Asma Khan on her unstoppable quest for social change in the food industry.

Desert Island Dishes

In this episode of Desert Island Dishes, host Margie Nomura interviews award-winning chef Asma Khan about her journey from a PhD in law to running

Key takeaways

• Asma Khan's palate was shaped by the intersection of two distinct Indian food cultures: rice-based Bengal and wheat-based arid regions.
• She discusses the profound social impact of dowry and the gendered devaluation of daughters in South Asian society.

Main topics

• Childhood culinary memories
• Gender inequality in India

Notable quotes

Food is a language of love.

Conclusion

An inspiring testament to using one's personal history and culinary pa

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi, I'm Margie Nomura and welcome to the Desert Island Dishes podcast. This is the podcast where every week I ask my guests to choose their seven desert island dishes. These range from finding out about the dish that most reminds them of their childhood, the best dish they've ever eaten, and of course, the last dish they would choose to eat before being cast off to the desert island. The question is, what would you choose as your last meal? Speaker 2 (0:30) Hi, how are you all? Do you know, the most amazing thing about this job is really the people that I get to meet and talk to. I've admired Asma and her work for many years now. I absolutely loved her episode of Chef's Table on Netflix. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. So it really was a pleasure to sit down with her and hear her story firsthand. The work she does is truly amazing and it feels like she's only really just getting started. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. My guest today is Asma Khan. Asma is an award-winning chef, best-selling cookbook writer and owner of one of London's most loved Indian restaurants, the Darjeeling Express. Not only does she hold a PhD in British constitutional law and is an honorary fellow at Oxford University, she was the first British chef to feature on Netflix's famed show Chef's Table. She's written three cookbooks whilst running her restaurant with a kitchen staffed entirely by women. Time magazine named her one of 2024's 100 most influential people. And in 2019, Business Insider named her number one on their list of 100 coolest people in food and drink. While she found her love and passion of cooking, perhaps later in life compared to some, Asma's tenacity and drive make her now one of the UK's most respected chefs. Her latest book, Monsoon, is out now. Welcome, Asma. Thank you. Thank you very much. In 2019, Business Insider named you number one on the 100 coolest people in food and drink. That's pretty cool. Like, how does that feel? Speaker 1 (2:10) Oh, my God. My first reaction was, oh, my God, finally, my kids are going to think I'm cool because someone else called me cool. Number one. Yeah, but it felt really good. And, you know, I was a bit embarrassed as well and grateful. Yeah, it felt great. Speaker 2 (2:27) Do those accolades, do they mean a lot? Speaker 1 (2:32) They mean a lot and they also don't mean anything. It's at two layers. They mean a lot because I then look at all the other people who I know probably working harder than me and are deserving of the accolade that I was given. So I feel very humbled at that level. But I also feel that, you know... Speaker 1 (2:55) I have a much bigger fish to fry. I'm always trying to think of how I can open more doors for other women, how I can make a difference, how I can get my story out. So in some ways, these things help because your voice reaches to a different audience. But personally, I don't take these things very seriously. I don't take myself very seriously. I think of it more like a kind of opportunity to do some good. and reach out to a great new audience. When Speaker 2 (3:26) you were talking about the director of Netflix's Chef's Table, you said, she didn't ask me any pointless questions about my husband and marriage, and I didn't need to explain what my mother meant to me. She just got it. So Asma, I'm going to try very hard to have that in my head and emulate her and not ask you any pointless questions. But we are going to dive straight into the first desire. Absolutely. That's the dish that most reminds you of your childhood. Speaker 1 (3:51) It's something called aloo chop. Aloo is potato. Chop is basically like a patty. But it's something that we ate more than two, three times a week. It's potatoes stuffed with mince. And the only thing that's used to spice the mint is salt and pepper. It's an Anglo-Indian dish. It's a British-influenced dish. And then, you know, the potato patty is dipped in crumb and then it's deep fried. And that I used to always love with ketchup. That is my favorite dish. And finally, I have the recipe in Monsoon. And I love that Nigella Lawson picked that dish up because there is something very British about that dish. and Calcutta being the capital of the empire in India. That influence, aloo chop, that's distinctive. So there are no masalas, no Indian spices in it. It's just salt and pepper. But that is my absolutely ultimate favorite childhood dish and my favorite dish even now. So Speaker 2 (4:55) you'd have that several times a week? Speaker 1 (4:56) Yeah, yeah. Also, I think that it's also inexpensive. In a family where you couldn't, if you cut up a chicken into eight pieces, we always have our chicken jointed. Not everybody, not all the sizes of this. Joints are the same. But aloo chop was always something that was inexpensive and filling and kids loved it and it was not spicy. So even very young kids could eat it. Speaker 2 (5:21) One of the things that I thought was so fascinating about your childhood was that your parents were both from different regions and actually both from different royal families. You say them being from different regions was actually really rare, but it was something that's turned out to be a huge benefit. to you because you have these two cultural influences. Tell me a little bit about that. Speaker 1 (5:42) Yeah, it's really to do with the staple, rice and wheat. Bengal is, you know, Bay of Bengal. There's the delta, so great for growing rice. My father comes from a very arid region, which is perfect for wheat. So my father doesn't eat rice and my mother doesn't eat roti. Speaker 2 (6:01) Really? Speaker 1 (6:01) Yeah, because you ate what was local to you. Things have changed a lot now, but when they were growing up, even when I was growing up, you ate what was local to you. No one kind of cling film wrapped in a refrigerated lorry sent you food from outside. Now it's a different world. Let's not talk about now. I hate what's happening in Indiana. So my father would not eat rice and my mother would not eat ruri. And it makes a huge impact on what is it. that is being cooked. Speaker 2 (6:30) Because Speaker 1 (6:30) when there is roti, you do not have things that have got a lot of gravy in it, or they're put into bowls. Even the dal is very thick. Whereas if you're eating rice, everything has got a lot of gravy in it. The dal is very watery because you eat with your hands and that rice is so absorbent, it sucks up all that gravy and juice. Totally different. And also weather is very different. We don't really have in Bengal a winter. I mean, winter literally kisses you and goes away. Whereas where my father grew up, there was like three months of really cold, different food, things that were already kind of laden with spice because you needed that heat. You never ate them in Bengal because, my God, you don't want more heat. So really very different food cultures, completely different. So how did that work together under one roof? Well, luckily my mother had a catering business, so we had more than your average. number of cooks and chefs. We had a big kitchen, a commercial kitchen outside. So we used to have two kinds of cuisines. But that was a huge advantage because I got to try and taste two different styles of food. And I literally have picked whatever I liked and that's what I learned to cook. Speaker 2 (7:45) So Speaker 1 (7:46) I went back and learned to cook something from my father's region, something from my mother's region, which is unusual because the way arranged marriages work. in India traditionally, especially, you know, the people getting married in the 60s and 50s, is that people got you married to someone from your own region. Because India is very different with language, with food, everything. So you married people who were like you. So you tended to eat the same food. My father and mother were very different people, but were married off because they were both royal. So no one really cared about the fact that my mother ate rice, my father, this is irrelevant. People were just, you know, the matchmaker was just trying to get this done. Speaker 1 (8:24) They're both royal. Yeah, that was all they cared about. They were both royals, so that ticked boxes. The fact that they would not eat the same food, it didn't matter. Speaker 2 (8:33) You are the middle child. You have an older sister and a younger brother, and you say that your family lamented the birth of a second daughter instead of the desired son. And that there is a deafening silence in India about the disappointment a family feels at having a second daughter. I know that you're involved in this amazing charity even now, but is that a feeling that does still exist in India or is it getting less? Speaker 1 (8:58) I don't think it's getting less. But definitely there is still dowry. Girl is seen as a financial liability. More and more people are obsessed about these grand all singing, all dancing. weddings. Media is obsessed with these big celebrity weddings, which is with outrageous amount of money being spent. Everybody's aspiring to have a grand wedding for their daughter. It's seen as establishing your status. Marriage and daughters and honor are all interlinked. The honor of the family is always linked to the girl, never the boy. And this is why the girl has all these restrictions put on them. And there is a financial cost. When you have a daughter, you know you've got to pay for the wedding, pay for the dowry, and you've got to protect her honor and get her married and hope that she doesn't fall in love with someone inappropriate and runoff. The societal pressure of conforming is still there. And today, in most families, the entire asset is inherited by the boy. So whether it's the farm or the family house, the family shop, The business, no one gives assets to the girl because she's the outsider now. She's married to someone else. You want to keep it within your family. And I remember this, that my neighbor loudly said that, you know, when you have daughters, it's as if you're watering your neighbor's garden because she's not going to stay in your garden. We are married off. There's no question of not getting you married. In fact, everybody would question you. You would have failed as parents if you did not get your daughter married off in this grand ceremonial kind of display of wealth and power. Speaker 1 (10:45) All of this works against us. So change cannot happen when society as a whole still embraces all these values. This is our biggest challenge, that your parents may be progressive, but society as a whole is still very conservative. And they still have these norms. This is where we fall. I think that the big problem is when you have another girl, there is this panic and fear that what if you do not have a son? What is going to happen to our bloodline? I've met some really interesting women who've said that when they had only girls, that their father was constantly taunted, that who's going to carry your family name? And I'm not going to name her, but she went on to become an extremely powerful politician. Oh, wow. And she told me that she came straight after seeing the Netflix thing. She was so emotional. She said, I'm an extremely powerful politician. I am recognized in this country. And today my father is called. the father of with my name. Oh Speaker 2 (11:44) my goodness, that's giving me goosebumps. This Speaker 1 (11:46) is what is happening. That there is still that lamenting that who will carry your name? The irony of it all is that, especially the second girls and, you know, the ones who feel and internalize the sense of being othered and not being wanted. We go on and set the world on fire. Our parents are then called like you are the parents of so-and-so. Yeah. The girl. But still, when the asset is the boys and the surname is carried by the boy, the clan is always about the boy. Speaker 2 (12:23) You say an internalized feeling. Was that something that you were aware of as a child? Yes, but the Speaker 1 (12:30) thing is, it's interesting because I think after the initial disappointment that my mother was made to feel, she'd failed. Not by my dad, but by her own mother, who had five daughters. She kept telling my mother, you've got to make sure you don't have another daughter. And my mother did. So I think she found it very overwhelming. She was upset when I was born. But very soon after, I realized very quickly, they really loved me. I was made to feel very valued by my immediate family. Extended family, friends, society made me feel unwanted. Speaker 2 (13:03) I'm so sorry. Speaker 1 (13:05) No, but I think that all of us can relate to this who are girls in South Asia. But no one articulates it. I was very lucky that my parents didn't do it. And that I had this great inner confidence because of the love I got, especially the love from my sister and my brother. They made me feel like I was a superstar. But what happens to girls, it's a lifelong wound that never heals. I carry the wounds. My wounds are not healed. And from this festering wound comes this fire to make