Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Priya Krishna: Food Writer in Disguise

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Journalist, author and New York Times critic Priya Krishna joins to dive deeper into the kitchen that inspired her cookbook Indian-ish. She talks through her mom's weeknight dinner routine (all done in a pristine white linen shirt), traveling to new cities and countries for free, and the lengths she goes to avoid being recognized at restaurants. Plus she shares her mom's quick and simple Dal recipe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast is brought to you by Alloy Health. Getting to spend a year in the kitchen with her, in coffee shops writing head notes, recording her talking about her childhood memories. It helped me understand her in a way that I don't think I could have had we not worked on this book. I always had like a real respect for how she raised us, but just my mom is like the most resilient person in the world. Hello, hello and welcome back to Your Mama's Kitchen.

This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by the kitchens that we grew up in as kids and all the stuff that happened there. The music, the memories, unpacking the groceries, doing homework at the kitchen table. I'm Michelle Norris, and our guest today could not be more perfect for a show called Your Mama's Kitchen. She is a restaurant critic. She is a world class food journalist. She's a master chef judge and she is a cookbook author and get this her cookbook was written with her mother. So she explored her mama's kitchen while she was writing that cookbook. Priya Krishna has said, quote, as a food writer who's eaten my way through many, many restaurants, I can still say I have never

tasted cooking as creative and unique as hers. She's talking about her mama there. I can't wait to talk to Priya about her mother's cooking, about all the ways that that kitchen influenced her and we're catching her while she's grabbing lunch. You may have heard her fork scraping against a bowl. What are you eating there, Priya? I'm eating spinach and feta orzo that I made last night. Oh, leftovers. That sounds delicious. It was one of my rare nights off. And so I got to like luxuriate and making a nice dinner and watching a movie and packing.

Oh, that sounds packing because you're moving. So we're catching you mid move also. Well, I'm getting that I'm betting that the spinach feta orzo is probably better now the next day. I think it is actually that's a great point. It is and I made I made some like onions that I deglazed with balsamic and they're really popping today. Okay. So I knew there was going to be some extra step, that it wasn't just spinach and feta and orzo thrown together, that you did something extra, which would be a great name

for a cookbook, something extra. That would be a great name for a cookbook. You know, actually what the key to this, I found a lemon and I grated, my friend does not have a zester, so I used a cheese grater to grate lemon zest into the ore. On top of it? Yeah. When you cooked it the first time or? No, like when I was finishing it. I just tossed it in.

Oh, okay. We're going to hurry up and have this conversation because I need to go have something to eat because you just made me very hungry. Well, you know how this show works. We always began with that central question. Tell me about your mama's kitchen. You grew up in Dallas. Can you describe the kitchen that you grew up in? Every inch of it. We bought the house for the kitchen. My parents literally bought a house that they could not afford because my mother fell in love with the kitchen. It's one of those kitchens that a house is anchored around. You walk in and there's this gravitational pull towards the kitchen.

It had white cabinets, these beautiful marble countertops, one of those fridges that blends into the walls, which to us felt like the pinnacle of luxury as like a Dallas family from the suburbs looking at houses. And I think the best feature of all is that this massive kitchen island, and it's sort of this kitchen island where you can prep, where you can entertain, where I could sit on the counter and as you said, do my math homework and watch my mom cook. It is a kitchen designed for community, designed for gathering, designed for entertaining. And it was my mom's happy place growing up.

And your mom is a prodigious cook. So she was showing off in that happy place. She was doing her thing. She was doing her thing in a white linen shirt. And she cooked in a white linen shirt. And that- And never once spilled anything on it. Oh, you're kidding. Does she wear an apron?

No, she wears no aprons. Okay. All right. That's, you know, I always joke about people like Nigella Lawson who cooks in cashmere and I'm like, how does she do that and not have to send that to the dry cleaner? So your mom must be in that category of cook. Yeah, she's not dry cleaning. Oh, okay.

All right. Now you spent a lot of time with her working on your cookbook, Indianish. What was that experience like cooking alongside your mom? Had you always been sort of a mini sous chef for her? I have always been a mini sous chef for her, but it was very limited. It was, you know, wash the cilantro, pick the chilies from the chili plant

and wash them, set the table, you know, take the stems off of the green beans. I feel like Indian-ish was the first opportunity where I was really in the driver's seat cooking sizzling spices, chopping onions, you know, deciding these are caramelized enough where we can add the potatoes. And so I feel like it, it forced my mom to give me some level of ownership over her recipes, which was wonderful, but also really difficult in all the ways you can imagine.

Well, the word force is an interesting verb. And when you say that you were in control of the kitchen, your mom sounds like the kitchen was really her domain. Was that something that was easy for her to let go of the reins and let you take control? It was not easy at all. And in fact, we really benefited from the fact that when I first moved home to test recipes for Indianish in my mom's kitchen, at the time my mom was working a full-time job. So she'd be out of the house from like, maybe 8am until like 3pm. And so from 8am to 3pm, I would cook three or four recipes based off of, you know,

handwritten recipes that she had given me. And she would come home from work and I would like, it was like a little judges table, I would present the food to her to evaluate. And she would taste it and she'd be like, where's the cardamom? And I'd be like, look at the recipe, you didn't put cardamom in the recipe. And she's like, where's the cardamom? And I'd be like, look at the recipe, you didn't put cardamom in the recipe. And she's like, well, this needs cardamom. I'm like, how the hell was I supposed to know it needed cardamom? And she's like, well, you've eaten this dish before. And that was basically how most of those interactions went. This comes up again and again and again in these episodes that when people write down

their recipes, they always leave out an ingredient? Always. And they say it's an accident, but you know, it might just be to make sure that you don't follow their steps exactly in the same way. So that their food is always just a step above of anybody else who tries to do it. Is that possible? I think that's absolutely true. But I am here to say that I worked the full recipes out of my mom, because I remember what the food I grew up with is supposed to taste like. My core memories are all food-based.

And so I knew this Mardur Paneer is missing something, the Skadi is missing something. So my mom could not get away with omitting an ingredient. And so I hope that Indian-ish exists for all the people whose parents write down ingredients, write down recipes and omit half the ingredients. So you've done everybody a salad who wants a taste of home if their parents didn't write down the recipes. Tell me about your mom. Can you describe her? What's her personality? She came to America, decided to take up a new career, and at the same time didn't shortchange you and your sister Mira. She was still cooking, working full time, and delivering beautiful buffets

every night. Yeah, my mom came to America as a wife, as the wife to my dad, who she had just had an arranged marriage to. My dad literally flew back to India, met my mom. Two weeks later, they were married. And then my mom flew back, landing in this country where she knew no one. She had never been before. And she didn't know how to cook.

Did she know your dad also? Were their families close? Was that part of the arrangement? Their families knew each other, but no, my dad was a stranger. So everything was new. Everything was new. Like imagine moving in, moving to a new country and moving in with a Craigslist roommate. That's what my mom was doing. Well, when you put it like that, that's... So was cooking a way that she maybe took control of the situation?

This is one thing that I can claim as my own. I think cooking, she was seeking the familiar, and she didn't know how to cook, but she knew what her grandmother and mother's food was supposed to taste like. So she shopped in American grocery stores and made Indian food out of what she could find in those American grocery stores.

And so she kind of invented this cuisine that was rooted in her memories and took from ingredients in the American grocery store with techniques she was learning from Julia Child on PBS. So is that why the cookbook is called Indian-ish in that it's traditional Indian cooking, but it has an American and perhaps a Texas spin on it? Yes, 100%. Like this food is very, my mom's food is born in America. It is American through and through. It is influenced by her memories, but you know, this Indian food is American food.

So give me an example of something that is a seminal like Tuesday night dish that she would make that is rooted both in India and Dallas, Texas. She loved making, um, saag paneer for us, but she couldn't get mustard greens and she couldn't always get paneer. And so she would experiment with cheeses and greens. So growing up, she would make saag paneer with spinach and then instead of paneer she would put cubes of feta or tofu in it. And believe it or not, that dish is like, I think I get tagged in an Instagram photo like once a week, if not

once a day. It is the most popular dish in the book. And did she do something to the feather of the tofu? Would she marinate it somehow to get it to be the right consistency? She would just cube it and throw it in. It's amazing. It's delicious. And that would be like a traditional meal that you'd have on a Tuesday night? That would just be one component. The thing about Indian moms is that they're not just they're not making like one meal in one pot and calling it a day. My mom was making sag. She was making rice or she was making roti. She was making dal. She would have a salad. Like we always had these multi-pronged meals. The idea of just one pot of something sitting on the table

and that being dinner was very foreign to us. And she was doing this after working full time? After working full time. She had 20 minutes. That's the time she had to put dinner on the table. Okay, I understand that. So that means that she was prepping, right? She was doing a lot of prep work ahead of time. Did she take like a day of the week like Sunday and prep for the whole week? Not like, not really. That's like that's the crazy thing when I tell like, how was she

just doing this in 20 minutes? You just described six different dishes that she was doing. She would come home. In a white linen shirt. In a white linen shirt. She would come home. This is what happened. She comes home.

She goes to her closet. She changes into like her work, her hangout clothes, which often included a white linen shirt, but sometimes, but they're always like chic at leisure. She would put on ABBA. She would pour herself a glass of wine. She would put the doll to cook and she would usually do a quick cooking doll that only took five or 10 minutes to cook. While that happened, she would chop her vegetables. She would prepare the subsea. Then she would direct my dad or my sister or me to chop the vegetables for salad and start prepping the salad. And then if she had to make rotis, she would take the dough out of the freezer or out of the fridge, she

would roll out the rotis. Eventually, we substituted this for tortillas from HEB because my mom was like, I don't want to roll out the roadies. If we need to make rice... H-E-B is, for those who don't know, that is a big grocery store chain in Texas. Huge. And at that point, she'd be like, oh, the rice. She would wash the rice, put the rice in a bowl, stick it in the microwave for 15 minutes because we cooked our rice in the microwave. And then at that point, she would squeeze lime over the salad. She would make the tharka for the dal, dump it in, finish the subzi. That's dinner.

20 minutes. Wow. 20 minutes. That's amazing. That is really amazing that she was that organized. And it tells me a lot about how you probably run your kitchen, you know, watching someone cook with that kind of efficiency. And her personality really comes through in the story that you just told. I know it's sometimes weird as an author to have your work quoted to you, but there is an essay that you rewrote about your mom that also went rather viral. And I just want to read a bit of that so our viewers and our listeners can understand a little bit more about the woman

that you're talking about. You say, we are opposites, my mother and I, where she is poised, classy, and no nonsense. I am goofy, outgoing, a people pleaser. My whole childhood, we struggled to find common ground. We weren't just from different generations. My mother was an immigrant from India. childhood we struggled to find common ground. We weren't just from different generations. My mother was an immigrant from India. I was an American kid trying to navigate the world

without a language to understand my identity. It was also very intimidating to have a mother who wakes up looking as if she just got a blowout, who was deeply admired by all her friends and coworkers, and who doesn't wear deodorant because she in her own words doesn't smell. I didn't know how I would ever live up to the standards she set for me, let alone for herself. I love that. I love that. I mean, that's a special kind of confidence. Like, I don't need deodorant. I don't smell. I cook in a white linen shirt and I'm just going to throw together an amazing buffet in 20 minutes. You would either want to try to emulate that if you grew up with that or you'd be so intimidated that you'd never step into the kitchen. You obviously

follow the route that took you to the kitchen. But it took me a long time to get there. Like it really did. My mom wasn't teaching us how to make dal and subsea. The kind of wrinkle in all of this is that my mom did not want to raise two housewives, my sister and me. She did not want to raise, she wanted to raise strong working women. That's what she wanted to do. So she did not teach us how to cook. She did not teach us

how to, how to clean. She did not teach us how to do any of those domestic responsibilities that she was kind of forced, forced to do because she was a woman. And so I didn't really learn how to cook her food until I started working on Indianish. Really? So you said you were a sous chef, but you really were not in the thick of it. I wasn't in the thick of it. I mean, like, again, I was washing cilantro and removing the stems from green beans. When you wrote Indianish, you said that this is for all the people out there who long for a taste of home, but perhaps don't have it, who are trying to understand how to hold on

to a taste of home, but recognize that they're now rooted here in America. Was that the mission statement that you had for yourself? Is that what you said in the book proposal when you sent that in or did it just evolve? When Indian is started as a book, I actually wasn't thinking about other Indians at first. I was thinking about every person I've met who says Indian food is too difficult to make. I don't know how to find all the ingredients. It's a project. It's heavy. It's rich, whatever. And I wanted to dispel that because I felt like Indian food, like any other cuisine, it can be simple. It can be

bright. It can be light. Sure, there are heavy, complicated dishes, but the food that I grew up with was not that. It was quick. It was easy, but it was really flavorful. And so when I wrote the proposal, that's what I sold Indian-ish as. And then as I started working on it and writing stories about my family, and then when I published it, I realized that so many other South Asians who grew up feeling really nostalgic for these flavors, but never learned how to make them, this book was resonating with them too. So it was resonating with people who felt intimidated to cook Indian food,

and it was resonating with people who felt a longing for Indian food. And I feel like that was kind of the beautiful surprise of Indian-ish, because in my head I was like, well, why would Indian people want to learn how to make my Indian food? I'm sure they know how to make their mom's Indian food or their dad's Indian food. But it was really Indians who made up the core of the early purchasers of Indian ish. We had dinner recently and wonderful, wonderful meal And you were there with several friends, some of them shared friends. And most of you were South Asian. And there was a conversation

that would go on at the table where you'd all nod with each other. Oh, yes, yes, I understand that. And it just made me think, what is it that happens? Because we all have our cultural sort of cues and roots that happen behind closed doors. There's the, you know, the piece of us that everybody sees. And a lot of that stuff that no one sees happens in the kitchen. Yeah. You know, because that's when you let your hair down.

That's when, you know, no one's looking. What is it about a South Asian kitchen that most people don't understand? And what is it about South Asian, maybe parenting, that people don't understand. And what is it about South Asian, maybe parenting that people don't understand? It's hard to treat South Asian kitchens and parenting as a monolith. But I will tell you from my experience and from talking to my friends, there's a couple of things. The food is not just, dinner is not just a grab and go thing. It's a, you sit down and you have a conversation thing.

It's a full spread. It's not one pot. It's not quick. It's, we have to sit down for dinner. The many components of the South Asian meal is one thing we've talked about. And just the smells of a South Asian kitchen. I just associate the smell of cumin seeds, dancing, and ghee with my kitchen. There's something about when I enter a kitchen of another South Asian person, there's always

something familiar. South Asian food in India can change from region to region, state to state, family to family, but there are these smells that will always feel very familiar. The smell of ghee, the smell of cumin, the smell of cilantro, the smell of Indian sweets. those things I feel really deeply nostalgic for and those really bring us together. And the other thing about South Asian parenting, and I think this is really shifting, but at least for my generation of children of immigrants, there is this sense of you're not really sharing your emotions with each other. We're not opening up a ton. We love to talk about how family is everything, family is everything.

But when it comes down to actually sharing emotional, vulnerable details about how we're feeling, that is far less familiar. Why do you, that is far less familiar. Why do you think that is? I don't know. It's something I want to talk to my parents more about, but I think my parents felt like they had to be authorities. They had to put this wall up between their kids.

They couldn't be our friends. The idea of Lorelei and Rory Gilmore in the Gilmore Girls was like as foreign as it got for me. Like your parent is not your friend. They're there to be an authority. They're there to raise you, but they're not there to like pal around with you. And one of like the pleasures of growing up for me has been, And one of the pleasures of growing up for me has been my parents are now my friends, my parents are now my peers. There's a really wonderful moment that happens, I feel like for every kid where you realize your parents are actual fallible human beings who are also trying to figure out life as well.

How did working on the cookbook change your relationship with your mom? Was that part of that process where you became more like peers? It changed everything. It changed everything. It changed my relationship with both of my parents. I think I often felt like we were just ships passing a little bit. Our interests were very different. Our careers were very different.

Our personalities were very different, our personalities were very different. Getting to spend a year in the kitchen with her, in coffee shops writing headnotes, recording her talking about her childhood memories. It helped me understand her in a way that I don't think I could have had we not worked on this book. I always had like a real respect for how she raised us, but just my mom is like the most resilient person in the world. Sorry, I'm getting my mom lost her parents when I was two years old in a really tragic car accident. And my grandparents were supposed to raise my sister and I.

My grandmother was gonna cook for us. And after losing her parents, not being able to afford childcare, my mom raised two kids. She put dinner on the table for us every night. She became like a very powerful person at work. And you know, she was an amazing partner to my dad. And you know, the two of them traded off taking on the bulk of the responsibilities. But like, I don't just love my mom, I deeply respect her. And I feel like

it was during that time. Sure, we bickered, but I was like, I respect the hell out of you. You are like, an unbelievably strong and resilient human being. You know, what a gift it is that you had the chance to record her stories, that you did it in the service of writing something because it sounds like she was invested in this project that you were working on together. And if you had just sat down and said, Mom, tell me about your life or would you mind telling me about the grandparents that I never really got to know? It might have been a different conversation, but because she knew she was contributing to this project and that's something that she knew that she would ultimately be very proud of, it seemed like that set the

stage for a different kind of conversation. I mean, I also think it kind of forced her to open up, right? Because these stories were going to be published. So we needed to know the backstory behind this. So one of my friends who has also worked with his parents professionally told me, like, I put my parents on television because I knew they would tell me the real stories if they knew they were going to be on television and they knew it was benefiting me and my work.

And I think it was the same thing. My parents were kind of forced to peel back the rose, to take off the rose colored glasses and think, okay, well, what's the actual story behind this? And that was really wonderful because I think there are still a lot of parents, and I understand, especially immigrant parents, who just want to tell their kids kind of the more sanitized version of something. Every mama in every kitchen since the beginning of time

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Go to myalloy.com to start your consult with a Menopause trained expert today. Use code KITCHEN to get $20 off your first order. Thank you. So you've called your mom, you have this great compliment for your mom. You say that she's a black belt level cook, but you note that she never really learned how to cook when she was growing up and that she didn't teach you and your sister how to cook. Was that you say it was mainly because she didn't want you, she wanted you to pursue a career. Was it also because she kind of liked her space and didn't want people in that space?

Were there lots of reasons that she kind of kept you out of the kitchen or kept you away from learning the fundamentals of cooking? I don't think I'll ever understand why she kind of kept that separation. But I like that theory. I think the kitchen was sort of her peaceful place and my mom is never one who needs to command a team. She's very much she sees cooking as kind of a solo endeavor, a way for

her to just connect with herself and with her intuition. Like when she makes dinner for a dinner party, it's rarely a collaboration. It's just her whipping out dish after dish and then putting foil on it and sticky in the oven to stay warm. She's so methodical in that way. So I haven't thought about that, but I think that's a really good theory as to why. But I think it also has to do with not wanting my sister and I to just spend all day in the kitchen. Your mom traveled a lot because she was working. What did she do that took her on the road so much? And did you as a family travel?

And the third part of that question is when you traveled, did she bring sort of that culinary experience home for you? And did that add to the Indian-ish cuisine that you served at your table? Yes, yes, and yes. My mom worked, she started as a software engineer for an airline software company, and then very quickly was plucked to be a manager of software engineers. So my mom was flying around the world, basically negotiating deals with airlines to sell software. And because she worked for, they had a partnership with American Airlines, because she essentially worked for an airline, she got employee benefits, which meant that you could stand by, you and your family could stand by and if there were extra seats on the plane, you could just fly for free.

And so our weekend routine, my mom was in town, often looked like packing a bag with like all weather clothes, like clothes for any climate. Oh, because you didn't know where you were going to go? Showing up at the airport and like starting, like we started at like started at like 8am we'd be like, alright, let's try for this flight to Portland. Didn't make it. Okay, great. Let's try on this flight to the Bahamas. Okay, didn't make it. One time we ended up on a flight and we got we went all the way to India, just for free through it's called non revving. But my sister and I just got so we got so good at airports and we thought it was such

a fun adventure. And what was so great is we would land in a place and this was not, this was before like the Google Maps days before, you know, travel journalism was really common. So we would land and we would just kind of figure out what to do. We would wander into restaurants and see what looked good to us. We'd sit on beaches. We'd find budget hotels that we could stay in. My parents are amazing at traveling on the cheap. And then we would go home and my mom would say, oh my God, remember that thing we ate? Remember that street corn we ate in Mexico? Let's try to make it here. And then she

would try to recreate it at home. Because Sundays were what my mom called creativity days, because we eat Indian food Monday to Friday. But Sunday was like, if we had a request for something non-Indian, she would make that. I'm learning so much about you. And it all makes sense. I mean, this seems to contribute to the kind of journalist that you are, the kind of food, the kind of culinary explorer that you are. So I want to talk a little bit about you and your life and how you came to this. You went back to New Hampshire for college. You went to Dartmouth. And while you were there, you worked at a restaurant that wound up having, I don't want to say it was your rosebud moment, but it wound up really having a seismic impact on your life going forward.

Tell me about that restaurant, how you got to that restaurant, and why it had such a big impact on you. Well, there was a point in which I thought that going into food meant working in restaurants, being a cook. And so I basically wandered into my favorite restaurant in town, which was a gastropub called Murphy's. Hanover New Hampshire has like maybe seven restaurants. So this is one of one of those seven. I walked in, I distinctly remember the chef was on the phone. He literally was

like, go away, go away. And I just kept knocking and I would not go away. And he was like, what do you want? I was like, I want to work in the kitchen. He said, are you sure you don't want to be a host? And I was like, no, I want to work in the kitchen. He was like, usually girls end up with the hosting jobs. And I was like, no, I want to work in the kitchen. He asked what kitchen experience I had. I said, none. He said, would you work for free? And I said, okay. Wait, back it up. I know. You worked for free? He said-

You were that eager to get a job in a restaurant? This should not be the case, but in the restaurant industry, this is actually very common. Is that to get your bearings in a kitchen, you work for free first, and then they pay you. So I worked for free for about three or four months, and then they paid me I think eight bucks an hour. Did you get back pay? No, I did not get back pay. Yes, it sucked. My hours were long, I had burns down my arms. But I learned a lot. I should have been paid.

But I learned a lot. What were you studying in college? And why were you hell bent on working in a kitchen? Did you already know that you wanted to be a food journalist or that you wanted to work in the culinary industry in some way? I wanted to work in food and I was looking for any way in. And at the time, so I was a French and government major, and I was working on a thesis in the French department about how,

basically, how French cuisine took over the world, how the French sort of became these authorities in the world of food. And a big part of that was when you look at a restaurant, you know, the word restaurant is a French word, how a kitchen is structured is rooted and how French kitchens were structured. And so I wanted to work in a kitchen, but I also was like, oh, this would be really helpful context as I'm writing my thesis. So what did you learn in that kitchen that made you want to keep going and decide that you want to dedicate really the rest of your life to talking about food, exploring food, elevating food in some way?

There were so many things. First off, the people I met in that kitchen, the people who work in restaurant kitchens are like the most interesting people you'll ever meet. They were nothing like the people I went to college with. You know, no one had any affiliation with the school. They were people who lived in the New Hampshire area, who for various reasons had ended up in that kitchen. It was like a stew of really fascinating people, and I had something to learn from all of them. They were all so generous with their time,

with teaching me how to work the robo, which was like the blender, how to correctly set up your cutting board, how to chop, how to put potatoes through the extruder to make French fries. Working in a restaurant like that was like a little mini version of culinary school and they kind of took me under their wing. Restaurants are these very kind of strange, somewhat fucked up communities in and of themselves.

But there was like a real beauty in that. I loved how chaotic it was in the back, but how pristine it seemed in the front. I loved that contrast. I loved the feeling of exhaustion every night at midnight when I'd leave the restaurant smelling like French fries with my white shirt all stained from whatever I made that day. But that said, I realized in that time, I did not want to work in the back of the house in a kitchen. I knew that food was really interesting to me. It had opened my eyes to what restaurant work is like, how hard restaurant work is, how undervalued restaurant work is, and how beautiful it is

that restaurants can exist in the first place. But I realized that telling those stories was maybe more interesting to me than actually being in the back of the house. So what did you do next? I sent 50 emails to every food magazine or editor that seemed interesting to me, asking for anything. A conversation, a job, an intro. I wrote little 50 love letters. Like, here's why I love your work. Here's why I love what you do. Is there any way I could be a part of it? It would be a dream.

And where did you land? I got a response from one place, a food magazine called Lucky Peach, which was run by the restaurant group Momofuku. And David Chang was of course, you know, behind all of that. What an opportunity to work with him early in your career. It was, I feel like I now believe in fate because of that, that out of all 50, that was the one that responded and it was Lucky Peach. And that would have been when Momofuku was sort of taking off, right?

It was when Momofuku felt like the center of the universe. Like, Dave would cough and it would get covered by food news. Seriously, like it was everything we did felt like the most important thing happening in food and I got to be in the center of it. And at the same time, Lucky Peach as a food magazine was at the cutting edge of food journalism. People were copying, you know, the styles of our covers, the topics we were writing about. Oh, even the font.

Everything. Everything. It just looked different. Yeah. It just felt so different and iconoclastic and groundbreaking. And you know, I wasn't the visionary behind any of this stuff, but it just felt like a thrill to be along for the ride. Now, just mentioning Momofuku makes me think about, you know, in the early days that the

fried chicken that you could get, oh my God. You can still get the fried chicken. So good. So good. So good. And then you wind up working for Bon Appetit for a time. And you have, you're doing, you're working on their YouTube channel, you're doing restaurant criticism, it seems like you, when you describe an Indian meal and there's all these little pieces of

it, it sort of seems like your career, that it had all these little pieces of it. There was a little of this and a little of that. Yes, 100%. I mean, Bon Appetit was kind of an accident. I was freelancing for them while working on Indian-ish. And one of my editors there, who I had a really great relationship with, was like, would you be willing to come on as a writer? And then I came on as a contracted writer. And then right as I came on, the video team was like,

oh, we're... We have this YouTube channel that's doing really well, which you want to make some of the dishes from Indian-ish on our YouTube channel. And it all just kind of happened serendipitously. I never... I never sought out to cook on camera, I would say. And I felt like I was just always gonna be like the person scribbling in the corner with the notebook.

But Bon Appetit really changed everything. And you wound up leaving Bon Appetit during a tumultuous time. There were a few of you that left, contract negotiations dragged on, you felt that there were issues with representation. When you look back at that moment, it was covered broadly, people listening may or may not remember that, but there was a lot of coverage around that issue. When you look back over your shoulder, hindsight being 20-20, what did that moment represent for you in terms of drawing, you know, sort of

a line for yourself? It's an interesting through line. You know, you start where you're working for free because you want to do this so bad. You want to get in the business. You're that hungry to get into the culinary world. But then at that point, you also drew a line and said, you know, this is, I'm not willing to put up with this in order to be there. It was both drawing a line in the sand saying, I am not willing to be treated like a second

class citizen just to be here. I don't want to be thrown crumbs and been told to be grateful for them. But I think the other thing that I realized was I have a platform and a privilege to leave. There are a lot of people and a lot of people of color in really horrible work situations, in abusive work situations, in toxic work environments who just don't have the ability to leave. They don't have the financial privilege to leave. They have to make rent. At that point, I was like, I have enough saved up.

I do not have debt. It would mean a lot to set an example for those who maybe are not in that position to say, I am not being willing, I am not willing to be treated this way because of the way I look. I am not willing to just put my head down and work because this channel has been really successful for me, even though I'm only being paid a few hundred bucks a video.

Do you think that that made a difference in how that organization treated other people in the end? It's hard to say. Like, broadly speaking, it's really hard to see DEI programs being itself becoming like this, this bad word. Um, the, like, I felt so empowered when I left Bon Appetit and it felt like. Everything was within grasp that everything was going to change. And the last year or so have reminded me that we really do live in like a one step forward, two steps back world when it comes to racial justice and equity. You now are at the New York Times. You're a restaurant critic among other things. And

I want to talk to you a little bit about, if I can, your work as a critic because if I'm allowed to say when we had dinner together, you were actually reviewing a restaurant. I went back and looked at the menu for that restaurant, by the way. We ate at this great Cheseron restaurant. And we had a wonderful spread. When I went back and looked at the menu, there were a lot of things that we didn't have, including like entrails and pig's ears and livers and spleens. And there's like all kinds of stuff on the menu that we could have had that we didn't that night. Maybe you did another visits because as I understand, you usually go back to a restaurant several times when you're reviewing a restaurant and

you wear disguises sometimes. Yes. Can we talk about that? So what is that like? Do people have your picture in the back, in the kitchens of restaurants so they know that O'Pree is here? We have to make sure that we're on our, you know, P's and Q's and on our toes because one of the restaurant critics are here? Yes. At certain restaurants, yeah, they'll have the photos of all the critics up on the wall.

So you're sort of, you're like Malibu's most wanted, but in a restaurant. So how do you get around that? You have so many, so many things. So you can, you know, I have, I have like 10 accounts on Resy and OpenTable, all with different names, different email addresses. I have credit cards that are not in my name. But that will only get you so far. Ultimately, when you walk through the door and they see you, like the jig is up. And I, when I was in college, read this book by Ruth Reichel, he used to be the restaurant critic at the New York Times called Garlic and Sapphires. And she talked about

the lengths that she would go to stay anonymous. And it included donning wigs and becoming these whole other personas. And the first restaurant that I reviewed was an Indian restaurant where I knew the chef was like on the hunt for me. And I just bought a wig and like talked to a friend of a friend who is a Broadway wig and makeup designer. And she gave me some tips on how to like make my face not look like my face. I bought some other fun accessories, some hats, and I invented a persona.

And I went to the restaurant as that person and the chef came directly up to our table and they had no idea who I was. Wow. So does this person have a name or can you share the name? This person's name was Becky. Okay. And what was that? Was that your first wig? That was my first wig. What tell me about that wig? It is a blonde wig and it has these cool bangs that you can kind of make into curtain bangs.

It's cool and it's a straight wig. I actually, I didn't buy that one. I got it from my friend James who does drag on the weekends in Chicago. And then you had to like do contour and all kinds of things to make your face look different. But it totally worked. And it was so nice getting the service that everyone else gets, which was thankfully just regular good service. So are you eating with friends who have to then be schooled, don't call me Priya. Yeah. So that's-

Don't call me Priya, don't talk loudly about what I do, just things like that. And how many personas do you now have? I have so many personas. Because I feel like I'm always paranoid that a restaurant has figured one out. So I'll buy another wig and figure out another person to be. Does it start with it? I've talked to actors before and they say, for instance, that for them getting into character starts with the shoes. Like they have to figure out, you know, what is the shoe that a police officer would wear who worked in South Boston? What is the

shoe that a maid would wear who had to walk several miles in Mississippi? For you, does it begin with a wig? It starts with the wig. It starts with the wig and then I go from there. Because the key is, I don't want to stand out. I just want to look like a regular person who would exist in the world, like a believable person, basically. You have to blend in enough. And do all your friends have to wear costumes also? No, no, no, they just come as themselves. Okay, so because I'm wondering if you're dressing up as like an older woman, if you want them

to sort of look like they're in the same cohort or something. I try to look like someone who would be in the same cohort as the people I'm dining with. So, Delica question, but as a South Asian woman, is it harder to take on different personas? Because are you trying to present different varieties and ethnicities? It's so funny you say that. The first time I wore a blonde wig, I looked at my husband and I was like, I look just like I'm just like any old white girl. And she was like, you do not look like a white girl. And your husband is a white man. He's a white man. So yeah.

He was like, I hate to break it to you, but you just look like a brown woman in a blonde wig. So, you know, I try to just look kind of just ethnically ambiguous is sort of what I'm going for. But there was a night where I sort of played up my South Asian-ness. I like wore like a black really long wig, really, really deep, dark black eye makeup. So it sort of depended, but that restaurant, I feel like it made sense for that type of restaurant that I was going to. But I'm never sure. I mean, I don't know. I'm not trying to change my race. I don't think I'm good enough at hair and makeup to do that.

There are people though, you live in New York, so there are people that you could find who could do that for you if you wanted to. Have you ever been busted? Yes, once. Uh oh, what happened? With the wig. I was at a French restaurant. God, this is so embarrassing. And I was wearing a wig cap, which are very elastic and my wig cap was really hurting my ears. And so I like went to go ish it like this and the wig cap snapped off of my head, taking the wig and my glasses with me. They like projectile off of my head. I mean, they popped off your head.

They popped off my head. The guy pouring the wine, I thought he was going to drop the wine. I felt so bad. And I literally, I dove under the table. I just went under the table. My coworker Mark was just standing like this in front of me like, yeah, this is totally normal. We're fine. And I was just like whispering to him like, I need 30 seconds. So did they know that it was Priyak Krishna that was in the restaurant or did they just think that this was just a really disastrous first date for somebody whose wig just popped off the top of their head? No, I was totally made. They knew who I was.

Oh, and you know they probably passed that story around like a hot plate of cookies. And I know this because next day I flew to New Orleans and saw my friend who's on a text group with a bunch of chefs and he saw me and burst out laughing. And he was like, I heard that. 24 hours later, it was already out in the world. He was like, I hear you had a little bit of like a wig mishap. And I was like, how do you already know? That of like a wig mishap. How do you already know that was like 12 hours ago?

Okay, your life needs to be made into a movie just so I can see that scene on film. Well, before I let you go, I want to know a little bit about your kitchen. You're married. You have a husband. I understand he does a lot of the cooking. Baking. Baking. Okay. So when you're a restaurant critic, how often do you eat at home? Rarely. Like when I tell you this spinach and orzo meal was such a delight, because I just do not get to cook and I love cooking. I love cooking every cuisine, every, like I will cook, I just, cooking makes me feel so relaxed and happy.

And, but we rarely get to, you know, our fridge, my husband is in graduate school right now and our fridge very much looks like, you know, a 20 something bachelor. It's like condiments and beer we have received from people but never drank. condiments and beer we have received from people but never drank. So I'm hoping soon that I will be able to achieve a bit of better balance.

Well, when you move, good luck moving into your new space and outfitting your kitchen. And I imagine you probably have a wig room or a wig closet for all your costumes. I have not put that in the floor plan, but maybe I need to. Well, do you keep the wigs on their heads or do they? What is the show? Oh, Schitt's Creek. Yeah. She had her wig wall. I wish I had a Moira Rose level wig wall. But unfortunately, I think it's like a stop and shop bag where they're just stored. And then when I take one out, I have to really brush it out. But I feel like I'm not doing a good job of wig storage at all. Oh yeah, you need a wig wall or a coat rack or something where they can be hung and aired

out in some way. And maybe a better wig cap. There are people who can help you with that too. Yeah, a non itchy wig cap. There are people who can help you with that too. Yeah, a non itchy wig cap would be great. I mean, wigs are really expensive and for good reason, but the wigs, I don't have a big wig budget. So my wigs are not their budget wigs. People are going to hear, you know you're going to hear from people after this episode

airs, girl, I can help you with your wig. You're going to hear from all kinds of people who have all kinds of advice for you on your wig game. I know I've got to let you go, but we always get a recipe from our guests that means something special to them that in some way tells the story of their mama's kitchen. What recipe do you want to share with us? I think it's my mom's dal. I think that dal recipe is the best representation of my mother's kitchen. A, because it's so simple.

It's five ingredients, but it tastes like liquid magic. And B, because it was such a staple in our house. It reminds me that the kind of warmth and joy that my mom's cooking inspired in me was in fact a 10 minute dish. So tell us a little bit, not everyone has had dal in a home kitchen. They maybe have had it in a restaurant. If they have, they may have found it in sort of the ethnic food aisle at the grocery store. What is dal and what made her dal so special? Dal is just lentils that are stewed together with spices, often turmeric, but sometimes not.

And what makes my mom's dal special is it's dead simple. Whenever people see the recipe, they're like, no onion, no garlic, no aromatics, like no herbs. Like, how is it so simple? But the reality is, if you have five ingredients that are really good and really punchy and that sort of work to make the symphony together, you don't need much. It is the recipe that for everyone who's ever told me like I'm too nervous to do Indian cooking or to cook Indian food, they make that and it gets them over the barrier. They're like, this is so easy. I could eat this every day all day.

So what are the five ingredients? Because I am surprised that it doesn't have at least onion in it. Lentils, turmeric, ghee, cumin seeds, red chili powder, and optional but really great, aspartita. Okay. And do you roast your cumin seeds? Yeah. So you cook the dal with turmeric and a little bit of salt. And then in a small pan, you heat up the ghee, and then you throw the cumin seeds and you let them toast and get super fragrant. And then I turn the heat off and I toss in the chili powder and the

aspartita which sort of has this wonderful garlicky aroma to it. Aspartita might be new to people also. Tell us about that. It's a tree resin. And it sort of tastes like if you were to just cut an onion in half and like stick your face in it. It's so potent and so aromatic, but it does a lot of heavy lifting in my mom's dhal because it has such a complexity and depth of flavor. And so once the dhal is cooked in the turmeric and the salt in the water, you just dump the mixture, the chunk, that ghee mixture in, you stir it together and that's it.

Eat that with rice. Wow. Is aspartita her unique interpretation of of dal or is that something that was in the dal that she grew up with? It would have been in the dal that she grew up with. Yeah. Yeah. And now the dal that we all can have access to, thanks to you. But I mean, every Indian household has a different thal and they're all delicious in their own way. I love this conversation.

I knew I would. Thanks so much for being with us. Well, thank you. This was healing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you've said that. It felt good to me too.

It was nourishing for me as well. I hope we have a chance to cook together one day. I hope we have a chance to dine together, whether it says Priya or one of your alter eagles. Just let me know and I'll be there. I might even don some sort of headdress myself if you need me to. But I hope that we can do that. And I'm so glad that you joined us.

My best to you and my best to your family. Thank you. It's been a great conversation. my best to your family. Thank you. It's been a great conversation. Thanks so much for talking with me today. I loved hearing all about your parents' journey. Your mom does sound like a black belt level cook. Thank you for spending time with her so you could share her recipes with us and for creating a cookbook that is so accessible with Indian-ish. It's a cookbook that if you haven't heard of it, you should check it out, you should add it to your bookshelf, and more importantly, take it off the bookshelf and add it to your

repertoire because it is really food that is accessible. And that's a special thing because not all cookbooks have food that is as delicious and as accessible and really as fun. The stories that you share, it's good reading. It's good viewing. It's good reading and it makes for good eating. Thanks so much. Before we let everybody go, a reminder that we are always interested in getting your stories. We'd love to hear about your memories, your thoughts, your thoughts on maybe a previous episode, you can make a video. You can send that to us at yourmommaskitchen.com where you can find all the recipes for all

the previous episodes. And you will certainly have the doll recipe there as well. And now that Rivian has lent me one of their cars that is complete with a travel kitchen, as I listen to this recipe with only five ingredients, I think I might start road testing these recipes while I'm actually on the road. Cause this is one that I could actually, I don't know if you've seen the Rivian with that tricked out travel kitchen in the back,

but this would actually be perfect. You go out, maybe you're tailgating somewhere and you just pull out that kitchen and pull out a pot and a pan and a skillet and make something delicious and maybe it would be Ruto's doll and that would be wonderful. For everybody else at home, thanks for joining us. See you next week and the week after that because you know here at Your Mama's Kitchen, we are always serving up something delicious.

Take care and be Bountiful.