Food & Drink mini-series: Ayesha Nurdjaja on how to flavour

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“I always like a bite of food to feel like the Fourth of July in your mouth: small explosions of flavour where each bite is different.” Welcome to our summer Food & Drink-themed mini-series, where every Wednesday for four weeks, an expert teaches us something new. Lilah’s second guest is Ayesha Nurdjaja, executive chef and partner of Shuka and Shukette in New York. Ayesha is an expert at flavour. Her Italian and Indonesian heritage, childhood in Brooklyn and travels to the Middle East have fused into a signature style. She explains how balancing flavour is like making music, how to develop and push your palate, and how to taste.

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Want to stay in touch? We love hearing from you. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.

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Links and mentions from the episode:

– Ayesha is on Instagram at @ayesharare

– Ayesha teaches us to cook shakshuka: https://www.today.com/video/learn-how-to-make-shakshuka-a-one-pot-meal-for-the-holidays-127622213623

– Ayesha shares her mother’s Italian meatball recipe: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=580377019271350

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This episode was produced by Molly Nugent. Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	FT Weekend Food and Drink is supported by Plymouth Gin.
0:04.6	Hi, FD Weekend listeners. This is Lila.
0:07.5	Welcome to the second episode of our four-part mini-series on Food and Drink.
0:13.2	Today, I can't wait to introduce you to Aisha Nerjaya.
0:17.1	She is the executive chef of two beloved New York restaurants, Shuka and Shuket,
0:22.3	and she's an absolute expert at flavor. So she joined me in the New York studio to teach us how to taste.
0:31.6	Okay, this is FT Weekend, the podcast Special Edition. I'm L Raptopoulos. Here's Aisha.
0:43.0	Aisha, hi, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. So you're the executive
0:47.4	chef and partner of one of my favorite restaurants in New York. Shuka, it's around the corner
0:53.2	from the New York Newsroom, and the journalist here go all the time.
0:57.4	Oh, that's amazing. Thank you.
0:58.9	And also one of my new favorite restaurants, Shuket, both in Manhattan, both on the west side.
1:04.2	And I'd love to learn from you about flavor.
1:06.4	But to start, I'm curious if we can go to Gravesend, Brooklyn, where you're from, and learn a little
1:11.6	bit about what it was like in the kitchen for you growing up.
1:15.6	Sure.
1:16.1	I have to say, I was a very lucky kid growing up.
1:18.9	My dad was a chef.
1:20.7	He was a chef of a ship that transported liquid natural gas from America to Asian countries.
1:25.5	My mother was Italian and my father's Indonesian.
1:27.8	So it was like a battle of chopped every night.
1:30.9	And my mother to this day is probably one of the best cooks that I know.
	...

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