Pod Insights Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware Meera Sodha About this episode It’s a foodie dream today with our next guest, chef and entrepreneur Meera Sodha. Author of the new vegetarian & vegan cookbook ‘Dinner’, Meera joined us for lunch bringing an absolutely delicious freshly baked honey cake with her! We discovered that Meera learned to cook from her lovely mum who grew up in Uganda, how she became a columnist for the Guardian magazine, her varied (and wild!) past careers, setting up her own dating agency 'Fancy an Indian?’(!), how she started writing cookbooks with the help of a smoothie company, and the fabulous story of how she met her husband (it’s like a Netflix romcom). Plus, she really gives Nigel Slater a run for his money with her incredible ways of describing food. Meera’s new vegan and vegetarian cookbook ‘Dinner’ is available to buy now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript 11,337 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:00 Speaker 03 Darling, have you got your tickets yet for our extra special Christmas extravaganza at the Union Chapel on Monday, the 2nd of December?
2:12 Jessie Ware? We are doing a special Choose Love Table Manners episode, live from the Union Chapel, with Dorno Porter and Chris O'Dowd. It's for a really good cause. Choose Love do incredible work for displaced people all around the world, and we're thrilled to be partnering with them this Christmas for a special Christmas bonanza. Expect, if you've been to our live shows before, maybe mum will be bringing some chicken soup. We may have to resurrect the chicken superfan and invite you all on stage. It's extra special because Union Chapel is really intimate, so we can get up close and personal. You can ask Lenny all about her last leopard print purchase. But above all, this is for a great cause. We would love to see you there next Monday.
2:49 Speaker 03 Don't miss out, it's going to be such fun.
2:52 Jessie Ware? Check our Table Manners Instagram bio and Choose Love's bio for tickets.
2:59 Jessie Ware? Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with my mum in my kitchen. It is a beautiful autumn day. The parakeets are, I don't know, parakeeting?
3:09 Speaker 03 Parakeeting, yeah.
3:09 Jessie Ware? Outside. It's a blue sky, but it was like 3 degrees this morning.
3:14 Speaker 03 So cold.
3:16 Jessie Ware? Very cold. Well, now my kitchen is like a greenhouse.
3:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:20 Jessie Ware? So, and I have direct sunshine in my eyes, so, but it's lovely, it's lovely.
3:24 Speaker 03 Okay.
3:26 Jessie Ware? I've been on cooking duty.
3:28 Speaker 03 Oh, you've excelled yourself.
3:29 Jessie Ware? I don't know if I have.
3:30 Speaker 03 I think you have.
3:31 Jessie Ware? We have a vegetarian on, who probably has one of the leading vegan, is it still only vegan?
3:39 Speaker 03 She's such a good vegetarian cook. She writes in The Guardian.
3:42 Jessie Ware? Yes, but like, her whole thing was that she has a vegan column.
3:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's his vegan.
3:46 Jessie Ware? Mirasoda's coming on the podcast. My brother cooks mirasoda recipes the whole time.
3:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:53 Jessie Ware? Salsa verde beans.
3:57 Jessie Ware? That's Mira. And we've got her coming on to talk about her new cookbook Dinner, which is a hundred and twenty recipes of vegan and vegetarian food. And I'm cooking, I'm on cooking duties. So I
4:10 Speaker 03 You've prepped.
4:11 Jessie Ware? I've prepped like a motherfucker.
4:13 Speaker 03 The prep queen today.
4:15 Jessie Ware? I'm still waiting to put in the main event, which, I mean, it could go one way or the other. I have made, if you've listened to the Jamie Demetriu episode, I made a savoury galette. And that was like a butternut squash and cider onion and cheddar cheese one. I haven't done that. But I've done some, I remember it being quite nice. So I've kind of improvised, it's pumpkin season. And so I've used one of the most delicious Natura de Lisa pumpkins, and I've roasted them. And I pureed the pumpkin flesh, because it has the green outside, so that would have made it look really ugly.
4:56 Jessie Ware? And then I got pre-rolled short crust pastry, which actually came in a circle, which was brilliant as well, thank you. And so I've put the base as the pumpkin puree, much like if you were doing a pizza, like tomato base. And I've left a bit of space around the edge, because what you do is you kind of create a crust by kind of folding it into itself. It's supposed to be very rustic, my kind of cooking. And then I've caramelised some red onions, which I did with some sherry vinegar as well to kind of add a little, and then goat's cheese. And then I've got some hazelnuts that I've crushed up that I toasted, and I've fried some sage. And I'm going to put them on near the end, because otherwise they'll kind of burn. And then I've done it with a herb salad
5:39 Jessie Ware? of tarragon, chives, dill, parsley. And then I've done, it's a Sophie Wybur recipe from Mob. So it's these harissa honey carrots and chickpeas that you do with whip feta. So I've done that. And then
5:55 Speaker 03 Have you been whipping your feta?
5:56 Jessie Ware? Yeah, but it makes it sound like it's really hard. It's such a great cheat, isn't it? But it looks very sexy.
6:02 Speaker 03 And it tastes great.
6:03 Jessie Ware? Yeah. And then for pudding, I have done Ravneet Gill's. Uh, it's called Baking for Pleasure, her cookbook. And I did her brown sugar meringues. I've never made meringues before in my life. These.
6:20 Speaker 03 Are you feeling pretty smug?
6:21 Jessie Ware? I'm feeling so smug.
6:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:24 Jessie Ware? I'm feeling like I could walk into an Ottolenghi. And say, hey, I see your gigantic delicious meringues and I raise you.
6:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:34 Jessie Ware? The Ravneet Gill brown sugar meringue. And then the genius thing of this is that you do a kind of coffee cream. So you just do some granulated instant coffee, put some sugar in that with a bit of water. And you pour that into mascarpone and then you add a double cream. And then you whip it and it's so banging. It's like tiramisu, it's delicious. And then I've done some cherries, frozen cherries with some sugar that you're going to put on top. And then I'm going to grate some dark chocolate. We were talking about Black Forest Gattos last week and it's almost like a Black Forest Gatto meringue.
7:11 Speaker 03 Those tin cherries were not great.
7:12 Jessie Ware? The tin cherries were awful. I recommend no one ever buying the tin cherries and always just go for the frozen cherries. And then add some sugar. So I think it should be quite nice. I'm a bit worried that I'm going to have a soggy bottom with the galette. So yeah, we've got Mira Sodhi coming up to eat a delicious vegetarian lunch. And to talk all things Guardian column and dinner, the cookbook.
7:53 Jessie Ware? Mira Sodhi, you've just joined us, not only with a beautiful bunch of flowers, shabli, my fave. And also a honey cake, which is outrageous that you have the time to do that. Cause I swear you're on the move at the moment and you're just so thoughtful. So cheers. Thank you so much.
8:08 Speaker 05 For having me.
8:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, cheers.
8:11 Jessie Ware? They're all drinking at lunchtime.
8:13 Speaker 03 I'm so happy. But it feels like late for me.
8:16 Jessie Ware? Because we did morning breakfast radio this morning.
8:19 Speaker 05 Oh, did you? Okay. Well, yeah. Did you have to be up really early for that? Unreal.
8:24 Speaker 03 I'm just not as good as I used to be at getting up early.
8:28 Jessie Ware? Because you're a diva now.
8:29 Speaker 03 No, because I'm old.
8:30 Jessie Ware? Um, but I mean, you must be up in the morning anyway because you have kids. How many kids do you have?
8:35 Speaker 05 Two and they're they're pretty good. I have to wake them up in the morning and I'm not saying like I'm not saying they're great at everything.
8:41 Speaker 03 God, are they teenagers?
8:42 Speaker 05 No, I know that. I think one of them's like four, but going on like fourteen.
8:47 Jessie Ware? Got it. I've got a three-nager in the other room at the moment. Yeah.
8:50 Speaker 03 A three-nager.
8:51 Jessie Ware? Yeah. I'm gonna be just busy-ing. Actually, can I ask your opinion? Because I've made a vegetarian. You are vegetarian, not vegan.
8:58 Speaker 05 Not vegan, correct.
8:59 Jessie Ware? Thank God. Okay, fine. Because I just put goat's cheese on the thing. So I've made galettes. A galette, pumpkin, onions, goat's cheese. I've kind of pureed the pumpkin. But I think that the delisa pumpkins look so nice. Do you say delisa? Is it delic?
9:15 Speaker 05 I don't know. I say delic, but I don't know.
9:19 Jessie Ware? I don't know either.
9:20 Speaker 05 From Sicily, aren't they?
9:21 Jessie Ware? Don't you know?
9:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:22 Jessie Ware? Okay, I'm gonna go delic.
9:24 Speaker 03 Sicily.
9:24 Speaker 05 I think so. I think they all come from Sicily and they cure them, don't they?
9:28 Jessie Ware? I don't know. Tell me more.
9:30 Speaker 05 Like magical wax. Do you have to peel off a wax?
9:32 Jessie Ware? It's so romantic.
9:34 Speaker 05 There's such a magnificently special pumpkin that they have to stamp it.
9:37 Jessie Ware? Basically, I pureed some of the flesh, but I was gonna put some more on top. But do you think that is pumpkin overload? If you've already got the puree?
9:45 Speaker 05 I don't think so. It like it could be a nice textural situation.
9:50 Jessie Ware? You just chat about.
9:51 Speaker 03 So where did you learn to cook?
9:53 Speaker 05 I mean, my mum is an amazing cook and I didn't learn how to cook when I was a kid. Because I was like semi a brat and sort of took it for granted that she was incredible. But also she used to kick me out of the kitchen and say, go and do your homework. You know, I want you to become a doctor. And she wanted like that sort of safety and security for me. And so I went to university and. Not knowing how to cook until I got homesick. And I was out one night with some friends and they, we were in a curry house on Brick Lane and they said, oh, what should we order from the menu? And I said, well, this isn't the food that I grew up eating.
10:33 Speaker 05 Um, this like baby puree corn, but I didn't realise that people didn't know that. It was like nothing like the Gujarati gorgeous, like vegetarian.
10:40 Jessie Ware? So where are you, what's your heritage?
10:42 Speaker 05 Gujarati. So Gujarat's on the west coast of India.
10:46 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
10:46 Speaker 05 And it's a state that's got the population like roughly a similar sized population to the, to the UK. So about sixty, six million or so, you know, something like that. And so it's not small and it is predominantly vegetarian because in, I think it's about two hundred and fifty B C, there was an emperor called Ashoka. And after a particularly bloody war, he said, no more blood must be spilled.
11:11 Jessie Ware? Okay.
11:11 Speaker 05 And.
11:11 Jessie Ware? It will be veggies.
11:12 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly. And then there's this principle of ahimsa, which is Buddhist, which is also kind of no harm, must be done to people. And, and so traditionally Hindus are quite like peace loving.
11:24 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
11:24 Speaker 05 You know, and so the, you know, the cuisine is centuries old. This way of, and, and so when, when people were starting to talk about plant based food and getting vegan, getting vegetarian, here and it feeling like a trend. I mean, we're talking, there's so many bits of the world that have been eating vegan vegetarian food for thousands of years.
11:43 Jessie Ware? This brings us on to your column. How long have you been the vegan columnist for The Guardian?
11:48 Speaker 05 Um, seven and a half going on eight years and I didn't think I'd last beyond a couple of weeks.
11:53 Jessie Ware? Am I right in thinking you weren't vegan at the time when you started to do the column?
11:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, I wasn't vegan and I'm still not vegan, but I love vegetables and I love animals predominantly when they're alive. And so those two things kind of propelled me forward. But what happened was, I got a phone call out of the blue one day from Melissa Deans, who was like the editor of the then Guardian Weekend magazine. She loved Fresh India, my second book, which is all vegetarian and said, oh, we, you know, cook loads of dishes out there. It, there's loads of vegan dishes. Would you consider heading up this column? And I should have said no, because, you know, I wasn't vegan and I also had a four month. Baby at the time, but I could see friends of mine struggling all around me to try and figure out like the western plates made up of like a big slab of meat in the middle of it and vegetables
12:38 Speaker 05 on the side. And they, I could tell that, you know, they didn't really know exactly what to cook. And I felt like I could add to the conversation because I'd grown up eating like vegetarian food and, and absolutely loving it. And I thought, you know, if I looked east towards, like beyond India, towards Thailand and Vietnam, that I'd find examples of like other cultures and cuisines that put vegetables in the centre of the table. And there are so many of them. Like if you look at Thailand, like there's like 95% of Thailand or Thai people are Buddhist. And
13:11 Jessie Ware? I didn't know that.
13:13 Speaker 05 Yes, they do eat meat, but like it's not like a primary, the, the cuisine's evolved without it being a primary ingredient. And so typically, like, like, if you think about a sometimes salad, you can take a little bit of meat out with no like real rupture to the recipe. It's still going to be absolutely delicious.
13:29 Jessie Ware? But how would you replace like the fish sauce?
13:32 Speaker 05 So you can get like vegan fish sauce. It's really good.
13:34 Jessie Ware? Oh, really?
13:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, Thai Taste make a really good one. And I think it's made with It's called nong pla. So nong pla you can make with fish sauce. Yeah. And I think they make the fish sauce with seaweed because it's kind of got that Okay, it's that salty. Salty, umami thing going on.
13:49 Jessie Ware? Mm hmm. My daughter in the last week has said, I like chickens, mum. I want to be a vegetarian. I said, that's absolutely fine, darling, but you need to eat a few more vegetables, I think, if we're going to do this. How do your children eat? Do they eat well?
14:03 Speaker 05 They're all right. I think they haven't always eaten well.
14:06 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
14:06 Speaker 05 So Aria, my eldest, used to come home and just demand like buttered pasta most nights. And then she's self elected to become a vegetarian. I think they're like, you know, she's like part of like the eco council at school and Eco council. She's got, I know, they've got like, she's got a thousand teddy bears in her room. Like she really loves animals and just didn't want to eat them. And I said exactly the same thing. You're going to have to eat loads of vegetables. So we kind of started just taking them off one by one. And I think there's just something about like having a bit more agency and or say in what she wants to do. And she just has started eating load tons more vegetables now. And it's been the most incredible journey because before she wouldn't like touch. You know, whatever we put in front of her and she wouldn't try it, but she wants like,
14:50 Speaker 05 she's desperate to be vegetarian. And the other one, Yogi, just kind of fell out of the womb, just putting everything she could in her mouth. And it's not fussy at all. She's like a self-elected flexitarian and God knows where she's got that from, because it wasn't me.
15:03 Speaker 03 How old is she?
15:03 Speaker 05 If there's a sausage going, she'll definitely eat it.
15:05 Speaker 03 She the four-year-old?
15:06 Speaker 05 That was, yeah, yeah.
15:08 Speaker 03 Do you cook meat for them?
15:09 Speaker 05 I don't know, but he, he's, he's like the only proper carnivore in our family. And so he-
15:15 Speaker 03 That's your husband?
15:16 Speaker 05 Yes.
15:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:17 Speaker 05 And so he'll like occasionally cook some sausages or like roast a chicken alongside what I'm doing and so that we can all eat together.
15:23 Speaker 03 And you don't mind?
15:25 Speaker 05 No, I don't mind because I, like, I mostly ate vegetarian food growing up. But when my grandfather moved over to Uganda, he started hunting antelope and baking them in, in like an oven dug out of the earth. And so I'm used to eating meat. I just don't eat that much of it. I don't cook it at home.
15:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:42 Speaker 05 Yeah. And I've got like a real weak spot for prawns myself, so.
15:45 Speaker 03 Oh, have you? Do you still eat them?
15:47 Speaker 05 I do, because I'm not, you know, as I say, I'm a pescatarian, but it's just this kind of problem with needing to label yourself, because really I don't, 95% of what I eat comes from plants. But food isn't just fuel. It's, it's also history, nostalgia, pleasure, tradition.
16:05 Speaker 03 That's our whole podcast.
16:06 Speaker 05 Is it? Yeah, well, there, yeah.
16:08 Speaker 03 Where were you brought up?
16:10 Speaker 05 Um, so I was born in Scumthorpe, of all places, I know.
16:13 Speaker 03 You haven't got the accent.
16:15 Speaker 05 Well, because my parents are from Uganda and I went to school in Hull. And I don't think, you can only tell on certain words like bath and grass. And I can't get rid of that A.
16:26 Speaker 03 Do your family still live there?
16:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, they still live there in a little village in Lincolnshire. And behind their house is a potato factory and there's like pinks all around. And yeah, they're still there. And there's a very small Indian community there. There's not that many. But my, when my grandfather came into this country, he met someone at a desk, you know, like they were part of the exodus in 1972, where like 28,000 Ugandan nations came over. And he was such a proud man and he said, oh, I don't want to take handouts from the British government. And so tell me where I can get a job. And the person on the other side of the desk said, oh, here they're looking for lorry drivers at Scunthorpe Steelwork. So we ended up in Scunthorpe of all places. So we were the only Indians in the village. And it was great though.
17:10 Speaker 03 Were they nice? Were people nice to you?
17:12 Speaker 05 Honestly, I mean, I never had a problem at all. I just, I mean, I think the only thing that it probably did for me was I was the one saying, oh, I don't want to go to school smelling of curry and fried onions. And, and so I didn't want curry for dinner. I really wanted.
17:30 Speaker 03 That's what Nisha Katona said.
17:32 Speaker 05 Did she? I wanted like spaghetti hoops on toast or wanted to go to pizza.
17:36 Speaker 03 Exactly what she said. She did. And when friends came back for dinner, they were expecting, or they came back for tea after school, they're expecting Indian food. And she'd say, give them mac and chips.
17:47 Speaker 05 Yeah. I mean, it was amazing from a food point of view because Lincolnshire is where like a lot of our produce grows. You know, they used to have like loads of potatoes. Like they used to have special railways that would carry them like from Lincolnshire to London for the markets. And Gujarati potato curry is like famous, but so we ate a lot of potatoes when I was growing up and like loads of cabbage and all of that.
18:10 Speaker 03 What do your parents do?
18:11 Speaker 05 So mum, she had a newsagent when I was growing up and helped dad. And he is a financial advisor. So he's still working. And so, you know, things to do with like pensions and insurance and.
18:23 Speaker 03 But very aspirational for you.
18:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, really. I would say so. I think they really wanted to make a good life. My, I mean, they were, they came into this country, they'd had everything taken from them. My grandfather was really wealthy in Uganda. He was self-made. He like set up the first Coca-Cola bottling factory, one of the first printing presses in Uganda. He was in business with the Tilda family when they were like doing orange juice and not rice.
18:49 Speaker 03 Wow. Funny. Was that in Uganda?
18:51 Speaker 05 That was in Uganda.
18:53 Speaker 03 So Tilda from Uganda.
18:54 Speaker 05 They are. Yeah. So it was just all sorts of strange coming over to the UK because they were. Pretty poor and my parents lived in that estate that was notorious on that Channel Four documentary called Skint, you know, the one. And so they in, they just became very thrifty. I mean, they ate curried baked beans and cabbage curry for days. And, and I think I really love that because I feel like the way that my mum cooked, it was very much about very cheap store cupboard cooking.
19:24 Jessie Ware? Hmm.
19:24 Speaker 05 Lentils, beans all, you know, cooked from scratch. But then she'd take whatever was in the fields around us, ended up in the green groves or given to us by neighbours, like whether it was marrows or like a brace of pheasants. I mean, anything really, uh, leeks, kale. I mean, whatever grew, she would just curry it. She was also really curious, which I love, like super passionate. So we'd like pirouette around the markets and she'd say, make sure you look for the aubergines with the bright green tops because they're fresh. And so I really learnt from her like how to pick ve- like good quality vegetables.
19:56 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
19:56 Speaker 05 But so, yeah, my memories of home were kind of her making this incredible food, this like the smell of basmati steaming and dal, like my favourite, favourite dal.
20:05 Jessie Ware? Which is your favourite dal?
20:06 Speaker 05 I mean, it's, it's called a daily dal and it's in Made in India. And I love that. I mean, I love many dals, many dals in my heart now. But that was one of my, that was my favourite growing up. Masala omelets on Sundays.
20:18 Jessie Ware? Yum.
20:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, dad putting Elvis on, um, on the record player or Latte Mangeshka playing and chai. I mean, it was gorgeous.
20:26 Speaker 03 So what's the basis of your curries or your mum's curries? Is it onions, tomatoes, garlic and?
20:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, it's.
20:34 Jessie Ware? Which spices would you not be able to do a curry without?
20:37 Speaker 05 Okay, so.
20:38 Jessie Ware? Or family curry.
20:39 Speaker 05 Typical Gujarati spicing, you're looking at equal parts ground.
20:43 Jessie Ware? I like this already. This sounds straightforward.
20:45 Speaker 05 Yeah. It's equal parts ground coriander and cumin.
20:48 Jessie Ware? Okay.
20:48 Speaker 05 And they complement each other so well because cumin's this like dark brooding horse of a spice. It smells a little bit like fresh man sweat in a nice way. And coriander's this like light floral, like lemony, like really happy smell. So those two go really well together. And then there's Kashmiri chilli, turmeric.
21:10 Speaker 05 Always, mainly for health related.
21:12 Jessie Ware? And that's equal parts as well or not?
21:13 Speaker 05 I mean, you can add those, like, I don't know, typically add like half a teaspoon of turmeric and then chili, like as you wish. And so those are the core spices and occasionally should start a, like, some people like make a spiced oil called a turka. After you've cooked something and then pushed it in, she likes to do it before because it would stink the house out. Where you get your oil nice and hot and you throw some mustard seeds in there and they become nice and nutty or some fenugreek seeds. And I said, well, why do you do that? And she said, oh, it's mostly for health purposes. So I really think you could just get away with having like cumin, coriander, kashmiri chili, turmeric and salt and that would be it. And you could, that's like predominantly what she used. Now typically in Gujarati cooking, you don't really use onion and garlic that much.
21:57 Speaker 05 But she was raised partly because they were living in like really rural Uganda. She was raised by a Punjabi family and the Punjabi way of cooking is like a lot richer. Where you use like onions and garlic and lots of ginger and she uses tons of garlic. I love garlic. I mean, I love using so much that you can kind of smell it on your skin the next day.
22:20 Speaker 05 This is such a treat. My favourite thing is being invited over to other people's houses.
22:25 Jessie Ware? Do you, we've had chefs on before and they've said that sometimes people really feel the pressure of cooking for you.
22:32 Speaker 05 I mean.
22:32 Jessie Ware? Well, for chefs.
22:33 Speaker 05 Yeah.
22:33 Jessie Ware? Do you find that people kind of freak out and don't know what to do?
22:36 Speaker 05 I mean, sometimes I just feel like Hugh and I love hosting and so we tend to host quite a lot.
22:43 Jessie Ware? How did you two meet?
22:44 Speaker 05 Uh, so we had, so he came to my flat when I wasn't there and he saw my bike. He's kind of a bike nut and saw my book collection and really wanted to like know more about me and so invited me over.
23:00 Jessie Ware? Why was he there when you went there?
23:01 Speaker 05 Oh, because he's friends with my flatmate and she was having a dinner party and I was at work.
23:09 Speaker 03 He broke me.
23:11 Speaker 05 And when I met him, there was like, like, he looks like he'd splattered the walls with blood. There was like, he was making a fessenjahn from scratch. His like mother in laws, like Armenian.
23:21 Jessie Ware? Fessenjahn. That's what Simon Le Bon was talking about on radio, you know.
23:25 Speaker 05 Oh, really? It's gorgeous to be had it.
23:27 Speaker 03 No, I need to do that.
23:28 Speaker 05 Oh, it's so good. It's so good and so simple. F E S E N J A N. And it's typically made, I think, with chicken or lamb.
23:40 Jessie Ware? Yes, Le Bon did it with lamb last night.
23:42 Speaker 03 He said red meat.
23:45 Jessie Ware? He said lamb, yes, lamb. And so he'd made a mess in your kitchen?
23:48 Speaker 05 Not my kitchen, his kitchen. Yeah, he'd just kind of really gone to town and doing this thing from scratch and it was gorgeous. And at the time I was working on, I was putting ping pong tables all across like London. I don't know if you've seen ping pong tables anywhere.
24:02 Jessie Ware? Hold on, ping pong, what, like playing ping pong?
24:05 Speaker 03 Was it that, was it?
24:06 Jessie Ware? Why were you doing that?
24:07 Speaker 03 Was it those places called ping pong and you could go there and play ping pong?
24:12 Speaker 05 No, so it wasn't that.
24:14 Jessie Ware? Okay.
24:15 Speaker 05 So it was, like, before I was in FEED, I had an arts organisation called Sing London, which I'd had to set up. And we put pianos and ping pong tables on the streets of cities in a bid to sort of get people together. And we didn't make any money from it. We were just kind of funded by different pots. And he worked in advertising. And he wasn't very good at flirting, so I thought he was offering me free advertising until I turned up to a date.
24:40 Speaker 05 And anyway, it was really nice. And fessenjahn's now like one of our very special dishes, but we make it with aubergine now. So we'll typically have that at like Christmas time or when people come over and it's.
24:50 Jessie Ware? This is like the beginning of a rom com. Don't you think?
24:55 Speaker 05 Yeah, it could be, could be.
24:57 Jessie Ware? Nobody Wants This Part Two, but gets set in London.
25:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, and it was like a scene out of like a Bridget Jones style thing, because his name's Hugh De Winton. And so I thought he had land and was quite rich and he's not actually.
25:09 Speaker 03 He sounds it.
25:10 Speaker 05 Yeah.
25:11 Jessie Ware? Was that what compelled you to go on the date then?
25:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, obviously.
25:13 Speaker 03 Maybe they used to have land.
25:15 Speaker 05 Maybe. I think, I think they did. He said there's a lot of dead De Wintons in Wales. And so maybe there's like a patch of land with my name, with his name waiting on it over there somewhere.
25:25 Jessie Ware? By the way, I'm acknowledging now. Yeah. The carrots are crunchy because I decided to scrub them.
25:33 Speaker 03 Frighten them.
25:34 Jessie Ware? Did I frighten, shock them?
25:36 Speaker 03 Shock them, sorry.
25:37 Jessie Ware? Um, no, but I scrubbed them. I was like, I'm just gonna keep them like with the um fucking skin on because it didn't have that much skin. I was like, I'm just gonna be rustic. And I'm not gonna do that next time because.
25:48 Speaker 03 No, I prefer them. I prefer them.
25:50 Jessie Ware? We like the taste of soil.
25:51 Speaker 03 No, I can't taste soil.
25:53 Jessie Ware? Oh, you may in a minute. Just, yeah.
25:55 Speaker 03 What did you do at university?
25:57 Speaker 05 So I did industrial relations, which is a really weird thing to study.
26:01 Speaker 03 Where?
26:02 Speaker 05 LSE, London School of Economics.
26:04 Jessie Ware? Is that kind of like city planning? Is it start something? I mean, explain to us what industrial.
26:10 Speaker 05 So industrial relations is is sort of the relationship between business and people and government. And like kind of organising how people work. And so it's kind of, you know, it's all about trade unions and workers' rights and um employment law and how businesses operate. And I don't really, I kind of did it because I was doing young enterprises at school and I was a managing director, but my team was like, they were all rugby lads and we were painting photo frames and it was like a total nightmare. And I was like, this is so interesting, like, I can't get anyone to do anything. And so I sort of became really interested in the people's side of business, like the kind of human face of it.
26:52 Speaker 05 But I didn't really realise that like studying it would mean like I eat, there's like kind of two routes out of it and one is maybe human resources and the other one's like, you know, trade unionism and that neither of those appealed to me in any way, shape or form. And so I was spat out of it and set up my own dating agency, um, which was.
27:13 Jessie Ware? That took such a turn.
27:17 Jessie Ware? Was this before or after the ping pong?
27:20 Speaker 05 It was before. I think I didn't know what I wanted to do and I didn't really have any, um, my parents like worked for themselves. I knew I wanted to do something. For myself and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to kind of go into insurance like my dad had. And at the time, my cousin was looking for a husband, but she'd only ever dated English boys and she was looking for an Indian husband. And like the family was passing around these books with like bios and like photos like tacked into them. And I was like, this is crazy. And so I met with the owners of JDate.
27:53 Jessie Ware? Yes.
27:53 Speaker 05 Because it was actually the, or the people who founded it, because it was the only online dating agency that existed at the time.
28:00 Jessie Ware? So for people that don't know what JDate is, it's um a very, very old uh dating, it was before an app, wasn't it or not, maybe?
28:07 Speaker 05 It was one of the first.
28:08 Jessie Ware? Oh, it was one of the first apps.
28:09 Speaker 05 Online dating website.
28:11 Jessie Ware? And it was for Jewish people to ju- meet Jewish people.
28:13 Speaker 05 Yes. And so this one was meant to be for Indian people to meet other Indian people and it was called Fancy an Indian. And I'm really, I'm really sad that I gave up the URL because it, I don't know, it's just like such a great URL.
28:27 Jessie Ware? You could be like a tech.
28:29 Speaker 05 Oh my god, I could be so rich. I could be a billionaire by now. Imagine.
28:35 Speaker 03 What did your mum say about this?
28:37 Speaker 05 I mean, she pumped some.
28:38 Jessie Ware? She was thrilled.
28:39 Speaker 05 Yeah, exactly. She'd find a good husband this way, darling. Yeah. She would have been, they pumped money into it and at the same time, I was like working at a um a call centre selling anti wrinkle cream.
28:52 Speaker 05 And in a, in like a bar.
28:53 Jessie Ware? And in your spare time, you were a teapot, as my grandma would say.
28:58 Speaker 03 I'm a teapot.
28:58 Jessie Ware? Especially if you've done everything, so you, in, in your spare time, you're a teapot. I don't know why she used to say.
29:04 Speaker 05 I love that.
29:05 Jessie Ware? Maybe like you can do everything, so you also can be a teapot.
29:07 Speaker 05 I mean, I was just being, I was, I was, you know, doing sort of part-time documentary making until I was fired. I had, I basically tried my hand absolutely. Uh yeah, I really felt like I was. And maybe that is like second generation immigrant, you know, something that I feel like my immigrant parents gave to me. It was like, you can do anything, you know, because they started from scratch and they, you know, managed to come out of their estate and like buy a lovely old rickety house somewhere and, you know, have a nice life in Lincolnshire.
29:37 Speaker 03 How far did Fancy the Indian?
29:38 Jessie Ware? Fancy an Indian guy.
29:40 Speaker 05 I mean, it went as far as me printing T-shirts and handing out flyers in Leicester Square. I organised a couple of events.
29:46 Speaker 03 Any marriages?
29:47 Speaker 05 No, it didn't get that far because nobody. Can I tell you what happened though? Because also, at the time, I knew I'd been told about Hugh, my now husband. And my friend said, oh, you should talk to him because he's really good at playlists. So I was organising. I did a couple of in-person events called Save the Date. Where, you know, you had to show the other, you know, who you were looking to date. Like how good you were at like flipping pancakes like blindfolded. And he did the playlist. And he couldn't make it to an event, but we ended up getting married anyway.
30:20 Jessie Ware? But have you started writing this story down?
30:23 Speaker 03 But you should.
30:24 Jessie Ware? This is a Netflix rom-com.
30:25 Speaker 03 Yeah. But did any of the people you'd set up end up marrying?
30:30 Speaker 05 I know people who got together from a ping pong parlor that I had from the ping pong time, so I had.
30:34 Jessie Ware? That makes you sound like a madam.
30:38 Jessie Ware? My parlor, the ping pong parlor.
30:40 Speaker 03 Susan Sarandon has ping pong tables. That's her business.
30:46 Jessie Ware? What? How do you know that?
30:48 Speaker 05 What, like the bars in New York, those ones?
30:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:51 Speaker 05 Oh, because it was so trendy at some point.
30:54 Speaker 03 You tricked it out.
30:54 Jessie Ware? How long ago was this?
30:56 Speaker 05 Good question. It was two thousand and four, five, two thousand and four.
31:01 Jessie Ware? Okay.
31:02 Speaker 05 Yes, quite a while ago. And I say I kind of fell into the food thing was a bit of an accident. I've always loved food.
31:10 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
31:11 Speaker 05 The fact that I've got books out was because of a two-minute conversation that just changed the course of my life. And so, like, I was working at Innocent Drinks, you know, the smoothie company.
31:22 Jessie Ware? Of course you were.
31:23 Speaker 05 And loved it there. It was like in the.
31:26 Jessie Ware? When they were really buzzing.
31:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, so I was number fifty-five, I think, through the door. And it was just a brilliant place to work. And they offered this thing called a scholarship, which was a thousand pounds to make your dreams come true. Arguably, I needed more than a thousand pounds, but I was like, I'll take it. So you had to stand up in front of the company and pitch Dragon's Den style, your idea, and then. People would vote and I said, oh, I want to go and meet my family in India that I haven't met in Gujarat, write down the family recipes. And then I'm going to, you know, make a book and give it to everyone. And by that I meant like, I'm going to write it up on the work, on word, on the work computers, print it out on the work computers and then just give it to people who worked at Innocent. Only one of the guys who voted for me, a guy called Pete was fixing my laptop one day and he's like, oh, I voted for you.
32:13 Speaker 05 And my wife's an editor at Simon and she sees she go and meet with her and I was like, whatever, please fix my laptop. I need to go and get this PowerPoint presentation done. And so I went to meet with her and not thinking anything of it because I'm a brown girl from Scunthorpe and like people like me didn't publish cookbooks. And Bryony Gaulet changed my life because she said, oh, this could be a book and. You know, I'll send you a list of agents and go home, write a proposal and practically kick me out of the restaurant. And so two weeks later from meeting her, I had an agent and then five weeks later, I had five publishing deals on the table. And I just still can't believe that that would have never have happened if I hadn't.
32:54 Jessie Ware? Pitched yourself to try and win a grant.
32:56 Speaker 05 And but also talked to Pete Gaulet, who was fixing my laptop. It was just a two minute conversation.
33:00 Jessie Ware? Are you still friends with him?
33:01 Speaker 05 I am still friends with him and Bryony and I just think, you know, these things can just happen out of like magic out of nowhere.
33:09 Jessie Ware? Kismet though, maybe it was meant to be.
33:11 Speaker 05 Maybe it was meant to be.
33:12 Jessie Ware? What's kismet mean? Like serendipity, it's kind of like what was meant to be.
33:15 Speaker 05 Maybe I wasn't meant to be like a tech entrepreneur.
33:18 Jessie Ware? Maybe you still are.
33:19 Speaker 05 Maybe.
33:20 Jessie Ware? Maybe you're about to be a big Hollywood producer, thanks. Because the story of your life is fascinating.
33:25 Speaker 05 Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
33:27 Speaker 03 So anything you've not done yet?
33:29 Speaker 05 Well, I think partly what I found was because I don't know if you know this, but like I had a breakdown. And so, and I laughed, but it wasn't actually a laughing matter. It was actually quite a horrible period in my life.
33:43 Jessie Ware? Was this after your second child?
33:44 Speaker 05 It was, but I don't think it was related to her because it was, I did have her during a pandemic and I think the reasons for why, why it happened are quite complicated. It might have been burnout. It could have been, you know, intense work deadlines or having a newborn baby, et cetera. But I just. And I fell out of love with like life and cooking and had to find my way back to the kitchen sort of step by step, a meal by meal. Which is what the book Dinner is about. So now, I think my point of saying that is I don't really, I try and sort of live in the little pockets of life these days, rather than sort of ambitiously try and do new things.
34:19 Jessie Ware? I'm presuming that's because you used to potentially think the other way and that was, you felt detrimental.
34:26 Speaker 05 Yes, I think what happened was, I, I think my identity was very closely tied to achievement. And so I just like went through life thinking that I could do everything and then just trying to do all of these things. And I loved it, don't get me wrong, okay, just I fed off it, it felt like I had like air in my lungs when I was doing all of this new stuff and I felt like invincible and I was like, I'm gonna make documentaries, I'll go and do this. I felt fearless, like you do when you're in your twenties, you know, you just feel like you can do anything.
34:52 Speaker 03 But do you think there's also pressure because you are second generation immigrant?
34:56 Speaker 05 Totally. I just felt like, you know, my parents just sort of set the bar really high and they said, you know, we want you to be successful.
35:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:02 Speaker 05 We want you to, and then they kind of laid out like a set of jobs that, they wanted me to be happy. And, and it came from a place that was really good because they had had to like, you know, they were hiding from the milkman. They didn't have any money and they just wanted security and safety for me. So it came from a really good place.
35:18 Speaker 03 What helped you get better?
35:21 Speaker 05 So it was, it, it all hinged on one day and uh, so it's probably been in bed for, I just didn't want to get out of bed, I felt very lethargic. And like all of my senses just narrowed down to nothing. And I felt really discombobulated about what was going on. And then, you know, after months and months of the same thing, Hugh, my husband, was starting to crack under the pressure because he'd been looking after our two girls, including our little baby and me. And also doing all the family cooking. And he said, I'd love you to cook me a meal. And it was his way of saying, I really need you to care for me. I need someone to care for me and to love me.
36:02 Speaker 05 And so I just woke up, I'd been so sort of in my own head and I ran into the kitchen and I grabbed some lentils. And some coconut milk and then went to the freezer where I keep, you know, all my chillies, curry leaves, lemongrass, you name it. And then I made this like Malaysian dal that we'd eaten bucket loads of in Singapore and I, when I made it, I just felt really like I felt like fresh air like in my lungs. I felt like energy in my fingertips and I really loved doing it. And it felt so different to, you know, I felt energetic for a start and I loved cooking, which I hadn't wanted to do. And so I thought, maybe there's something in this here and maybe I just need to cook
36:41 Speaker 05 for myself or for pleasure or for joy, but not for work, not for deadlines, not for books. And so I started like cooking, just kind of feeling my way through. And, you know, it was typically fried eggs in like soy and butter over rice. Like we're talking really simple things like tofu fried rice or tomato pasta with a bit of kimchi in there. And I just kept a record of these things. And then this orange notebook that we keep by the microwave just started to fill up over time. And then I was meant to be under contract to write another book. And I spoke to my editor and I was already like a year late at this point on this book. And I said, listen, I really think I'm, I feel like this is giving me such purpose. Like I felt like
37:24 Speaker 05 by planning dinner, I felt really grounded and by cooking it, it was like a small sense of achievement in my day. And then with like coming around the table with everyone, it just was just magic. I just loved it. Which I know sounds really basic, but before that, I'll say that like, I might have been working all day on a lime pickle recipe trying to perfect it. I couldn't give that to the kids. So then we'd give them pasta or something. Hugh and I would eat later and it was all quite disjointed, but like here we were just all kind of eating this one thing together. And so dinner just became this like thing that I really felt like had so much magic and power in it.
38:04 Speaker 05 I think maybe as humans, we've always known that coming around the dinner table is a really wonderful, joyful, brilliant thing. But I'd lost sight of it. I just, I couldn't really see it.
38:14 Speaker 03 What do you think was wrong with you?
38:16 Speaker 05 I think it was stuff that I hadn't addressed from my childhood that, you know, and I think it was that a lot of my identity was tied into work.
38:24 Jessie Ware? Um.
38:25 Speaker 05 And so I just kept on saying yes, and I like putting a lot of pressure on myself to do things. And then I think part of it was also writing recipes for, I mean, I've I've been in the game for ten years now. And initially I started because I wanted to record my mum's recipes.
38:40 Jessie Ware? Um.
38:40 Speaker 05 And I wanted to record them because I wanted to pass them on. And suddenly I found myself not cooking. The food that I'd grown up eating, the dal, the spinach and paneer curries, the aubergine and tomato curries that she cooked day in, day out, like, you know, the the smell of charge parties on the toa that like just filled, you know, that's the smell of my childhood. And um I just got so far away from that, I think. And it's not like I was like power hungry. But you just can like go down a path and not, I just didn't look behind me until it was a bit too late.
39:11 Jessie Ware? That resonates so much that you you're on this hamster wheel.
39:15 Speaker 05 Um.
39:16 Jessie Ware? Where it's all good stuff, so therefore there's no reason to want to jump off until you burn yourself out. And I got to the point where you know, I have wonderful management and supportive people around me, but I was just like, I on the outside, everyone's going, you're good, it's doing, you're doing so well, it's so good, like, and you're like, you you don't know what what you're doing. And also having young children, I that resonates so much. I mean, I feel like this weight has been lifted that I have made this decision not to tour next year. And that's just one aspect. I love touring, but the juggle of that with the podcast, making new music, with promoting, with being a parent, it was like just even having that little bit has made me be able to feel like I can be a better parent and a better
40:00 Jessie Ware? podcaster and artist, I don't know.
40:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, I I think it's really powerful that you say that because I think there are lots of people who will look at you from the outside thinking, how does she do it all?
40:12 Jessie Ware? Yeah, and I hate that because they go, how do you do it all? And I'm like, actually, I'm really struggling.
40:16 Speaker 05 Yeah.
40:16 Jessie Ware? You know, and I'm sure it's similar to you.
40:19 Speaker 03 It's hard to have it all, isn't it?
40:21 Speaker 05 It really is. It really, really is. And we're part of this experimental generation.
40:25 Jessie Ware? Um.
40:26 Speaker 05 Raising our. Kids and working full time and it's it's really hard. I feel like I've broken free from it. I mean, I'm still work in progress, but I'll have this idea that I want to create like, I don't know, a fresh supermarket dull range or something and then send out a few emails and then I'll think crap, I need to, I need to delete those because I shouldn't really be starting a new project. I really need to, you know, leave enough time for myself to just enjoy life, feel the sun on my face in the morning, do the yoga classes that I love doing, spend time with my kids. Like my idea of success these days looks like being able to pick up the kids at three thirty and we do that on a Friday and then we have film night and I am just the happiest.
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43:23 Speaker 03 Where do you think the best curry is in London?
43:25 Speaker 05 So my favorite place is Saravana Bhavan. Have you heard of it?
43:29 Speaker 03 Where is it?
43:30 Speaker 05 Okay, so they've got, I don't know, about five branches across London. But the one that's closest to me is East Ham. And there's a big South Indian community there. And the four of us, like my family, love to go on a Sunday. Early lunch, kids eat early. But at the same time, all of these South Indian families are tipping out of the temples. The women have got fresh jasmine in their hair. And all their beautiful temple jewelry on in their saris. And you're sitting bum to bum with them in Saravana Bhavan. It's more like a canteen, but it's really lively, like properly pumping in there. And we order a big jug of mango lassi. And then like rounds of dosas and like dal, butter fry. And you know, if you order a dosa, it's not just a dosa.
44:13 Speaker 05 It comes with beautifully spiced potatoes, all the fresh coconut chutney, the sambar. I mean, so good. Anthony Paner. So it's not really a typical kind of curry house, like, but.
44:24 Speaker 03 Does the job.
44:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, that sounds great. Would you like a restaurant? No, I don't think so because I think if I had a restaurant, I'd probably feel the need to be in it every day. And also I cook, I cook home cooking, like my food, the heart of it is like proper home food. And so my favorite thing is when people have cooked something and then it just becomes part of their repertoire and something that they love. And so I think if I opened a restaurant, I'd feel the need to make it like fancy or fussy. And that's not really who I am or what my food's about.
44:55 Speaker 03 So Miriam, if you invite me for dinner, what are you going to cook?
45:00 Speaker 05 Um.
45:00 Speaker 03 Not lunchtime, I want to come in the evening where I can not just have mango lassi unless it's laced with something exciting. So just tell me.
45:10 Speaker 05 What kind of stuff do you like?
45:12 Speaker 03 You can see I'm a difficult tricky. No, she doesn't. I'm going veggy because she cooks special.
45:17 Jessie Ware? But it's not good for your arthritis.
45:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, oh but she's not.
45:20 Speaker 05 No, no.
45:20 Jessie Ware? Nightshades.
45:21 Speaker 03 All the nightshades are not good for arthritis. I try.
45:25 Speaker 05 Oh.
45:26 Speaker 03 Not supposed to eat potatoes, tomatoes.
45:29 Jessie Ware? Getting hard to.
45:30 Speaker 05 This is becoming quite a tight brief.
45:32 Jessie Ware? You'd have to do your, you'd have to do your sexy chili paner, surely to.
45:36 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, okay. That's what I would do is um.
45:39 Speaker 03 Not too hot for me.
45:41 Speaker 05 We'd maybe start, we start with pani puri because they're loads of fun. I mean, we'd probably start with.
45:45 Speaker 03 Now, tell me how you make pani puri.
45:48 Speaker 05 Yes.
45:49 Speaker 03 Are they liquid ones?
45:51 Speaker 05 Yes.
45:51 Speaker 03 So you make them and then I've seen people on MasterChef make this.
45:54 Speaker 05 Stunning.
45:55 Speaker 03 And you make them and you put them in the oil, they puff up.
45:58 Speaker 05 Yes, I don't, I don't make them myself, I just buy them. Where can you buy them? Okay, so you can buy them from any Indian grocery store. But have a look at, pick up the box and have a look at the bottom, make sure there's not too many shards because obviously it relies on the liquid staying in, otherwise it goes all over you.
46:14 Speaker 03 Okay.
46:14 Speaker 05 Whatever you're wearing. And then you poke a hole in with your thumb.
46:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:19 Speaker 05 And put them to one side and then make a gorgeous delicious concoction of tamarind, cute, like roasted cumin seeds. Mint, coriander, a little bit of lemon, and that's sort of like pani, like a water that goes in. And then sprouted mung beans, like voluptuous chickpeas, like the ones that we've just eaten.
46:39 Jessie Ware? You are so good with your words. You're like fricking Nigel Sl- you, Nigel Slater, could have like a word off about how you speak about food. Voluptuous chickpeas.
46:49 Speaker 05 Voluptuous chick, but they do taste like embarrassingly.
46:52 Jessie Ware? Slater.
46:52 Speaker 05 Yeah, take that. Embarrassingly sexy, don't they, when you eat them and they're so creamy. Um.
46:58 Jessie Ware? I love that.
46:59 Speaker 05 So you've got basically, you get this shell, you put all the little things in there and like you can sometimes get these like little chickpea crisps. And you pour the water in, it's got to go into your gob within about five seconds and they are. Just amazing. They taste delicious, like a flavour explosion. And I'd I'd make you a Naked and Famous, which is the worst name for a cocktail in the history of man.
47:18 Speaker 03 Oh my god.
47:19 Speaker 05 It's terrible. Do you know it?
47:21 Speaker 03 No, I don't.
47:21 Speaker 05 It's so good.
47:22 Speaker 03 We're going to have it though now.
47:25 Speaker 05 It's like the kind of grown up, sexier cousin of a margarita. And so you you make it.
47:32 Speaker 03 Famous.
47:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:33 Speaker 03 Who made this up?
47:35 Speaker 05 I don't know.
47:35 Jessie Ware? How could they make a sexy and more grown up margarita and then have such a bad name with that?
47:39 Speaker 03 There's tequila, the base.
47:41 Speaker 05 So, yeah, it's mezcal and lime. So, you know, component parts of a margarita in a way. And then you add aperol and yellow chardonnay.
47:50 Speaker 03 Oh my god.
47:52 Jessie Ware? This is a shit mix.
47:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:54 Jessie Ware? This is like gonna get you rocked.
47:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's kind of like can have one, shouldn't have two.
47:59 Speaker 03 Okay.
48:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
48:00 Speaker 03 And do you put lots of ice in? Do you shake it?
48:03 Speaker 05 Yes, yeah. And it's the colour of a Miami sunset and you have to sip it quite slowly, but it's so delicious.
48:10 Speaker 03 I bet.
48:11 Speaker 05 So good.
48:12 Speaker 03 Wow.
48:13 Speaker 05 So main course, that's a good one. I think I might make you.
48:18 Speaker 03 I don't like it too spicy.
48:19 Speaker 05 Oh, you said that already. It's fine because Indian food doesn't have to be.
48:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:24 Speaker 05 Well, I mean, sadly, Asian food doesn't have to be spicy. You can just, you don't have to, I don't add it in for my kids. Like, I'll add a little bit in that they won't be able to taste. But when I have people over, I like to bung things in the oven now. I used to make very elaborate five course meals and now post burnout and very much like, you know, assembly job or do it in advance. And so this butter paneer curry and the recipes in dinner is a really good one because you chuck everything into a pan. And you don't normally make a curry in a pan, so it's quite a weird experiment for me. But I love it because it's so easy and I can just, I'd be able to sit down and we could just chat away.
49:01 Speaker 03 Good.
49:01 Speaker 05 Drinking our Naked and Famous cocktails.
49:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:05 Speaker 05 And actually, you know, before I used to be like a jack in a box, kind of jumping up and down. So I'd make that for you and it goes really well. I know it's not in season, but with an asparagus thoran, which is a Carolyn dish, like coconut, mustard, seeds.
49:19 Speaker 03 It's asparagus and cashew.
49:21 Speaker 05 Um, no, but I, I, I mean, I cook quite like my mom. I use British produce. And then I will cook something southeast Asian with that. And I'm a real tinkerer as well, so I'm not typically like an authentic cook in any way, shape or form. I'm just, I like to just cook.
49:38 Jessie Ware? Sounds delicious.
49:39 Speaker 05 What would I make for pudding? Like, again, I try to make things easy on myself now. And the, the ice cream that I love to serve people is the pistachio and lemon one. That's the Hackney Chilato. Have you had that?
49:48 Jessie Ware? I love Hackney Chilato. I like the banana one.
49:50 Speaker 05 Oh, I've not had that.
49:51 Jessie Ware? Oh, it's like banana and peanut butter or something like that. It's so good.
49:54 Speaker 05 They are so good.
49:55 Jessie Ware? They're bloody good.
49:56 Speaker 05 They're bloody good. And so my sneaky hack is I kind of whiz up some like, um, brown sugar and pistachios and like decorate, like throw it over the top. So it looks, it looks nice and maybe serve it with some fruit. But, I mean, if you were fully signed up, paid up member of the vegan experience or the vegetarian experience, I'd make you my cheesecake because it's not made with real cheese. And I just think.
50:20 Jessie Ware? What's it made with?
50:21 Speaker 05 It's a good question. Yes. And it was just a mountain to climb. And I think partly that and my eighteen carat laxa, I just need to talk about because there's such absurd recipes. One's got a kilo of carrots in there.
50:33 Jessie Ware? Oh my god, that vegan vanilla baked cheesecake looks sensational.
50:39 Speaker 05 It is.
50:39 Jessie Ware? How many times did it take you to get that right?
50:41 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, many, many, many times because no one's agreed on what vegan dairy is. And so trying to write a recipe around an ingredient that just, you know, is a shapeshifter is not an easy thing. But that's why I love the internet because someone, I think I might have posted that I was struggling to like write this recipe because it kept on splitting. And this guy, trying to remember his name, it will come to me, but he got in touch and I said, I think I know what your problem is. It's like the ratios of this to this. And I was like, he's absolutely just made, like he's made my year, but the fact that we've created something now together and it's like this, like it's kind of a, it's almost like the state of affairs on vegan dairy and also the internet, because that could have only happened like now. Otherwise I would have failed and wouldn't be able to publish this recipe. I just think is,
51:27 Speaker 05 it's really great that we can get here because veganism is still relatively new in this country. And so I feel it's one of those ones where it's like, what are you grateful for? I'm like, ah, vegan dairy, this guy who helped me with this recipe.
51:45 Jessie Ware? I'm really pleased with that.
51:47 Speaker 05 That is amazing. That is Ottolenghi levels of meringue.
51:51 Jessie Ware? It's not Jesse thought.
51:52 Speaker 05 Wow.
51:53 Jessie Ware? So it's brown sugar meringue with mascarpone coffee cream, cream.
51:59 Speaker 05 Cool.
52:00 Jessie Ware? This is delicious. Cherries and grated chocolate. And I'm not a pudding girl and I think this, it was really easy. So shout out Ravne.
52:09 Speaker 05 That is unreal.
52:12 Jessie Ware? That was good.
52:13 Speaker 05 And that is like the perfect chewy meringue.
52:16 Jessie Ware? I know.
52:16 Speaker 05 So good.
52:17 Jessie Ware? She puts corn flour in hers.
52:19 Speaker 05 I have heard that. Do you also use vinegar or something?
52:22 Jessie Ware? No, she didn't. No. But this is banging.
52:24 Speaker 05 Mmm, oh good.
52:26 Jessie Ware? Can I ask you what your last supper would be? Starter, main, pudding, drink of, I think I know the drink of choice. Is it going to be a Naked and Famous?
52:35 Speaker 05 It is.
52:36 Jessie Ware? And you're going away to a desert island and you cannot have these delicious foods.
52:42 Speaker 05 Okay, so in 2013, I took a road trip around India with my then boyfriend, he is now my husband. And we ended up in Kerala in a place called Vakula.
52:51 Jessie Ware? Oh, yeah.
52:52 Speaker 05 Have you? So we were invited to Kamari's house. Have you been to Kamari's house?
52:56 Jessie Ware? I don't know.
52:57 Speaker 05 Damn, you need to go back to Kerala. You need to go back to Vakula. Her house is like paradise. Not only does she cook from scratch, but she grew everything from scratch. And I'm not just talking about vegetables. She made her own coconut oil. She had her own cow, like peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, everything. And so she made us this beautiful meal with 13 different curries, like beetroot pachadi, black eyed beans.
53:19 Jessie Ware? Oh my god.
53:19 Speaker 05 Cabbage leeks, dal's, like uphams, it's like fermented rice pancake. It was a sensational meal and like the best of the trip. And then after we'd finished, she fed the banana leaf that she served onto the cow. So it was like also a no waste situation. And so I adored that meal and I've just, it's rarely been matched since. If I was, you know, if it was my last meal, my first call would be to Kamari to come and cook. It was just unreal.
53:50 Jessie Ware? Would she do the whole meal?
53:52 Speaker 05 She would. So I think typically with Indian foods, you don't really tend to have like starters, mains and poods. Um.
53:58 Speaker 03 You just keep going.
53:59 Speaker 05 You've just, yeah, exactly. You've just got thirteen or fourteen or fifteen things in the centre of the table. So I think that's probably what I'd do. I'd have like a feast.
54:08 Jessie Ware? That sounds heavenly. And to finish?
54:11 Speaker 05 To finish, I think, well, I mean, this is quite incongruent, but if it's my last meal and we're just allowed to be
54:17 Jessie Ware? Yeah.
54:18 Speaker 05 whoever we are, I would probably have a tiramisu, which sounds bonkers considering the meal that just preceded it, but.
54:24 Jessie Ware? It's one of the greatest desserts in the world.
54:26 Speaker 05 I mean, tiramisu is amazing, especially when it's made really well. And I had a sensational pistachio one recently. It was so good.
54:33 Jessie Ware? Where from?
54:34 Speaker 05 So it was a girl called Rupert Badani who made it and she ran a supper club in fifty six St James', which is in Walthamstow, like quite close to me. And it was mind-blowingly good, mind-blowing. And I'm kind of just trying to see if I can inch in and become friends with her so that she might give me the recipe. It's so, so like, imagine that, like coffee and pistachio cream.
54:59 Jessie Ware? Oh.
54:59 Speaker 05 Oh.
55:00 Jessie Ware? Mira, it's been such a pleasure hearing you speak and speak so bravely and beautifully about your struggles, but also a wonderful outcome, which is dinner. And, and thank you so much for being on. And it's so, I'm so.
55:15 Speaker 03 Your story's about food. You make everything come alive.
55:18 Speaker 05 The, the luxurious chipmunks. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring that up again. I love that. Well, listen, I've absolutely loved it. I love meeting you two. I think what you're doing is amazing. Your food is sensational.
55:29 Speaker 03 It was absolutely brilliant, darling.
55:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
55:33 Speaker 03 And that food.
55:34 Speaker 05 Would you like to me to put it in a doggy bag?
55:37 Jessie Ware? Yes.
55:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:38 Speaker 05 I'd like to.
55:39 Jessie Ware? At home.
55:39 Speaker 05 Yeah, because I, I, I gave you a huge one. I'd, I'd like to be polite and say, no, don't go to the trouble, but it's just too good.
56:00 Jessie Ware? Thank you so much to Mira Soder for coming on and being so honest and fabulous and generous. I mean, she came in, I have to say. That's very generous by her. We haven't been getting as many prezies from guests recently.
56:15 Speaker 06 Beautiful flowers.
56:16 Jessie Ware? What other guests have lacked in presence, she made up for in
56:19 Speaker 06 Flowers.
56:20 Jessie Ware? Flowers.
56:21 Speaker 06 Beautiful bottle of wine.
56:22 Jessie Ware? Chablis and honey cake. Just a word for all the PRs that have their people coming on. Just fucking bring me a bottle.
56:28 Speaker 06 Jessica, don't be grasping.
56:29 Jessie Ware? No, I'm not. But that was very generous.
56:31 Speaker 06 Yeah.
56:32 Jessie Ware? And appreciated.
56:33 Speaker 06 Yeah.
56:33 Jessie Ware? And how thoughtful that we're recording this.
56:36 Speaker 06 So sweet, because she knew it was around Rosh Hashanah.
56:38 Jessie Ware? And it's just so considerate.
56:40 Speaker 06 And it's the Claudia Roden recipe.
56:42 Jessie Ware? Well, the goat. The goat. Thank you, Mira. I loved hearing her talking about food and her upbringing and her relationship with ingredients and meals and
56:55 Speaker 06 Very articulate, beautiful words.
56:57 Jessie Ware? Just like, yeah, and I'm, I'm gonna finish the chablis with you.
57:02 Speaker 06 Oh no, darling, I think I better not.
57:04 Jessie Ware? Really? How's that fast gonna be tomorrow? You're gonna be, you're gonna be dehydrated.
57:09 Speaker 06 I'm gonna not drink tonight.
57:10 Jessie Ware? Cheers. Thank you to Mira Soder. Her book Dinner is out now. So if you ever, and as she said, she says she's a lazy cook. She wants to get the best flavour in the quickest time possible. That's my kind of gal. So if you're looking for a vegan vegetarian recipe book, this could be quite, well.
57:27 Speaker 06 I have to say, she's one of my favourite guests.
57:29 Jessie Ware? I love that.
57:30 Speaker 06 To be honest.
57:31 Jessie Ware? Listening to her talk about food, I could have, I was annoyed that the cab was here to do this.
57:37 Speaker 06 She's also got a beautiful voice. It's very soothing.
57:40 Jessie Ware? And you know you'd have a good night out with Mira.
57:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, naked and, naked and famous.
57:44 Jessie Ware? I'm in. Thank you, Mira, and thank you to everyone that listened. Mira Soder's book Dinner is out now. Go and get it.
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