How Padma Lakshmi Cooked Her Way Through the Pandemic

Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler

Condé Nast Traveler

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.4 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Padma Lakshmi has had a busy 12 months. She spent the early stages of lockdown alphabetizing her spices—and then reorganizing them by region—and cooking an incredible amount of food at home. Then her new show, Taste the Nation, which dives into the immigrant roots of America's favorite cuisines, premiered in June, and she spent the fall filming a new season of Top Chef in Portland, under a number of new COVID-19 restrictions.

This week, she's talking about all of that and more with us, from the transportive meals she's cooked while grounded to the places she's itching to visit when this is all over. Most importantly, we chat about the strength and influence of immigrants in the U.S., how food media has changed in the last year, and what may be in store for Taste the Nation's second season.

Read a transcription of the episode here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/padma-lakshmi-women-who-travel-podcast

Read Lale's conversation with Padma from March 2020: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/padma-lakshmi-on-the-immigrant-cuisines-that-make-america

Pick up a copy of Padma's reprinted Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet at bookshop.org or your local bookstore

Follow Padma: @padmalakshmi

Follow Lale: @lalehannah

Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere

Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. This is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condi Nass Traveler. I'm Lalei Aricoglu, and with me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey.
0:13.5	Hello. Our guest this week is the author, activist, and television host, Padma Lakshmi. A Hulu show,
0:19.9	Taste the Nation, helped us travel through our
0:21.7	screens when it was released last summer, taking viewers across the US to meet the people who
0:26.5	have shaped what American food is today. And a second season is set to be released on Hulu later this
0:31.7	year. Plus, she's hosting a brand new season of Top Chef, which premieres on April 1st. Thanks for joining us, Padma.
0:39.2	Hi, thanks for having me.
0:41.2	So, I would say my first ever Zoom interview was with you in March of last year about one week into lockdown.
0:50.2	And I think it's safe to say that neither of us probably understood what the rest of 2020 was going to look like.
0:55.7	How has the past year been for you?
0:58.4	It's been surreal.
1:01.1	Like for most people, I've actually been trying to write about it because I'm guest editing the Best American Travel Writing series for last year this year.
1:11.6	And I find myself really stymied for words to just give name and shape to the sort of
1:22.6	emptiness and dread that we've all felt. And I think the hardest thing has been not knowing in many ways
1:29.5	when you spoke with me last year you know just about around this time I was probably a much
1:35.3	happier person because I like most people thought oh you know this will be probably two
1:40.1	three weeks tops it'll be a nice and forced vacation for all of us. And I'll be able to
1:45.8	spend all this time with my daughter, which, which, you know, I did do, obviously, which has been
1:52.3	great, but has also, you know, been very illuminating in the sense that, you know, I always thought
1:57.1	that I maybe would love to teach because I love children and things like that.
2:01.6	But after going through homeschooling with Krishna, my 11-year-old, then 10-year-old,
2:07.6	I realized that teachers are sort of these superheroes, which I always knew because they affected my life and my learning so much.
	...

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