, I I, I, I mean, I think, I think of reading an author as
• 1:21:50
  similar to hanging out with that person.
• 1:21:52
  Um, it's a, a not fully a one way conversation, but pretty close to it.
• 1:21:55
  So it, it takes a lot to sort of want to hang with someone that much.
• 1:21:57
  And she's so good.
• 1:21:59
  I could hang with her all the time.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah.
• 1:22:00
  Really, really?
• 1:22:00
  What fun.
• 1:22:01
  Yeah.
• 1:22:01
  And if you stepped into her home and you looked at, you looked at her book and the
• 1:22:05
  way she lived her life and what she did, in my opinion, it should be very like.
• 1:22:09
  Congruent between both of those.
• 1:22:10
  Totally.
• 1:22:10
  Yeah.
• 1:22:11
  It was, it was a lovely, complimentary, lovely experience.
• 1:22:14
  Yes.
• 1:22:14
  That's wonderful.
• 1:22:14
  That's wonderful.
• 1:22:16
  Well, why don't you tell everybody how they can connect
• 1:22:18
  with you online if they can.
• 1:22:21
  Yeah, totally.
• 1:22:21
  Of course.
• 1:22:21
  Absolutely.
• 1:22:22
  Thank you all.
• 1:22:22
  Thank you, Maggie, so much for having us.
• 1:22:24
  And, and thank you for listening.
• 1:22:25
  Uh, all of you dear listeners, in, in, in, uh, podcast world.
• 1:22:29
  Um, so we, uh, are not on social media, but we are, um, I am writing
• 1:22:35
  this Substack, uh, which is at, um, Heartland Masala HQ on, uh, Substack,
• 1:22:41
  which is a newsletter hosting platform.
• 1:22:43
  Uh, you can connect with me directly there.
• 1:22:46
  Um, alternatively my, if you have any questions about the book, my
• 1:22:48
  email address is just my first name, dot my last name at Gmail.
• 1:22:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:22:52
  And welcome, welcome correspondence.
• 1:22:54
  Um.
• 1:22:55
  And otherwise, uh, that's, that's, I think those, those are the best ways to, to
• 1:22:58
  be in touch and we really appreciate it.
• 1:23:00
  My band also, in case you're curious to listen, is called
• 1:23:02
  Darling Side, D-A-R-L-I-N-G-S-I-D-E.
• 1:23:05
  And my band is on social media and uh, and on Spotify and all the things as well.
• 1:23:09
  Wonderful.
• 1:23:10
  And they are also referred to as two Simons and two Garfunkel
• 1:23:14
  by the Wall Street Journal.
• 1:23:15
  Very sweet.
• 1:23:16
  I'm gonna have to add 'em to my playlist.
• 1:23:19
  I, Spotify.
• 1:23:19
  Spotify, please.
• 1:23:20
  Yes.
• 1:23:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:23:21
  Yes.
• 1:23:21
  I think it's wonderful.
• 1:23:22
  I, um, this is my first interview I've done where we have cooking and music
• 1:23:27
  and writing and words altogether.
• 1:23:28
  I feel like it's a dream come true 'cause I've always had that thought,
• 1:23:32
  um, about the notes in the music, the words and our, and uh, the
• 1:23:38
  language and ingredients in food.
• 1:23:40
  And, um, so it's been terrific to meet you both.
• 1:23:43
  And a mother son duo writing a beautiful book.
• 1:23:47
  Heartland Masala, an Indian cookbook from an American kitchen.
• 1:23:53
  Thanks so much, Maggie.
• 1:23:54
  Thank you Maggie.
• 1:23:55
  Yeah, have a great day.
• 1:23:56
  You too.
• 1:23:56
  Thank you.
• 1:23:57
  You too.
• 1:23:58
  Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 1:24:03
  Again, all the links can be found in the show notes@www.cookbooklove.co.
• 1:24:08
  And if you are interested in writing a cookbook of your own, please check out the
• 1:24:13
  free cookbook writing masterclass called How to Get Paid to Write a Cookbook.
• 1:24:18
  It is designed specifically for food or nutrition experts,
• 1:24:22
  and you can check that out at www.cookbookwritersacademy.com/free.
• 1:24:30
  So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:24:33
  This is your host, Maggie Green, and until next time, have a great.
• 1:24:37
  And keep loving your cookbooks.
• 1:24:43
  Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:24:46
  You can find out more information@www.cookbooklove.co.