I'm Samin Nasrat.

And I'm Rishi K. Sherway. Together we make a podcast called Home Cooking. You might remember home cooking from back in March 2020 when we launched it to help folks who were stuck in lockdown with their quarantine cooking questions. And now that things are super scary again, we thought maybe it's time to bring the podcast back. We're back with a brand new season of eight episodes. And just like before, we're going to

try and answer all kinds of questions. Whatever you need, where are your friends in the kitchen?

So look for home cooking on your favorite podcast app and subscribe today.

I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is a special episode of Milk Street Radio.

Today it's an extended cut of my latest interview with Samin Nasrat.

Her first book from 2017, Salt, Fat, Acid Heat, was a major blockbuster.

In her new book, Good Things, she, well, she does it again.

Samin, welcome back to Milk Street.

Hi, Chris. Thanks so much for having me. You know, first of all, let me say, everybody in the food world wants to be you. You write this amazing book and sells jillions of copies, you know, win awards,

Netflix special.

And then I start reading your new book, and there's this sentence on the street.

Finally, clinical depression, potent and ravenous swallowed me whole.

And I just stopped.

I went like, wow, you know, here's this person who enormous success, smart, great writer, interesting career, but, you know, I guess there's always a dark side.

So success did not generate happiness or there were just other things involved. I mean, of course, there were plenty of highs and I feel still very lucky for, if nothing

else, the financial stability that I really never had before.

But also just, you know, like one of the best parts of it for sure is people come up to me and say that it like changed their life.

It taught them how to cook.

And there's a certain type of interaction that is so moving to me when, say, like a young

Middle Eastern woman is just like, wow, I never thought I'd see someone who looks like me

doing what you do. Because I didn't'd see someone who looks like me doing what you do.

...