Cook Samin Nosrat (‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’) Returns with ‘Good Things’

Eight years ago, cook and writer Samin Nosrat created a kitchen staple with Salt Fat Acid Heat https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/: a New York Times bestseller that later became a hit Netflix series. Nosrat returns with Good Things https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622646/good-things-by-samin-nosrat/, a collection of personal recipes straight from her dining table. We discuss the influences that shaped the book (8:30), the ephemerality (and pleasure) of produce (9:30), her complicated San Diego childhood growing up with Iranian parents (17:30), the high expectations placed before her (22:40), and how she eventually found her way to Chez Panisse in Berkeley (32:00). On the back-half, Samin talks about her salad days working in restaurants (46:00), grand openings and closings (42:30), the origins of Salt Fat Acid Heat (47:00), what The Bear gets right about cooking (1:00:25), and how she thinks about time (1:03:00) and ritual (1:07:40). This episode was recorded at Spotify Studios. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Sam Fragoso?

  Today, cook and writer Samin Nosrat. In 2017, she published Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, a book that became a runaway New York Times bestseller, earned the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook, and ultimately went on to inspire the Emmy-nominated Netflix series of the same name. If you've seen the show, read the book, or even heard her podcast, Home Cooking, what's immediately striking is Samin's enthusiasm. She relishes in sharing what she loves and who she loves with their audience. The baker who wakes up before dawn to make fresh bread. The farmer who travels hours to bring produce to the market.

• 1:20Sam Fragoso?

  The chef who drives miles and miles and miles to source the highest-quality produce for their meals. These are the people and stories that make up much of Samin's work. As for her story, she was raised in San Diego by Iranian immigrants, and came of age with an early appreciation for all things food. Her mother, often driving more than 80 miles in search of meals that tasted like home. She then went to study English at UC Berkeley, where admittedly, she spent more time working in kitchens than studying in classrooms. First at Chez Panisse, bussing tables, later at other local restaurants in Berkeley until about 2009.

• 2:03Sam Fragoso?

  We talk about each of those eras in today's conversation, and how they set the stage for both Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and her new book, Good Things, which is out on September 16th. It's a joyous collection of 125 recipes, filled with rituals and memories and friends. It's more personal than clinical, though. It reads basically like an invitation to come over, take a seat and enjoy the food that Samin so clearly takes pleasure in making and also eating. And so today, we begin by tracing the influences, both literary and culinary, that shaped this new book. And we also talk about rediscovering a love of cooking during the pandemic,

• 2:47Sam Fragoso?

  the joy of making a meal for your loved ones, the remarkable rise of salt, fat, acid, heat, what the bear gets right about cooking, and how Samin tries in her work and in her life to make every second count. This is Samin Nosrat.

• 3:18Sam Fragoso?

  Samin.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Sam.

• 3:19Sam Fragoso?

  Hi.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  My buddy.

• 3:21Sam Fragoso?

  We never met before.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  No, but we have similar names. Sam is my coffee name.

• 3:25Sam Fragoso?

  Is it really?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26Sam Fragoso?

  Because you don't trust that they'll spell Samin right?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  That, and also now I just want to attract as little attention to myself.

• 3:32Sam Fragoso?

  As little attention as possible. How are you doing?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Oh, that's really nice. Thanks. Um, I'm OK. It is an interesting thing to have to talk about yourself and what you've done and why. And so I worked really hard for the book tour, especially for the book events, to set it up so that I wouldn't have to do that for the in-person events. And I asked basically my friends and people who I admire to sit in conversation with me in the hope that we will have some sort of larger, meaningful conversation that's not just, tell me about your chicken recipe.

• 4:07Sam Fragoso?

  Let's, let's, let's give that a go.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  OK.

• 4:09Sam Fragoso?

  I think, I think we can do that. You started working in restaurants back in 1998 at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. But even as a sophomore in college, bussing tables, you had already developed a pretty complicated relationship to recipes. You were skeptical of them from moment one. And throughout the years, in every interview, and I do mean in every interview, you would say some variation of the sentence, "I am never, ever going to write a cookbook with recipes."

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I know, and here I've made a fool of myself. Enter a book of recipes.

• 4:51Sam Fragoso?

  For people who aren't watching, we have before us this new cookbook of excellent recipes.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  It's called, it's called Good Things. So to begin, what changed? Part of what has been going on for me since the first book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, came out, is that went on to be such a huge success in every measurable way beyond what I could have ever imagined. And I am an ambitious person who man, like, hoped and manifested for success. And this was still more than I could have ever dreamt of.

• 5:24Sam Fragoso?

  You're someone who, as a teenager, had a manifestation journal.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I still have it. Yeah. And so, um, all of the attention and success knocked me really far off kilter for a variety of reasons. One, I think I've been largely in the background. I've been a largely invisible person in my career world. And so all of a sudden, I was very visible and very, for the most part, beloved. And it was like, people were just wanting from me. And my nature is I want to give. So I gave everything and more than everything I had. And there, that left me with very little, like, energy or anything for myself. And then also, I, you know, we live in a world of capitalism, of more, more, more, of, oh, you have a success, so quickly, let's sell the next one.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And so I sold a book idea for another Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat style of book that was going to be a philosophical sort of distillation of how, what it is that cooks in a professional setting, take into consideration to decide what to cook and how to translate that for home. But then, once I sat down to do it, I realized it would take another 18 years. And I just kind of melted under that thought, that it felt so, I was like, this is not what I want to do. And also, the success was really lonely. I mean, looking back on some level, I think I believed that achieving all these things Would make me feel less lonely and settled and happy in my life. And it wasn't, and I was grappling with that. There was the pandemic. I was actually lonely.

• 6:55Sam Fragoso?

  You, you said in one interview that even if I won a Nobel Peace Prize, it would not be enough for my parents.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wouldn't have been. And I think I've spent my whole life.

• 7:05Sam Fragoso?

  Would it have been enough for you?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  I don't even know what's enough for me because I think I've only ever, or at least until that point, I had only other, ever been navigating the world on some deep, deep level, trying to make them happy.

• 7:20Sam Fragoso?

  Your parents?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, my parents happy. And that I now see was a fool's errand.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And I have, I try to exist outside of that, but it's, it's hard.

• 7:36Sam Fragoso?

  I'm laughing in, in just recognition of my own life.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:40Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  It's hard. Like I was an achievement machine. I am an achievement machine, but I definitely.

• 7:45Sam Fragoso?

  Was that your nickname in high school?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I, you know what's crazy? I went to this crazy high school that was, I was middling at best.

• 7:52Sam Fragoso?

  You were on the cross country team.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I was on the cross country team, but I was like 40th place.

• 7:58Sam Fragoso?

  So you, you have the success. You make this show for Netflix. It's extremely popular. You make a show so popular that Michelle Obama wants you to be part of her cooking TV show for kids.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  With puppets.

• 8:12Sam Fragoso?

  With puppets, yes. It was lonely and isolating. From there, you start writing how?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I couldn't, I couldn't, I kept. And the other thing about food is I have been measuring myself and what it is that I do against the broader food media landscape. And you see people, incredibly popular people with beautiful work that they're putting out, whether it's on social media, in publications, online and, I don't know, New York Times.com, whatever, that everyone wants to cook and it becomes really popular. And so that, in my mind, as I was writing this book, I, I thought I was trying to do that. And it was only after the book was done and I began doing these interviews that a really thoughtful food writer in England, Ruby Tando, asked me this question. She said, "It really looks like these recipes in this book.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  It feels like you have a very personal relationship to them."

• 9:05Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  And she was like, "That's so interesting because for me, I will develop a recipe, publish it and never think about it again."

• 9:12Sam Fragoso?

  Ah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh, yes, that's exactly right. Like, these things are, these things that I've been making and eating for years or my whole life. And that's the thing I want to share with you. Or if it's not that, it's that I come across something so special in the world. Like, this morning, I was at this extremely fancy and expensive, like, butcher shop grocery in East LA. And they had my, every time I come to LA, I buy these strawberries, these Harry's berries, like, have you ever had them?

• 9:40Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think so.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Okay, they're, they're like fifteen dollars for one cup of berries. And they are the-

• 9:45Sam Fragoso?

  Fifteen dollars?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yes, and they are so good.

• 9:48Sam Fragoso?

  I would go bankrupt on these strawberries if I lived here.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  And the fruit is so special, and it's special because of this family that grows this fruit and they're, you know, third or fourth generation, like, former interns. And the, they're growing these, like, incredibly fragrant strawberries that are much closer to the original strawberry. The flavor has been bred out of strawberries because what makes them flavorful is also what makes them go bad. So in order for them to be shelf-stable and be picked at Driscoll's Farm and shipped all the way to Maine and sold at a Whole Foods there, you have to breed all of the flavor and the aroma out. So these Harry's berries are incredibly, like, delicate and they start going bad, but you just, you buy them and you eat them, you eat them as fast as you can, standing over the sink. And so, like, to me, I just am like, I want everyone to know how special this is.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I want everyone to know about this apricot, this mango, or I went to Sonora Town and I had this thing and, oh my god, he makes this tortilla because he drives to Mexico every six weeks to buy the special flower. And that's not something that I made up. What is interesting and special about it is, like, my enthusiasm of, like, I want, and also, this person's story, which is also not what happens in a lot of cookbooks, right? You normally say, I came up with this thing, but I feel really uncomfortable, I didn't come up with this thing. So how do I tell someone else's story without taking from them? How do I share? How do I use this platform that I have? Or how do I share something, like, meaningful to me that might not be the most extravagant or dazzling thing? So that is also part of my discomfort with recipes.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  It takes extra work to make it into a valuable story that has meaning for me.

• 11:26Sam Fragoso?

  So it's a book of enthusiasms?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  It is a book of enthusiasms.

• 11:29Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, you're trying to replicate- What one would find in Samin's house.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 11:35Sam Fragoso?

  Onto the page here.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Onto the, as much as possible, which is like a flawed premise to begin with.

• 11:40Sam Fragoso?

  Your first book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you said was more a philosophy about cooking than a cookbook. How would you describe the guiding philosophy of good things?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  It's a picture of me in this moment of time. It's me sharing my love and value of things like the handmade, the handmade textiles in my life, the handmade ceramics, these gifts and treasures that people have shared with me. It's a, it's a treasure chest. Yeah, it's a time capsule in a treasure chest for you to do with what you would like.

• 12:12Sam Fragoso?

  The influences for this book also seem to be deeply literary. Tell me about Abraham Joshua Heschel's 1951 book, The Sabbath, and how it helped inform this book here.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Abraham Joshua Heschel was like a mid-century rabbi philosopher. He was a contemporary of Martin Luther King. I think they were friends. And he wrote a few books, including this little pocket-sized book called The Sabbath, that a friend gave to me, I think because he also, so many people I know at this point in time are searching for a sense of meaning and sort of trying to answer for themselves this question, what is a good life? And so Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about Judaism being a religion not of things, but basically of time. And a big practice, a huge practice in that is the carving out of this Sabbath. I think he calls it a cathedral in time.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  And as I sort of was trying to return back onto planet Earth from being uprooted and tumbled through just endless attention, praise, media, everything.

• 13:21Sam Fragoso?

  Followed by a pandemic.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Followed by a pandemic, my own depression.

• 13:25Sam Fragoso?

  Your father passed away.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  My father passing away. In the midst of all of that, I was trying to figure out what am I doing and why? Like, what was all of this for?

• 13:33Sam Fragoso?

  Why food now?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also, yeah, and like, it can feel so empty to be like, here's some recipes and nice pictures. Make this thing. I also feel like, as I have tried to figure out, what am I doing with my life?

• 13:47Sam Fragoso?

  Are you asking that every day?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely do. Also, because part of it, it's, it's interesting, it's starting again. I made a thing. I became incredibly visible. All of this attention and opportunity came. Whether or not I wanted it all, there, I try to sort of think about each thing carefully and say yes or no.

• 14:05Sam Fragoso?

  But you did want it, right?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did want, I wanted the success. I don't know that I wanted to be the face of whatever brands, whatever, anything.

• 14:15Sam Fragoso?

  You wanted to keep your name on the coffee cup order.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I wanted to figure out like, why am I, what am I doing? And I think that answer to that and to what I'm capable of doing with the resources that I have and the why of it, it took me a while to find it, but it ultimately has been about figuring out a way to value my own time the best that I possibly can and to sort of share this message of how important time is for all of us. And that, in this book, one way in which we can express that value or share this most precious currency with other people who we care about is by eating with them or cooking for them or cooking with them. It's just about sort of the act of sharing this thing

• 15:02Speaker 01

  that I will never be able to get more of. Honestly, valuing myself enough and, and the people around me enough to, to understand that that, there is a gift enough in that.

• 15:12Sam Fragoso?

  In that book, The Sabbath, he writes, "One must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive the presence of eternity in a single moment. One must live and act as if the fate of all of time would depend on a single moment." Cue the hairy strawberries moment.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Truly like, and honestly, I mean, not to get too precious about it, but I do actually think fruit for me, I've, I really have a love affair with fruit and I think fruit is such a, like, perfect metonym for time. I mean, fruit, you have, and flowers, the two things I love so much. I love growing them. I love consuming them. I love sharing them. And they both are so much about that moment. You wait too long to eat your apricots, they are overripe and moldy. You, you know, a flower arrangement, a beautiful flower arrangement is at its best the moment it's created and then it's, it's, it's dying. Like, there's just something so beautiful in sort of, it forces you to be so present, to taste those berries as you're jamming them down your mouth over the sink.

• 16:16Sam Fragoso?

  Nothing screams presence like jamming strawberries down your mouth over the thing. I feel like you're you've like kind of tap danced around and alluded to these things that have been going on in your life. And I wanted to talk about them square on like in the midst of writing this book in the pandemic, which was hard enough. As you mentioned, several people in your life pass away. And you said recently to the New York Times that in the aftermath of your father's death, you've been reexamining your childhood and discovering that it was not exactly as it appeared to you as a child. So for context, your parents immigrated from Iran to America in 1976 for religious reasons.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  It's a little tricky. So my dad's family was Baha'i. Baha'is were persecuted, basically, I think, since the founding of the religion in the 1800s. But the pressure and the persecution increased as the religious revolution approached. And so many Baha'is fled the country before the 1979 revolution, including the entirety of my dad's side of the family. My mom's side of the family is Muslim. And so that caused some strife from the beginning between these two sides of the family and ultimately between my two parents. And my father and grandparents were, they sought religious asylum. They came here under religious asylum and then my mom followed.

• 17:38Sam Fragoso?

  So when you're growing up in San Diego, what was the story that you used to tell yourself and others about your childhood? And how are you understanding it differently now in the aftermath of your father's death?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I think my whole childhood, I was trying to fit in in a very white world. And so I think the story I told myself was if I'm just sort of good enough and try hard enough and I'm nice enough, maybe no one will notice that I'm not white. And that sort of was my aim in my broader life. And then at home, it was a similar, there was a similar version of if I try hard enough and I'm good enough and I'm nice enough, like maybe. I'll fit in here because I never fit in. I kind of just didn't fit in anywhere.

• 18:25Sam Fragoso?

  Your mom would say, at school, you're in America. At home, you're in Iran.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And of course, trying to be the best kid I could be really tried to embody that. We spoke Farsi at home, ate Persian food, all of the things. But it's kind of unsettling and it's an impossible task to give a child. Because I believed about myself that, oh, I must not fit in at school because I'm Iranian. And, oh, I must not like fully fit in here because I'm, you know, American. But maybe if I go to Iran, like this mythical place where all of my ancestors are from. And like, that's where, that'll be where I fit in.

• 19:01Sam Fragoso?

  You went, you went at, what, 14 years old?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  And I did not fit in. I think I was just trying to win at a game of chess that I was never going to win. And now I realize like, oh, I was given an impossible task. And on top of that, there were all these layers of trauma and grief that we never looked at or talked about or addressed. I had a sister who was born, she was, she was two, she was a year and a half older than me. And when I was, basically when my mom was pregnant with me, they found out my sister had a terminal brain tumor. And so I was born into like a state of extreme sort of grief and trauma

• 19:45Speaker 01

  and trying to save this child who was unsavable. And that is not something we ever talked about. Once, you know, I have, I have no memories of my sister.

• 19:56Sam Fragoso?

  There's, there's one photograph of the two of you in, in the kitchen.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  In the fridge, yeah.

• 20:00Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  I only have a few photos of her. And in my mind, growing up, she was kind of just like an avatar of something.

• 20:10Sam Fragoso?

  Let me ask you, you said that you didn't talk about these things. These like, these like repressed dramas.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:16Sam Fragoso?

  When was the first time you realized, oh, my sister passed away?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  I remember when I was in high school, like, there were pictures of her. I knew she wasn't there anymore. Yeah. We did on her birthday and Persian New Year, go visit her grave. Okay. So I knew there had been a sister. It was just the effect of having had a sister and her being gone was never explored in any way. And if anything, it was very much like not my loss to grieve because I was just like kind of a, you know, barely conscious lump of flesh at one and a half. It was my parents' loss to grieve. Hmm. And that was sort of what it was considered. And because it made my mom so sad, we never talked about it. And I do remember when I was in high school, there's just like this fleeting thought went by at one point where,

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I think because I had friends who had siblings who were also in high school, older siblings, that I was like, oh, if my sister were here, I would have had that. And there would have been this other girl and would we have, liked each other, hated each other, fought? Would she have let me use her clothes? You know, like, there was just a sense of, there was this shadow, this ghost, that I kind of just wondered about, but I don't think I had, I just don't, don't think I had the emotional bandwidth or the psychological bandwidth to think about it in any broader terms. And it wasn't truly until I read a draft of my friend Laurel Braitman's memoir about loss and grief.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And I was so struck with her, with the grief, and it felt so familiar that I was like, huh, maybe there's something in this for me, but what could I possibly have to grieve? And this was in 2021. This was when I was, you know, 41 years old. Forty years after my sister died, it started to occur to me, maybe I had something to grieve too. And my neighbors, I live in this little, compound of four homes, and my neighbor, Aya, who actually shot the book, at the time she had a son who was one and a half. And in the mornings, he would come over and knock on my door and come say hi to me and my puppy. And I would, I was like, he's so alive and vibrant. He has a personality. He's a whole person. And if his older sister disappeared tomorrow and no one ever talked about it,

• 22:27Speaker 01

  he would be devastated. Like it would, he would wonder what had happened. It would be this huge confusing loss. And so that was the first way, first moment I could have a little compassion for myself and understand like, oh, this probably has had some sort of effect on me and been resonating my whole life. And I haven't even known to open that door.

• 22:48Sam Fragoso?

  You said once in describing your childhood that growing up in your home, you constantly were watching your parents both losing their minds.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 22:57Sam Fragoso?

  What did that look like?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  It was like a pressure cooker, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't, it's not that, I mean, I won't speak for our whole culture, but like my family for sure, we have tempers and we yell and stuff. So there was some of that, but it was more that there was just a sense of pressure at all times.

• 23:13Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And for me, my escape, like my safe place was to go to my room and read. And only now have I sort of understood, oh, it's because I could close a door and go into my own world. Because I never knew in what way I would let somebody down or be found to be lacking. And one of the funniest things I think is like, my whole life, my mom would tell me, don't worry, this is to me as like a nine year old, right? Don't worry, I'm saving up so that when you're 18, will I can get you a nose job and a chin job and fix that. You know, um, sorry, I did it right when you took a huge swallow.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  So I was like, I was unclear because I didn't know I was supposed to worry, right? Like, and there were kids at my high school, there were Persian kids at my high school who had nose jobs. Like it was, I was aware of it as a thing for sure. But I didn't even know that I was supposed to worry. So then of course I started worrying. And then, you know, 18 came and went and there was no nose job. So now I was like, which of course I don't really want, I don't want. But, um, there was a lot of that kind of pointing out the ways in which I was falling short, which I do believe comes from like her, my own, you know, they were trying to protect, they were trying to make me the best. It was not, but I think it was also just from, it's not a big part of Persian culture to

• 24:38Speaker 01

  like psychologically self evaluate, self awareness. I would not call it like one of our big skills.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  And there's a distrust of therapy. There's a distrust of talking outside of the family, telling anyone anything private. And that doesn't help when you have all of these major, major traumas and griefs that you really need to process. I mean, the trauma of leaving her country is so gnarly. And I think sometimes about all of the forms of racism that my parents were facing in my childhood.

• 25:13Sam Fragoso?

  Did you see it?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  There were times I for sure saw it. I mean,

• 25:16Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, San Diego's, you know.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  It's a pretty white conservative, like, military town. And there were things like, probably when I was like in sixth or seventh grade, my dad ran like an immigration services business. It was like a notary public. He would take passport photos. He would help you do your immigration forms. And in San Diego, there are a lot of people from Mexico, but also because my dad had worked in like education, he could help foreign students and all sorts of refugees and stuff. And I think just to get my grandpa out of the house, he would take him to work with him. And they worked in a very like unglamorous strip mall. And one day, like some guy, some white guy came in and started beating my dad and my grandpa with a cane and, you know, calling them racist names. And then my dad

• 26:02Speaker 01

  took him to court. And I think for whatever reason, he lost. Like, there was just this thing where they came and did physical violence in his business and he lost. And I think that was really humiliating for him. And at the time, I didn't understand the whole story. But now I'm just like, oh, that was blatant, like crazy anti Middle Eastern racism. When I was in second grade, you know, a kid called me a terrorist. And I didn't know what that meant. This was like all over North time, like Iran-Contra affair. Now, looking back, I understand that my whole life, Iran has just only sort of meant one thing in the larger, like, Western public narrative. And it's a sadness for me because there's so much more. The reason I find it important to talk about this stuff is because it's so subtle.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  And I spend a lot of time being like, why am I complaining about this stuff? Like, no one was beating me up. I always had food to eat, more or less. Like, it was not.

• 26:55Sam Fragoso?

  So that's my last question I had, because as I said, part of the research before talking to you today was reading about the Bahai faith. And you did recently call your dad violent.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he was very, very, very, very, uh, like abusive.

• 27:12Sam Fragoso?

  But the Bahai faith, I mean, I just read this, this is from the Bahai Publishing Committee of 1973. "The Bahais are forbidden to resort to force, even in self-defense. They are bidden to be obedient to the laws of their country and not to resist with violence any aggression."

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:29Sam Fragoso?

  Which, I don't know if I could exhibit such self-restraint.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's also a religious ideal, like who, who.

• 27:36Sam Fragoso?

  Right, exactly. But I want to understand, since they came here and they fled this place for religious reasons, in your house, you said there was two warring religions between Muslim faith and Bahai. What did the principles look like? And did it match up with the behavior you experienced?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  You know, both of my parents, I would say, practiced their religion apart from us. And also, my mom has gotten more religious, I think, as she gets older. So there was, we never went to any religious gatherings. And because my mom had been harmed really intensely and demeaned by my father's family, she has held a lifelong grudge against not only the family, but their faith. My mom was like, nothing Bahai will enter this house. So we experienced or sort of witnessed my dad's broader community, his big, like, his broader family. Um, but there was not, I didn't actually know very much about the Bahai faith until I went to college and I took a religions class and I like got books to read.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Because I, in so many ways, had been taught by my mom to distrust. And like, I, I, I try in my life to not have like prejudice against anyone for any. Reason, you know, or a part of their identity, but I definitely like it took a lot of work for me to outgrow the prejudice against the Wahi faith that like was sort of drilled into me as a kid. And when I started reading about it, I was like, wow, this sounds like a perfectly nice religion. I don't, you know, I don't know what there is to dislike about about it, like.

• 29:13Sam Fragoso?

  You didn't understand your mother's grudge.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  No, and it's and because like, as you said, when at the beginning, you said, my parents came in 1976. My, there's so much I don't know about my family. There are so many specifics I don't know and I'll probably never know. And when my dad was in the hospital, so my dad, I've been estranged from my dad since I was about 19 years old, pretty much like, I just had to separate myself from him and stay away from him.

• 29:38Sam Fragoso?

  So that's right when you you leave home and you go to Berkeley and you two are estranged from that point on?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  More or less like it felt like these people who had sort of just told me what to do, but not really helped me or guided me or led me in any meaningful way throughout my childhood and adolescence. My dad, my grandpa, they were sort of just like these characters around. And also, there was a little voice inside of me that said, if I stay home, I will die. Like I, there's something inside of me will die. And then also like I financially sort of separated myself and, you know, he still tried to tell me what to do.

• 30:14Sam Fragoso?

  How did he mean?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Like, he would just pop up. I wanted to go to Spain for my year abroad. And he's like, absolutely not. You have to go to England. And I was like, okay, like, there were just these ways I didn't know how to disobey. You know, I, I want this job. No, you have to apply for that summer job. I'm going to buy this computer. No, you have to buy this computer with your own money that you made.

• 30:32Sam Fragoso?

  What do you think would have happened if you disobeyed?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  I probably would have regretted it immediately and begged for forgiveness. I don't think I, I think I couldn't draw the line until I had enough like stability and security in my own life.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  And a sense of self, even sense of self, to just be like, I'm not actually doing anything wrong here. I'm not doing some terrible thing. So that didn't happen for another 10 years or so. It really, so there was a little, there was still some contact, but when I finally drew the boundary was after I sold the book contract for Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Because that was the first time in my life I had any sense of financial stability.

• 31:12Sam Fragoso?

  That's 2013.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I realized, I was like, okay, I don't, and I officially, I really stopped talking to him at that point because everything with him had always been a sort of power game and a manipulation. And it was ultimately always about money because that was a way he could always control. Even though what's crazy is like, I never got anything from him. So somehow I let him control me with the promise of money that never actually came. I don't understand.

• 31:40Sam Fragoso?

  I don't, I don't love this deal.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was not fun. And so I think realizing I could do it for myself, there's so much fear in the world. Like, you know, I also, I'm not, I did not grow up poor by any means, but I always worked. I worked to put myself through college. When I started working at Chez Panis, I made $10 an hour.

• 31:59Sam Fragoso?

  So that's, that's you as a bussler in 1998?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  And then as a cook, I also made $10 an hour. For a lot of years, I made $12 to $15 an hour as a cook.

• 32:08Sam Fragoso?

  You worked so much that when you graduated from Berkeley, you didn't go to your graduation.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had three jobs when I was a grad, I had that year, that like, that last year of school, I worked at Chez Panis. I worked as like the arts editor of the school paper. And I had a job, like I was a reader for one of my professors, reading papers and grading papers. And so later that summer, there was the 40th, 30th birthday of Chez Panis. And it was on campus. So I sort of told myself that was my graduation.

• 32:42Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about the early experiences of you cooking.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Sam Fragoso?

  As much as we've talked about family drama.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 32:48Sam Fragoso?

  I know, and we'll double back to that, don't worry. Working at Chez Panis, what was the first dish that you didn't know how to cook that you've perfected?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 33:03Sam Fragoso?

  Or the one where you're like, okay, I think I have something here.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I do, I don't remember what the first was. I do know that I have a journal because for a long time, I was still bussing tables and volunteering in the kitchen for like a half a day or day. So I would go home and write in this journal, the tasks that I'd been allowed to do that day, which now I just look back on with the hugest heart, full of love for that kid. Because it would be like, today Lori let me clean salted anchovies under, and remove the skeletons under the running water of the faucet. Today, I got to peel garlic. Like, it was so, today I learned how to make mayonnaise, you know?

• 33:40Sam Fragoso?

  That's amazing.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  And it was so cute.

• 33:42Sam Fragoso?

  Is this part of the manifestation journal?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  No, this was just like a, it was sort of like a recipe journal.

• 33:46Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so you have one manifestation journal, one recipe journal, and then one like day-to-day journal.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  I'm not that organized, Sam. The like day-to-day was the messy recipe one, where I would also like cut and paste.

• 33:58Sam Fragoso?

  We want to know Samin's process.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And so the, um, it was a long time after that, that they would have let me make something start to finish. And I wasn't just sort of helping people and trying to stay out of the way. And there was a day when I had been working, there's a job called pasta lettuce. And it's because you make the pasta and you wash the lettuce. That's your whole eight-hour shift is making fresh pasta.

• 34:22Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, okay.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  And washing all the lettuces for people to then make salads out of. And so I'd been doing that for a few months and somebody called in sick. In the like, in the fancy downstairs formal dining room, one of the cooks called in sick. So they, they came to me and they're like, and I was eating lunch upstairs. It was a Saturday. I was eating lunch with my roommate's family. And they came to the table and they're like, someone called in sick. Like, we're desperate. Can you go home and get your knives or whatever, change out of these clothes and come back?

• 34:52Sam Fragoso?

  You've been waiting for this call.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yes, totally. And it was so exciting. And I was like, I'll be right back. And so I like ran, you know, I like left the meal. It was fully like cartoon, like, you know, like smoke marks in the middle, whatever. And I like went home, got my stuff, came back.

• 35:08Sam Fragoso?

  You were running with your knives?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. And I'm like, put me in, coach. And so they, they put me in and I made, and the, and the menus are written, you know, in advance. And so you kind of have to stick to what was written. So you didn't change it to make it easier for me. So I had to make these ravioli that are very traditional, like pasta from Emilio Romagna, that when I tell you what it is, it's going to sound kind of gross, but it tastes delicious.

• 35:33Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Which is, they make it like a shred, they make like a braised beef, or some sort of tough, tough cut. And that becomes the main dish. And then the broth from the braised beef gets combined with a little bit of breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. And this breadcrumb cheese filling soaked with broth becomes the ravioli filling. So you get two dishes out of one pot of meat.

• 35:56Sam Fragoso?

  Nothing sounds disgusting.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  So that they're not stuffed with, you know, some perfect fresh filling. It's kind of like, it's stretching things. And so we, I think someone else must have cooked the meat, but I like shredded it. And I combined, I did all the things and made the filling with the thing. And I like showed up and I, you know, folded 250 raviolis. No, it was probably like 500 actually, because there's 100 people downstairs. Everyone gets 5, 500 raviolis. And I, I, and there was just this feeling of everybody being like, go Sami and go. Because they knew, like, all the cooks knew how badly I wanted it for so long. And it always was so out of reach. And this was this amazing night where I got to be the one who helped, you know?

• 36:33Sam Fragoso?

  They knew that you were the young woman going home, writing in the journal, they let me wash lettuce today.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Totally. So pathetic.

• 36:44Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think so.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  It's just so like, I want to do that, like.

• 36:48Sam Fragoso?

  It's called giving a shit.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I've al- maybe I like have always cared a little too much, but I don't know how to not, you know?

• 36:56Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, yeah, I couldn't possibly relate to that.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 36:59Sam Fragoso?

  Did you continue trying too hard as a sous chef?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always tried too hard. There I was like, you know, the restaurant where I worked when I came home from Italy, Ecolo, was run by the chef who had been my mentor at Chez Panis. And this was an Italian restaurant and it was a short-lived. It was from 2004, 2000 to 2009. It sort of died after the economic crash and we were always sort of in financial precarity. It takes often five years for a restaurant to break even. And we were just hitting that, that when the crash happened in 2008. And so there was always this pressure from the owner, from the restaurant investor who lived in New York and had many successful restaurants there. And he's like, I know how to run a restaurant. Like, I don't know what you fools in California are doing.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And so I was constantly trying to like be more economical while still adhering to all of our philosophies and values that we had brought from Chez Panis, that we had learned about supporting the farms and cooking with the good ingredients and all this kind of stuff.

• 37:58Sam Fragoso?

  What kind of eggs did you guys use?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you know about the eggs.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  So why we like, we had found this, this tiny farm, this incredible farmer Alexis, who raised chickens. And at the time, this was early 2000s, it was the like eating locally and Michael Pollan and the locavore movement and, and locally produced meats was really sort of becoming part of the like broader food culture. And Alexis started a farm where she was raising chickens and they were pastured, which meant they spent the day out on open pasture. And so we were one of her first customers and we, I loved those eggs. They were the most beautiful eggs.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  And we would buy them and then they, they would check our invoices, the New York like accountants, which, and they're like, why are you spending so much money on pasteurized eggs? And I was like, not pasteurized, pastured. Like it's two totally different things. And there was just a sort of fundamental like value misalignment, which honestly was a great lesson for me of like, do not get into a- Collaboration or get into bed with people if you have that much misalignment fundamentally because it's everything's going to be a struggle. So I would do things like in order to not sacrifice the things that I cared about, I would drive an hour each way to the farm myself to do the pickup so that we didn't have to pay for delivery. Or I would get the number two tomatoes instead of the perfect number one tomatoes and then

• 39:22Speaker 01

  sort through them, each one, like hundreds of pounds of potatoes, tomatoes a week, and then turn all of the crusts and crumbs and tips and tops into tomato sauce that I would then can so that we could use it. Like I've truly embodied the Italian farm wife of this restaurant. And I don't know if in the end it was financially helpful in any way, but I learned a lot.

• 39:45Sam Fragoso?

  But wouldn't your mom do the exact same thing growing up?

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:50Sam Fragoso?

  Then wasn't there a bakery in Irvine that she would take you guys to?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think that-

• 39:55Sam Fragoso?

  Irvine's not that close to San Diego.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Eighty-eight miles.

• 39:59Sam Fragoso?

  Wow.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:59Sam Fragoso?

  That's how you know.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  I've done that drive a lot of times.

• 40:02Sam Fragoso?

  You were like, it's eighty-eight miles both ways. Oh, no.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:06Sam Fragoso?

  She would take you guys to Orange County, Los Angeles, all to get Iranian cuisine, right?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  The taste of home, for sure.

• 40:13Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like that, which I at the time thought it was unique to my family or to my culture. And now, having spent so much time with people from all over the world, I understand, I do think that that's a big part of being an immigrant is like you're always looking for the taste of home. And I will say, I've never met anyone as crazy as Iranians are for like the distances, literal and figurative, to which we will go for the taste. I mean, even me coming in here and saying, I'm going to buy Harriet's berries every time I get there, or like every year I drive two and a half hours to pick all the apricots to make my own jam. This is very much a part of like my culture and also luckily, something beautiful in my career, you know, that many of my colleagues also share.

• 40:58Sam Fragoso?

  So you did everything you could to make this restaurant solvent?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:02Sam Fragoso?

  But it had to close in 2009. And in the summer of 2009, you wrote a piece for the-

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, you found that.

• 41:10Sam Fragoso?

  San Francisco Chronicle. There's a section here I thought you could maybe read for us.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:15Sam Fragoso?

  Because, you know, in The Bear, which everyone has been watching and loving, there's, there's kind of an amazing montage where Sydney, I O's character, she's flipping through images in her head of all these chefs that she's met. And all of these chefs around Chicago that are so talented.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:34Sam Fragoso?

  All of these people have had restaurants that open and closed.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:39Sam Fragoso?

  And that talent alone just doesn't, it's just not enough.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:43Sam Fragoso?

  And you wrote this piece in 2009.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:46Sam Fragoso?

  As your, as your shop closed up or had to close up.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:50Sam Fragoso?

  And I thought maybe you could read it.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Sure. Just this little bit right here. Before shutting the doors, we decided to have a week of special dinners. We'd cook the food we loved to eat, be surrounded by our friends and pay tribute to the purveyors whose work we'd so greatly appreciated. We spent each day in the kitchen preparing a different menu of Chris's favorite dishes. Echolow overflowed with people, regulars fretted about where they would now eat. Chris and I just looked at each other and wondered, where were all these people before this? How could it be that only now, on the eve of closing, Echolow had become the restaurant we'd always wanted? We kept hearing from people, I wish I had come more. We wished it too. Regardless of what the money people said, I think these customers knew that we were doing the right thing, supporting family farmers,

• 42:36Speaker 01

  putting money back into the local economy, hiring people from the neighborhood. I just don't think most people realize how hard or expensive those choices are. Wow, it's really wild how this is still so true 14 years later, 15 years later, 16 years later, I can't do math.

• 42:53Sam Fragoso?

  16 years later.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  16 years later, like, um, I mean, the, yeah, like, The Bear nails it. I think restaurant culture right now, I think certainly after the pandemic, it's really, really hard to have a restaurant. And people don't know.

• 43:08Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, but you know, there's, there's another part, which is you write, where were all these people before this? And I, I just, I've been thinking about this a lot. In our culture right now, because I think we need to realign and reprioritize the things that matter to us and how we go about.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 43:26Sam Fragoso?

  Expressing that enthusiasm. And I'm not just saying that as someone who makes a show every week. But I am saying that as someone who makes a show every week. Like, you know what I don't want to see anymore? Our restaurants closing and shows ending and the onslaught of people posting about it online.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:45Sam Fragoso?

  It's fine that you want to write elegies in your obituary, you know, your postmortems. And I'm not just, again, not just saying it for Talk Easy. I mean, for you, for anyone who's given so much to the thing, I do think we all need to be better at, in the moment, while we are here and alive and this thing is here and alive. You should say something.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed.

• 44:09Sam Fragoso?

  You should post something. You should go as often as you can, you know, and afford financially. If you like something, you should share it.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Or if you like that, having that store in your neighborhood and it costs a little more than going online and buying it, like maybe buying some.

• 44:23Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  You know, buying the book at the store.

• 44:25Sam Fragoso?

  Don't wait till it's gone.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:27Sam Fragoso?

  To say that you give a shit.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to me, this is directly tied to this other thing I've been thinking so much about, which is like the value of making and things that are made for us. And especially when you come, like in this sort of, we're sitting under the shadow of an approaching AI world, where like, it will be more and more precious and more and more expensive for us to acquire and consume and enjoy things that are made for us by humans with each passing day. And one of the pleasures of life is eating in a restaurant, I think. And I don't even mean a fancy restaurant. I just mean, one of the few remaining things available and accessible to most people is to go to a restaurant and eat something, even if it's a $2 taco from a taco truck. That is one of the few ways that we have

• 45:14Speaker 01

  right now to experience that somebody made you something.

• 45:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  From start to finish. Because it's, I love a beautiful handmade textile, you know, from Gregory Parkinson in India, but like, I can have that once every three years, you know, like, it's very expensive. And I love the beautiful ceramics and I love those things. And I, I want to fill my life with things that are made by, by hands. But food is, is luckily still here for us, but we have to know it. There are many ways in which that can be taken away from us, too.

• 45:47Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, more from Smeen Nosrat.

• 45:56Sam Fragoso?

  I think a lot of us are going to spend the next few weeks looking for gifts online. And while I like finding something thoughtful for the people in my life, the process can get a little ridiculous. You've got a dozen tabs open, you're comparing prices, and you're trying to remember which store had that one thing you saw that has a deal, and you flagged it, and you saved it, and now you can't find it. Anyway, that's what I like about Shop. Shop brings all kinds of stores together in one place, so you can search for what you're looking for across different brands, while discovering new ones along the way, plus tracking all your orders without jumping in between websites. And just in time for the holidays, they're celebrating the all-new shop.com with a pretty extraordinary giveaway.

• 46:37Sam Fragoso?

  1,000 shoppers will win $1,000 in Shop Cash. That's $1 million in total, which you can put towards gifts for other people, or maybe something you've had an eye on for yourself. And you don't have to buy anything to enter the giveaway. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win, and that's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 47:30Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back. After the restaurant closes in 2009, you have a winding journey of cooking and working with Michael Pollan. You sell the book in 2013, as you mentioned earlier. And you then pitched the show on October 30th of 2016. Yeah, wild. When you pitched Salt, Fat, Acid Heat... What did the pitch sound like?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Oh, it was so cool. It was really cool. And also, you have to know, like, I don't know anything about Hollywood. I don't know anything about pitching. I only know how to show up and be my crazy self.

• 48:03Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Luckily, like, the production company that was making this with me, what they did was they, we rented a house that was kind of conveniently located to where the executives from Netflix lived. And I, like, went to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. I bought all this stuff and we set it up so that I would basically do a cooking class and like a cooking demonstration for the executives when they came. But also, the pitch was me. It was me being me, showing like I can cook and talk at the same time. And I can do that, you know? And they were like, well, this is fun, but is all you're interested in is the farmer's market? And I had, I was staying at my friend's mom's house and I like brought all of her linen. You know, I tried to make it really nice and cute. And they're like, this is cool, but like, is that all you? And I said, no, no, actually, like, the farmer's market is my pleasure and joy, but

• 48:49Speaker 01

  I think there's so much more. And so let me tell you about these things. And, and I could tell that one of them, like, I just knew I had him. And he has these like icy blue eyes. And there was just this way, like, he was looking at me and I was like, that's my guy. I got him. We're talking about cooking, like, he gets me. And that ended up being like, who bought my show?

• 49:10Sam Fragoso?

  When they greenlit it?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:12Sam Fragoso?

  It was maybe a couple of days after Donald Trump won his first?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Election, yeah.

• 49:17Sam Fragoso?

  When you got the call, where were you?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I was pretty comatose from the election, so like, I didn't really want to ever get out of bed. And there was just this feeling of, oh, my God, an opportunity is coming. And also, what does it mean for me to do that in this time when this is the people that I'm speaking to? Do they even want to hear what I have to say? Does it make sense for me to put myself, make myself visible in front of them? Would I be safe? It felt, I don't know, whatever the extreme version of bittersweet is.

• 49:46Sam Fragoso?

  When you got the call that they greenlit it, you said, what does it mean for me to decide to be a public person when the public has sent a very clear message in 2016 with the election that I'm not the kind of person they want to see on camera?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:01Sam Fragoso?

  I've been thinking about this quote since I read it. And I wonder, like, do you think those two realities are connected? Because the show became massively popular.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like, I don't want to hear your politics, just give me your recipes.

• 50:17Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  That I get. And I don't know, like, listening to you read those words back, maybe the thing that I felt was less about, like, that they didn't want a person like me on camera and just that they didn't want a person like me around. And certainly, like, within months of that, right, like, January 2017, there's like a Muslim ban and immigration ban against people from where I'm from. And, and now here we are, 2025. A week ago, I was at a beautiful wedding of a Bengali couple. And it was a Muslim wedding that presided over by a Palestinian Imam. And the whole time, you know, there are all these amazing Bengali rituals or Bangladeshi rituals. And it was just so, such a beautiful thing to witness and be a part of, so fun.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  And I remember multiple times wondering, like, I wonder if these people who all live very local to me, feel safe or have times regularly where they don't feel safe. And I asked some of the young people there and they were like, oh, yeah, it really reminds me of 2001. Which 2001 was a really, there's a before and after in my own life, even though I'm not personally religious. Like, it doesn't matter if you're religious or not, if you look a certain way, or if your name sounds like something. So I just have had fear for myself and for my brothers and for people who look like me. That's been heightened since 2001. And it sort, I sort of got dull to it. And then it reignited in 2016. And, and right now, it's really strong.

• 51:43Sam Fragoso?

  When you made the show in, in 2017, 2018, did your mother ever come to set?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  She did. She was in one of the episodes.

• 51:50Sam Fragoso?

  And what did she make of you making a show for Netflix?

• 51:55Speaker 01

  She didn't understand what it was. And she definitely didn't understand that it was my show from my idea.

• 52:01Sam Fragoso?

  Who did she think made the show?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  You know, she sort of read the room. She saw the way that people were deferring to the director. And she was like, oh, this is the person that is the most respected and in charge, which of course, a director is important. But there's a way also where like, I don't think she could process that the thing was built around me and my idea. And at some point, She turned to the director and she said, Caroline, like, whose show is this? And by this time, we were all very tight and everyone was so sort of like, Samin, what do you think about this? Samin, what do you think about this? We'd been to Japan, we'd been to Italy together, you know, like, we were very, they saw me speak different languages. And then, so I remember Luke, my director of photography, his jaw just fell because

• 52:47Speaker 01

  he was like, wow, your own mom doesn't understand this is your thing. And I kind of threw like, I totally like a teenager threw a tantrum. I was like, no, this is my show. You don't understand this is based on my book. It's my show. And, um, yeah, but, yeah.

• 53:05Sam Fragoso?

  What?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, just tracks. It's like, uh, I think that's the difference between like, even then and now is like, now I just know I can't expect anything. The pain comes from the expecting or the hoping. And so it's better to just not hope and understand like what is, is.

• 53:25Sam Fragoso?

  You're not asking for a lot.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 53:27Sam Fragoso?

  And you think that's too much to ask for?

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Not too much, but it's just not going to happen.

• 53:31Sam Fragoso?

  Why can't that happen?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  I don't know. People have limitations. Like, I asked one of my therapists, what makes somebody have capacity for change and growth? Like, where does capacity come from? Because there are people who have been mistreated or harmed and grow up to be totally generous, open, self-aware people. And then there are people who don't. And I think for my mom and for my dad, there was a lot of pain and loss in their lives, I think, early in their lives. I sort of have to guess what some of that is. And I have to, like, like I said, in my, my most skillful moments, extend a lot of compassion to them for that and just understand like, so the capacity comes from somebody seeing you clearly in your early childhood, I think.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Like, and I don't think either of my parents had that. And I think it's really sad, like what they became, especially my dad, really became something really harmful to many people around him and.

• 54:30Sam Fragoso?

  Harmful to you?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  For sure harmful to me. I mean, my dad, he had some pathology. I don't know what it was, but he just really like enjoyed making people miserable. So when I say violent, it was not physically violent. It was real like intense emotional violence.

• 54:45Sam Fragoso?

  Beyond the you should get a different laptop, not that laptop.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. Like just crazy manipulation. Even in my estrangement with him, there was a lot of like, I always suspected that he was stalking me or that he would try to like, I bought a house. I figured out how to, I like made money after the show and I bought a house and I immediately knew I was like, he's going to figure out a way to try and take this house from me. But then I would like go to therapy and my therapist would be like, well, do you have any reason to believe these things? Or is this just what your child self is feeling? And I'm like, well, I guess I don't have any proof, you know? And then um, I just was like, I could imagine him coming here and tripping outside and suing, you know, just to mess with me. He loved suing people just to mess with them.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  And so when he was in the hospital, he had a traumatic brain injury that left him on life support and in the hospital for close to six months. And that is how and why I got sort of brought back in to his life at the end was to try to advocate to get him off of those machines because neither of my parents want that or wanted that. And um, that became like a very complicated and melodramatic thing when we found out he had a secret wife in Israel who was calling and telling the hospital that my brothers and I were murderers who were trying to steal all of his money. So it just became this like medical and legal nightmare that extended for way longer than it needed to.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  And as we were looking desperately for a legal document that showed his medical wishes, we were going through his files and stuff and we found proof that he was stalking me, that he was sending people to spy on me, that he was trying to figure out how to harm me, that he was like, yeah, saying horrible things about me and that, and which in a way was so validating because I was like, God, I knew it. We found a cache of secret videos. He made a secret YouTube channel with like 45 hour long videos of himself just ranting at the camera.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  That's also where he revealed we had Jewish ancestry, which had always been kept from us. And that actually sort of tracked. When I like traced some of the stuff, I was like, oh, this makes total sense. Also, a lot of Baha'is were Jews who became Baha'i. And so I was like, this is so cool. I was like, this is amazing. Like, there's just things where I'm like, wow, I wish I had known this about myself.

• 57:05Sam Fragoso?

  At your father's funeral, to wrap around back to the book, it's my understanding that there was a conversation you have at the relative about this book and that book.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:17Sam Fragoso?

  That was a way for you to sort of think about what you've been doing and where you're going.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Wow, yes, yeah. It was right when my dad died. It was my uncle's wife, who I'm not super close with. But she, this is her second marriage, and she had lost a child in her past. And also, she's Iranian. And she, in many ways, is much more sort of, um, let's say emotionally sound than either of my parents. And I asked her, I said, how did you, like, you lost a child in such a crazy way. And my mom lost a child. And you have a different relationship to your surviving child and to reality than my mom does. Like, what did you do different? And she was like, oh, I went to therapy. And also, I realized I had to really get clear because I still had another kid to take care of.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  And so I couldn't let that kid's life be only about this loss. And I was like, oh, interesting, interesting. And so we talked and I said, oh, you know, my, a thing I've understand about myself now is that I've spent my whole life trying to be two kids' worth of good and trying to make up for this, like, impossible loss. Essentially, like, that was what I internalized. And there's no way a person can ever do that. I was never gonna be two kids. I just, I couldn't.

• 58:36Sam Fragoso?

  For you and your sister.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  For me and my sister, yeah. So I was always trying to somehow fill this impossible hole for all of us. And she said, well, salt, fat, acid, heat was such a huge thing. You put everything you had into it. You did the thing. That was the thing where you were trying to be two siblings. Like, you were, it was the, it was the you and your sister's worth of good. And what if your next book is just you and that's enough? And that was just a really beautiful sort of moment of being seen by someone in my extended family. And also, like, a really emotionally

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Insightful way for me to consider that what it is that I'm trying to do. And also, yeah, just the incredible amount of pain and suffering I put myself through to make anything, the impossibly high standards. And what's crazy is I know I'm never going to make another salt fat. Like, there's never going to be another one. And I don't even have a lot of grief about that. Like, that was its own wonderful thing.

• 59:34Sam Fragoso?

  It took like nineteen years.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, there's not going to be another one. You can't manufacture that, and it's fine. I just needed to hear somebody else be like, what you are is enough, and what you'll make will be enough.

• 59:46Sam Fragoso?

  So, as we close, why don't we talk about this book again? And, and kind of what it means to you and what it means, what you hope it means to people who, who buy it? Because when you released Salt Fat, Acid Heat, and then the show on Netflix, you said your hope is that the program and the book convey the idea that good food around the world is more similar than it is different, and that we as humans are more similar than we are different. The idea was that maybe by learning about somebody's food culture, maybe you'll have some more compassion for them.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  That was so idealistic.

• 1:00:25Sam Fragoso?

  In 2025, do you still believe that?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I think that was really naive, and it takes a lot more than eating somebody's tacos to believe that they don't, shouldn't get shut out of this country or, you know, chased out by ICE. So, I don't, I don't know that I believe that. But maybe it's something so much more simple that I, I do believe, and I, well, I, let's say I'll have the, like, audacity to hope, is one small way that we can, like, take care of ourselves and of each other is to spend some time together.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  In a world that like is just trying to take all of our attention and time away from us and trying to convince us that we need something more than what we have and what we are to be okay. And so like this is a book of recipes for boiling broccoli, for pasta with a tub of ricotta dumped in it, for you know, yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It's simple delicious stuff that makes my days a little more special and meaningful. And whether or not you read this book or cook from it, like my message that I hope is that you can find some small way in your day to spend some time with people who you care about.

• 1:01:48Sam Fragoso?

  My personal favorite episode from The Bear is an episode called Forks.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Me too. That's my favorite.

• 1:01:53Sam Fragoso?

  It's amazing.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  It's so good.

• 1:01:55Sam Fragoso?

  And in it, like Cousin Richie is stodging for like a very fancy restaurant. Like the kind that you probably worked at.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  That's way fancier than anywhere.

• 1:02:06Sam Fragoso?

  Even fancier. Is that like a French Laundry kind of thing?

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's called Ever. It's a real restaurant in Chicago. It's called Ever, yeah.

• 1:02:11Sam Fragoso?

  And basically in the episode, he receives a crash course in working in fine dining. And there's a scene toward the end of the episode between Richie and the chef at the restaurant, Chef Terry, played by the great Olivia Colman. And I thought maybe we could watch that for a moment.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  I would love nothing more. It's so beautiful.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  What are you making?

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  I'm just peeling mushrooms for the lamb de tournelle.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Peeling mushrooms?

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just a nice little fun detail so when the diners see it, they know that someone spent a lot of time on their dish. Do you want to have a go?

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Okay, so hold it like this. Knife thirteen hundred.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Grab the end and just peel like that. Just go slowly.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Thirteen hundred, huh?

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Do you serve?

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  Dad did.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, same. Staff sergeant.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Corporal.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Lot of standards.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Turns out I like standards.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Do you move around a lot?

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. You?

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  I know Carmen.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  I'm sorry that he pulled a favor.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Not at all. I don't do favors.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  How's that?

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Can I do another one?

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  Yes, please do.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  So why do you do this?

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  I do it for a living.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  No, but like, don't you have stodges that do this shit?

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like starting the day with this.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Respect. Feels attached. I think time spent doing this is time well spent.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Time well spent?

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  That's what it's all about?

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:04:26Sam Fragoso?

  When you watch that, where does it land with you?

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  It just, that, from the first time I saw that, I've watched that scene so many times. I went back and transcribed it because I thought I would quote it in the book. And the way she talks about time and the meaning of time.

• 1:04:44Sam Fragoso?

  Time well spent.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Time well spent. And it's so beautiful. Like, that's all I want to sort of, at the end of every day in my life, be able to be like, did I have any time well spent today? And that it comes from such a simple thing. For her, it's cleaning mushrooms. But also, I think for her, it's probably having quiet, being able to connect with this original task that she at some point loved so much that she decided to devote her whole life to a career of doing that task. And with that comes business headaches and staff headaches and the toilet leaking and all this kind of stuff. But still, every day, like, you have a little moment of something that means something to you and reconnects you to the physical sense of having a body, of having a body in a world with other humans.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And like, that's all, that's honestly why I stand over the sink stuffing my face with strawberries. Like I'm just like trying to remember I have a body and trying to remember like this is this day I get to have this smell and this taste. It's so special. I really wish I had brought the strawberries in from the car for you. I feel so bad that I left them in my car.

• 1:05:49Sam Fragoso?

  Right after this, that's where we're headed.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Sam Fragoso?

  Are you at your best when you're cooking?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Sometimes, not always.

• 1:05:57Sam Fragoso?

  I think it's true for me. I'll tell you, I really started cooking three, four years ago. Outside of playing basketball on Sunday and Tuesday nights, it's the thing I look forward to the most. And it's because I am tired of being in my head.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Totally. That's why I think when I'm able to get out of my head and just cook is absolutely when I'm my best. And that's, I think, what I'm hoping for for other people. And I know on a daily basis, that doesn't always happen. There's children running around and yelling and screaming, but.

• 1:06:30Sam Fragoso?

  And we don't even have children.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even have children. There's still children running around.

• 1:06:33Sam Fragoso?

  They're in your community or in your head?

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Both, inside and outside.

• 1:06:36Sam Fragoso?

  Literal and metaphor. Okay.

• 1:06:41Sam Fragoso?

  My last question for you. We started this episode talking about time and how we evaluated. And you said recently on your show, Home Cooking, for as long as I can remember, I've always been saving up for something. How old are you? What, 45, 46?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  45.

• 1:06:59Sam Fragoso?

  What are we saving up for?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm trying to save up less now, but I definitely think my whole life I've been, I feel like I have had the sense that there's some bank account balance of goodness or achievement or something that I'm trying to reach before then I can be happy or comfortable or feel safe. And I do think like watching my dad die really clarified something for me about that because I think he died in such a sad and pathetic and lonely way. And it really helped me. I was like, wow, when I die, that's not what I want. I want to be able to look back on my life and see that I.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Filled it with so much goodness and friendship and nature and good food and puppy dogs and all the good things. So much of my dad's life was about sort of machinations and money. For what? So I think it really kind of clarified something for me about there's no finish line. Or if there is, it's when you die. And so then like, why am I, what am I saving up for?

• 1:08:16Sam Fragoso?

  Well, that's my question is if you're done saving, how do you want to spend?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I'm much better at saying yes to like trips and opportunities and invitations than I would have always just been like, I can't do that. I'm working. I can't do that. I shouldn't spend that money right now. I can't do that for whatever reason. I feel bad or I feel guilty. Now I do that. I get on the plane and I cross the country to go to my friend's child's bris.

• 1:08:44Sam Fragoso?

  Say yes to experience.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna go jump in the ocean in Sicily because I have 10 days and I'm so excited. And I told myself when I finished this book, I would go to Italy again. And so I'm just trying to say yes, instead of saying, maybe one day.

• 1:09:01Sam Fragoso?

  If we're thinking about a prescription from this book, a thing that we should hold on to and maybe put into our lives, can you tell us about what you do every Monday night?

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Monday night is like probably my, what I have closest to in my life to religion. It's a dinner that I have with three, now four other families. There are probably about 12 of us at any given time. There's like three-ish kids. And we just get together and cook food and eat it. And we don't even always cook it. Sometimes we order out. This week it wasn't Monday, it was Sunday. It was the six-year-old's birthday party. We had an ice cream sundae party because everyone was leaving town. But there's something really magical about the act of we've all committed to this ritual that we do. It's in all of our calendars. We have a group text thread.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  And you know, no, I'm the only one who's a professional food-related person, but everyone sort of likes eating or cooking or just hanging out. And so there's kind of different ways in which everyone contributes and it sort of manages to always come together in some way or another. And It has given us all something to look forward to. It's given us a scaffolding to our week. It's been a really beautiful and unexpected gift in all of our lives. And at first, I thought it was something my friends were doing for me because I was so lonely. But when I said that to them, they were like, no, no, this is for us too. And so just watching how we've really sanctified it has been really moving.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  And that's the group of people to whom I dedicate the book. And it's, and I, I have a lot of anxiety about my tour because it's going to take me away from a lot of Monday dinners, but, but it'll still be there when I get back.

• 1:10:51Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Sam Fragoso?

  It's great to cook. It's even better to cook for others.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  It really, for me, that's like when I feel I'm doing something sacred.

• 1:11:00Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Sam Fragoso?

  Not me too. Well, speaking of gifts, um, thank you for sitting for as long as you have and for this new book. Um, I've so enjoyed it.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Thank you for your thoughtful questions and yeah, thank you for such a thoughtful conversation.

• 1:11:14Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, next time bring the strawberries.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  I will. I'm so sorry. I'm going to send you some.

• 1:11:19Sam Fragoso?

  Sami Nosrat. I'll see you soon.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I'll see you soon.

• 1:11:22Sam Fragoso?

  Much love.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:11:23Sam Fragoso?

  All right.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Sam.

• 1:11:24Sam Fragoso?

  We did it.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:11:26Sam Fragoso?

  Is that all right?

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  You're the best. You're so sweet.

• 1:12:29Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. I want to give a special thanks this week to the teams at Mona Creative and Penguin Random House. And of course, our guest today, Samin Nosrat. Her new cookbook, Good Things, comes out next week on September 16th. To preorder, visit our show notes at talkeasypod.com. To hear more Lemonada podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, wherever you like to listen. You can also subscribe to Lemonada Premium for exclusive bonus content and ad-free listening. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple or head to lemonadapremium.com. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo.

• 1:13:11Sam Fragoso?

  Today's talk was edited by Adam Jamal and Nick Zahn. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Kresha Shanoi. Photographs today are from Maria Alvarez. Research assistance from Kiki Giorgio. This episode was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media, and I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to another episode of Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with Terry Gross. Until then, stay safe and some more.

• 1:14:02Speaker 04

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long-haul truck together.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:14:16Speaker 05

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Thirty-two thousand pounds of frozen dead rats. That's it. Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast, What It's Like to Be.

• 1:14:32Speaker 06

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