Khushbu Shah and the Art of Improvising
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.9 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The prolific food writer and cook talks to Mark and Kate about having one foot in two cultures; the auntie whisperer network – or, how Indians in America learned to make do without some of their beloved staples, and how they learned to make do with what was readily available; and why and how the term "fusion" got a dirty rep.
Find the recipe for Khushbu's Masala Smashed Potatoes on the Bittman Project: https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/masala-smashed-potatoes/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to food. I'm Kate Bittman. I hope you're enjoying being here with us, and if that's the case, you might want to find us online at bitmanproject.com, where we've got more than 1,500 recipes, cooking how-toes, essays about how food affects us, Mark's opinions, our recommendations for things to eat and cookware |
| 0:22.7 | and books, and a lot more. It's a burgeoning community, and if you care about food, I'm fairly |
| 0:28.1 | certain you'll enjoy our site. Bitmanproject.com. Lou Roll is not something you'd normally feel good about, |
| 0:48.5 | but ours is not your normal loo roll. |
| 0:51.4 | It donates 50% of profits to help provide access to clean water and toilets, |
| 0:56.6 | which means every wee is more of a... |
| 0:59.5 | Wee! And every number two is more of a number... |
| 1:03.9 | Two! Switch to toilet paper that makes you feel... |
| 1:08.4 | Good! Okay, you get the idea. Who gives a crap? Feel good toilet paper. |
| 1:23.2 | Today we're revisiting an episode from a year ago, an interview with Kashpoo Shah. |
| 1:29.0 | Kusbu is a food writer and journalist and was the youngest person and the first person of color to hold the restaurant editor job at Food and Wine magazine. |
| 1:39.1 | A child of Indian immigrants, Kushpoo grew up in, where her parents raised her with a deep appreciation |
| 1:44.8 | for good food and cooking and for improvising. Her cookbook, Umrakin, is a love letter to that |
| 1:51.3 | childhood, to the way Kashpoo's mother learned to cook when she got to America, swapping in |
| 1:57.1 | American staples for the Indian ingredients that were hard to find at the time. |
| 2:01.8 | Thankfully, a bit easier now, and is full of homie, loving, and delicious recipes. |
| 2:08.0 | Kushu's love for cooking and family is contagious, as you will most definitely see from her conversation with me and Mark. |
| 2:16.5 | Thanks for joining us. We're psyched to have you here. We love the book. |
| 2:21.0 | We're really eager to talk about it. Yeah. I'm excited to be here. Cushboo, your book, |
| 2:26.9 | Umrican, is pretty incredible. I'm super excited to cook from it. I especially love the breakfast |
| 2:32.0 | offerings, um, the Desi Egg sandwich and the French toast |
| 2:35.8 | specifically, but a lot of stuff in there really spoke to me. And I want to get into the nitty-gritty |
... |
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