Meera Sodha
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Darlings, have you got your tickets yet for our extra special Christmas extravaganza at the Union Chapel on Monday the 2nd of December? We are doing a special Choose Love Table Manners episode live from the Union Chapel with Dawn O'Porter and Chris O'Dowd. It's for

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and invite you all on stage. It's extra special because Union Chapel is really intimate, so we can get up close and personal. You can ask Lenny all about her last leopard print purchase. But above all, this is for a great cause. We would love to see you there next Monday. Don't miss out. It's going to be such fun. Check our Table Manners Instagram bio and Choose Love's bio for tickets.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with my mum in my kitchen. It is a beautiful autumn day. The parakeets are, I don't know, parakeeting? Parakeeting, yeah. Outside. It's a blue sky, but it was like three degrees this morning. So cold. Very cold. Well, now my kitchen is like a greenhouse. Yeah. So, and I have direct sunshine in my eyes, so, but it's lovely. It's lovely. Okay. Um...

I've been on cooking duty. Oh, you've excelled yourself. I don't know if I have. I think you have. We have a vegetarian on who probably has one of the leading vegan... Is it still only vegan? She's such a good vegetarian cook. She writes in The Guardian. Yes, but her whole thing was that she has a vegan column. Yeah, it's his vegan. Mira Soda's coming on the podcast. My brother cooks Mira Soda recipes the whole time. Yeah. Salsa verde beans. Yeah.

That's Mira. And we've got her coming on to talk about her new cookbook, Dinner, which is 120 recipes of vegan and vegetarian food. And I'm cooking. I'm on cooking duty. So I... You've prepped. I've prepped like a motherfucker. You've been the prep queen today. I'm still waiting to put in the main event, which...

I mean, it could go one way or the other. I have made, if you've listened to the Jamie Dimitri episode, I made a savoury galette and that was like a butternut squash and cider onion and cheddar cheese one. I haven't done that, but I've done some. I remember it being quite nice. So I've kind of improvised. It's pumpkin season,

And so I've used one of the most delicious Natura Delisa pumpkins and I've roasted them and I pureed the pumpkin flesh myself.

because it has the green outside so that would have made it look really ugly and then I got pre-rolled shortcrust pastry which actually came in a circle which was brilliant as well thank you and so I've put the base as the pumpkin puree much like if you were doing a pizza like tomato base and I've left a bit of space around the edge because what you do is you kind of create a crust by kind of folding into itself it's supposed to be very rustic my kind of cooking and then I

I've caramelised some red onions, which I did with some sherry vinegar as well to kind of add a little...

And then goat's cheese. And then I've got some hazelnuts that I've crushed up, that I toasted. And I fried some sage. And I'm going to put them on near the end because otherwise they'll kind of burn. And then I've done it with a herb salad of tarragon, chives, dill, parsley. And then I've done, it's a Sophie Wybird recipe from Mob. So it's these harissa, honey, carrots and chickpeas that you do with whipped feta cheese.

So I've done that. And then... Have you been whipping your feta? Yeah, but it makes it sound like it's really hard. It's such a great cheat, isn't it? But it looks very sexy. And it tastes great. Yeah. And then for pudding, I've done Ravneet Gill's, it's called Baking for Pleasure, her cookbook. And I did her brown sugar meringues. I've never made meringues before in my life.

Are you feeling pretty smug? I'm feeling so smug. Yeah. I'm feeling like I could walk into an otterengi and say, hey, I see your gigantic, delicious meringues and I raise you the Ravneet Gill brown sugar. Yeah.

meringue and then the genius thing of this is that you do a kind of coffee cream so you just do some granulated instant coffee put some sugar in that with a bit of water and you pour that into mascarpone and then you add a double cream and then you whip it and it's so banging it's like tiramisu it's delicious

And then I've done some cherries, frozen cherries with some sugar that you're going to put on top. And then I'm going to grate some dark chocolate. We were talking about Black Forest Gatos last week and it's almost like a Black Forest Gato meringue. Those tin cherries were not great. The tin cherries were awful. I recommend no one ever buying the tin cherries and always just go for the frozen cherries.

and then add some sugar. So I think it should be quite nice. I'm a bit worried that I'm going to have a soggy bottom with the galettes. So yeah, we've got Mira Soda coming up to eat a delicious vegetarian lunch. And to talk all things Guardian Column and dinner, the cookbook.

Mirasoda, you've just joined us, not only with a beautiful bunch of flowers, Shably, my fave, and also a honey cake, which is outrageous that you had the time to do that because I swear you're on the move at the moment and you're just so thoughtful. So cheers. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, cheers. I love to hear you guys. We're all drinking at lunchtime. I'm so happy. But it feels like late for me. Because we did morning breakfast radio this morning.

Oh, did you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Did you have to be up really early for that? Six. Six. Unreal. Unbelievable. I'm just not as good as I used to be at getting up early. Because you're a diva now. No, because I'm old. But, I mean, you must be up in the morning anyway because you have kids. How many kids do you have? Two. And they're pretty good. I have to wake them up.

in the morning and I'm not saying like I'm not saying they're great at everything are they teenagers no I know that I think one of them's like four but going on like 14 got it I've got a three nager in the other room at the moment yeah a three yeah I'm gonna be just busying actually can I ask your opinion because I've made a vegetarian you are vegetarian not vegan not vegan correct thank god okay fine because um I just put goat's cheese on the thing so I've made galettes and

A galette with pumpkin, onions, goat's cheese. I kind of pureed the pumpkin, but I think that the Delisa pumpkins look so nice. Do you say Delisa? Is it Delica? I don't know. I say Delica, but I don't know. I don't know either. Because they're from Sicily, aren't they?

Don't you know? Yeah. Okay, I'm going to go get a cup. They're from Sicily. I think so. I think they all come from Sicily. And they cure them, don't they? I don't know. And then they come with their magical wax. Do you have to peel off the wax? Yes, it's so romantic. It's such a magnificently special pumpkin that they have to stamp it. Basically, I've pureed some of the flesh, but I was going to put some more on top. But do you think that is pumpkin overload? No.

If you've already got the puree? I don't think so. It could be a nice textural situation. So where did you learn to cook? I mean, my mum is an amazing cook and I didn't learn how to cook when I was a kid.

Because I was like semi a brat and sort of took it for granted that she was incredible. But also she used to kick me out of the kitchen and say, go and do your homework. You know, I want you to become a doctor. And she wanted like that sort of safety and security for me. And so I went to university and not knowing how to cook until I got homesick.

And I was out one night with some friends and we were in a curry house on Brick Lane and they said, oh, what should we order from the menu? And I said, well, this isn't the food that I grew up eating. This like baby puree corn. But I didn't realize that people didn't know that. It was like nothing like the Gujarati gorgeous like vegetarian food. So what's your heritage? Gujarati food.

So Gujarat's on the west coast of India and it's a state that's got the population, like roughly a similar sized population to the UK. So about 16, 6 million or something like that. And so it's not small and it is predominantly vegetarian because in India,

I think it was about 250 BC, there was an emperor called Ashoka. And after a particularly bloody war, he said, no more blood must be spilled. Okay, it won't be veggies. Yes, exactly. And then there's this principle of ahimsa, which is Buddhist, which is also kind of no harm must be done to people. And so traditionally, Hindus are quite like peace loving, you know. And so, you know, the cuisine is centuries old, this way of...

When people are starting to talk about plant-based food and going vegan, going vegetarian, here and it feeling like a trend. I mean, we're talking there's so many bits of the world that have been eating vegan, vegetarian food for thousands of years. This brings us on to your column. How long have you been the vegan columnist for The Guardian? Mm-hmm.

seven and a half going on eight years and I didn't think I'd last beyond a couple of weeks. Am I right in thinking you weren't vegan at the time when you started to do the column? Yeah, I wasn't vegan and I'm still not vegan but I love vegetables and I love animals predominantly when they're alive and so those two things kind of propelled me forward but what happened was

I got a phone call out of the blue one day from Melissa Deans, who is like the editor of the then Guardian Weekend magazine. She loved Fresh India, my second book, which is all vegetarian, and said, you know, cook loads of dishes out there. There's loads of vegan dishes. Would you consider heading up this column? And I should have said no, because...

You know, I wasn't vegan. And I also had a four month old baby at the time. But I could see friends of mine struggling all around me to try and figure out like the Western plates made up of like a big slab of meat in the middle of it and vegetables on the side. And...

they, I could tell that, you know, they didn't really know exactly what to cook. And I felt like I could add to the conversation because I'd grown up eating like vegetarian food and, and absolutely loving it. And I thought, you know, if I looked east towards like beyond India, towards Thailand and Vietnam, that I'd find examples of like other cultures and cuisines that put vegetables in the center of the table. Yeah.

And there are so many of them. Like if you look at Thailand, like 95% of Thailand or Thai people are Buddhist. I didn't know that. Yes, they do eat meat, but like it's not like a primary. The cuisine's evolved without it being a primary ingredient. And so typically, like if you think about a Som Tam salad, you can take a little bit of meat out with no like real rupture to the recipe. It's still going to be absolutely delicious. But how would you replace like the fish sauce?

So you can get like vegan fish sauce. It's really good. Yeah. Thai tastes make a really good one. And I think it's made with... Is it called naan pla? So naan pla you can make with fish sauce. Yeah. And I think they make the fish sauce with seaweed because it's kind of got that salty umami thing going on. My daughter in the last week has said, I like chickens, mum. I want to be a vegetarian. I said, that's absolutely fine, darling, but you need to eat a few more vegetables, I think, if we're going to do this.

How do your children eat? Do they eat well? Right. I think they haven't always eaten well. So Aria, my eldest, used to come home and just demand like buttered pasta most nights. And then she self-elected to become a vegetarian. I think they're like, you know, she's like part of like the eco council at school. And she's got, I know, they've got like, she's got a thousand teddy bears in her room. Like she really loves animals.

And just didn't want to eat them. And I said exactly the same thing. You're going to have to eat loads of vegetables. So we kind of started just taking them off one by one. And I think there's just something about like having a bit more agency or say in what she wants to do. And she just has started eating loads, tons more vegetables now. And it's been the most incredible journey because before she wouldn't like touch vegetables.

you know, whatever we put in front of her and she wouldn't try it, but she wants, like she's desperate to be vegetarian. And the other one, Yogi just kind of fell out of the womb, just putting everything she could in her mouth and it's not fussy at all. She's like a self-elected flexitarian and God knows where she's got that from because it wasn't me. How old is she? If there's a sausage going, she'll definitely eat it. She's a four-year-old? Yeah.

Do you cook meat for them? I don't know, but he's like the only proper carnivore in our family. That's your husband? Yes. And so he'll occasionally cook some sausages or roast a chicken alongside what I'm doing so that we can all eat together. And you don't mind? No, I don't mind because I mostly ate vegetarian food growing up. But when my grandfather moved over to Uganda, he started hunting antelope and baking them in an oven dug out of the earth.

And so I'm used to eating meat. I just don't eat that much of it. I don't cook it at home. Yeah. Yeah. And I've got like a real weak spot for prawns myself. Oh, have you? Do you still eat them? I do because I'm not, you know, as I say, I'm a pescatarian, but it's just this kind of problem with needing to label yourself because really I don't. Ninety five percent of what I eat comes from plants. But food isn't just fuel. It's food.

It's also history, nostalgia, pleasure, tradition. That's our whole podcast. Is it? Yeah, well, there you go. Where were you brought up? So I was born in Scunthorpe, of all places. Scunthorpe? I know. You haven't got the accent. Well, because my parents are from Uganda and I went to school in Hull. And I don't think you can only tell on certain words like bath and...

And I can't get rid of that. Do your family still live there? Yeah, they still live there in a little village in Lincolnshire. And behind their house is a potato factory. And there's like pigs all around. And yeah, they're still there. And there's a very small Indian community there. There's not that many. But when my grandfather came into this country, he met someone at a desk. You know, like they were part of that exodus in 1972 where like 28,000 Ugandan Asians came over. Yeah.

And he was such a proud man. And he said, oh, I don't want to take handouts from the British government. And so tell me where I can get a job. And the person on the other side of the desk said, oh, here they're looking for lorry drivers at Scunthorpe Steelworks. So we ended up in Scunthorpe of all places. So we were the only Indians in the village. Yeah.

And it was great, though. Were they nice? Were people nice to you? Honestly, I mean, I never had a problem at all. I just I mean, I think the only thing that it probably did for me was I was the one saying, oh, I don't want to go to school smelling of curry and fried onions and everything.

And so I didn't want curry for dinner. I really wanted... That's what Nisha Katona said. Did she? I wanted like spaghetti hoops on toast or wanted to go to Pizza Hut. That's exactly what she said. And when friends came back for dinner, they were expecting, or they came back for tea after school, they were expecting Indian food. And she'd say, give the Megan chips. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it was amazing from a food point of view, because Lincolnshire is where like a lot of our produce grows. You know, they used to have loads of potatoes, like they used to have special railways that would carry them like from Lincolnshire to London for the markets. And Gujarati potato curry is like famous, but...

So we ate a lot of potatoes when I was growing up and loads of cabbage and pepper. What do your parents do? So mum, she had a news agent when I was growing up and helped dad. And he is a financial advisor, so he's still working. And so, you know, things to do with pensions and insurance. But very aspirational for you. Yeah, really. I would say so. I think they really wanted to make a good life. I mean, they were...

They came into this country. They had everything taken from them. My grandfather was really wealthy in Uganda. He was self-made. He like set up the first Coca-Cola bottling factory, one of the first printing presses in Uganda. He was in business with the Tilda family when they were like doing orange juice and not rice. Wow. Was that in Uganda? That was in Uganda. So Tilda from Uganda. They are. Yeah. So it was just all sorts of strange coming over to the UK because they were

pretty poor and my parents lived in that estate that was notorious on that Channel 4 documentary called Skint you know the one and so they just became very thrifty I mean they ate curried baked beans and cabbage curry for days and I think that

I really love that because I feel like the way that my mum cooked, it was very much about very cheap store cupboard cooking. Lentils, beans all, you know, cooked from scratch. But then she'd take whatever was in the fields around us, ended up in the greengrocers or given to us by neighbours, like whether it was marrows or like abrasive pheasants. I mean, anything really leaks.

I mean, whatever grew, she would just curry it. She was also really curious, which I love, like super passionate. So we'd like pirouette around the markets and she'd say, make sure you look for the aubergines with the bright green tops because they're fresh. And so I really learned from her like how to...

Pick good quality vegetables. But so yeah, my memories of home were kind of her making this incredible food, like the smell of basmati steaming and dal, like my favorite, favorite dal. Which is your favorite dal? I mean, it's called a daily dal and it's in native India. And I love that. I mean, I love many dals, many dals in my heart now. But that was one of my, that was my favorite growing up.

Masala omelettes on Sundays. Yeah, Dad putting Elvis on the record player or Lata Mangeshka playing and chai. I mean, it was gorgeous. So what's the basis of your curries or your mum's curries? Is it onions, tomatoes, garlic and...

Yeah, well, it's... Which spices would you not be able to do a curry without? Okay, so... Or family curry, either. Typical Gujarati spicing, you're looking at equal parts ground coriander... I like this already, this sounds straightforward. Yeah, it's equal parts ground coriander and cumin. Okay. And they complement each other so well because cumin's this, like, dark brooding horse of a spice. It smells a little bit like fresh man's sweat.

in a nice way. And coriander is this light floral, lemony, really happy smell. So those two go really well together. And then there's Kashmiri chilli.

always, mainly for health-related purposes. And that's equal parts as well, or not? I mean, you can add those, like, I don't know, typically add, like, half a teaspoon of turmeric and then chilli, like, as you wish. And so those are the core spices. And occasionally, she'll start a... Like, some people, like, make a spiced oil called a turka. Ah,

You've cooked something and then put it in. She likes to do it before because it would stink the house out where you get your oil nice and hot and you throw some mustard seeds in there and they become nice and nutty or some fenugreek seeds. And I said, well, why do you do that? And she said, oh, it's mostly for health purposes. So I really think you could just get away with having like cumin, coriander, Kashmiri chili, turmeric and salt and that would be it.

and that's predominantly what she used. Now typically in Gujarati cooking you don't really use onion and garlic that much but she was raised partly because they were living in really rural Uganda. She was raised by a Punjabi family and the Punjabi way of cooking is a lot richer where you use onions and garlic and lots of ginger and she uses tons of garlic. I love garlic. I mean I love using so much that you can kind of smell it on your skin the next day.

This is such a treat. Oh, thank you so much. My favourite thing is being invited over to other people's houses. Do you, we've had chefs on before and they've said that sometimes people really feel the pressure of cooking for you. I mean, well, for a chef. Yeah. Do you find that people kind of freak out and don't know what to do? I mean, sometimes I just feel like Hugh and I love hosting and so we tend to host quite a lot. How did you two meet?

So he came to my flat when I wasn't there and he saw my bike. He's kind of a bike nut and saw my book collection and really wanted to know more about me and so invited me over. Why was he there when you weren't there? Oh, because he's friends with my flatmate and she was having a dinner party and I was at work. Okay. He broke in. Yes.

And when I met him, there was like, he looks like he splattered the walls with blood. There was like, he was making a fessinjan from scratch. His mother-in-law is like Armenian. A fessinjan? That's what Simon and the Bomb was talking about on radio. Oh, really? It's gorgeous if you had it. No, I need to do this. Oh, it's so good. It's so good and so simple. How do you spell it? F-E-S-S.

E-N-J-A-N. And it's typically made, I think, with chicken or lamb? Yasmin Labon did it with lamb last night. He said lamb. And so he'd made a mess in your kitchen? Not my kitchen, his kitchen. Yeah, he'd just kind of really gone to town and doing this thing from scratch and it was gorgeous.

And at the time I was working on, I was putting ping pong tables all across like London. I don't know if you've seen ping pong tables anywhere. Ping pong, what like playing ping pong? Was it that? Why were you doing that? Was it those places called ping pong and you could go there and play ping pong? No, so it wasn't that. So before I was in feed, I had an arts organisation called.

called Sing London, which I'd helped to set up. We put pianos and ping pong tables on the streets of cities in a bid to sort of get people together. And we didn't make any money from it. We were just kind of funded by different pots. And he worked in advertising and he wasn't very good at flirting. So I thought he was offering me free advertising until I turned up to a date and

And anyway, it was really nice. And Bess and John's now like one of our very special dishes, but we make it with aubergine now. So we'll typically have that at like Christmas time or when people come over and it's... This is like the beginning of a rom-com. Yeah, it could be. Could be. Nobody wants this part two, but it's set in London. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it was like a scene out of like a Bridget Jones style thing because his name's Hugh de Winton and so I thought he had land and was quite rich and he's not actually. He sounds it. Yeah. Was that what compelled you to go on the date? I mean, yeah, obviously. Maybe they used to have land. Maybe. I think they did. He said there's a lot of dead de Wintons in Wales and so maybe there's like a patch of land with my name, with his name waiting on it over there somewhere. By the way, I'm acknowledging now. Yeah.

The carrots are crunchy because I decided to scrub them. Did you frighten them? Did I frighten them? Shock them. Shock them, sorry. No, but I scrubbed them. I was like, I'm just going to keep them with the fucking skin on because it didn't have that much skin. I was like, I'm just going to be rustic. I'm not going to do that next time because I can taste crunch. No, I prefer them. You like the taste of soil? No, I can't taste soil. Well, you may in a minute. Just, yeah, whatever.

What did you do at university? So I did industrial relations, which is a really weird thing to study. Where? LSE, London School of Economics. Is that kind of like city planning? Is it start something? I mean, explain to us what industrial... So industrial relations is sort of the relationship between business and people and government and like kind of organising how people work. And so it's kind of, you know,

It's all about trade unions and workers' rights and employment law and how businesses operate. And I don't really, I kind of did it because I was doing Young Enterprise at school and I was a managing director, but my team was like, they were all rugby lads and we were painting photo frames and it was like a total nightmare. And I was like, this is so interesting. Like, I can't get anyone to do anything. And so I sort of became really interested in the people side of business, like the kind of human face of it.

But I didn't really realise that like studying it would mean like there's like kind of two routes out of it. And one is maybe human resources and the other one's like, you know, trade unionism. And neither of those appealed to me in any way, shape or form. And so I was spat out of it and set up my own dating agency, which was... That took such a turn. I know. Yeah.

Was this before or after the ping pongs? It was before. I think I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I didn't really have any... My parents worked for themselves, so I knew I wanted to do something different.

for myself and I didn't really know what I wanted to do I didn't want to kind of go into insurance like my dad had and at the time my cousin was looking for a husband but she'd only ever dated English boys and she was looking for an Indian husband and like the family was passing around these books with like bios and like photos like tacked into them and I was like this is crazy and so I met with the owners of J-Date and

Yes. Oh, my God. Because it was actually the, or the people who founded it, because it was the only online dating agency that existed at the time. So for people that don't know what JDate is, it's a very, very old dating, it was before an app, wasn't it, or not? Maybe. It was one of the first. It was one of the first apps. Online dating websites. And it was for Jewish people to meet Jewish people. Yes. And so this one was meant to be for Indian people to meet other Indian people, and it was called Fancy an Indian. Yeah.

And I'm really sad that I gave up the URL because, I don't know, it's just such a great URL. You could be like a tech queen. Oh my God, I could be so rich. I could be a billionaire by now. Imagine. Imagine.

What did your mum say about this? I mean, she found some... I bet she was thrilled. Yeah, I know, exactly. She'd find a good husband this way, darling. Yeah. I mean, she would have been... They pumped money into it. And at the same time, I was, like, working at a call centre selling anti-wrinkle cream. And in, like, a bar... And in your spare time, you were a teapot. As my grandma would say. Well...

You've done everything. So in your spare time, you're a teapot. I don't know why she used to say that. I love that. Maybe like you can do everything. I mean, I was just being, you know, doing sort of part-time documentary making until I was fired. I basically tried my hand at it. Yeah, I really felt like I was. And maybe that is like second generation immigrant, you know, something.

that I feel like my immigrant parents gave to me was like, you can do anything, you know, because they started from scratch and they, you know, managed to come out of their estate and like buy a lovely old rickety house somewhere and, you know, have a nice life in Lincolnshire. How far did Fancy the Indian go? Fancy an Indian go? I mean, it went as far as me printing T-shirts and handing out flyers in like Leicester Square. I organised a couple of events. Any marriages? No.

No, it didn't get that far because nobody... Can I tell you what happened? Because also at the time I knew I'd been told about Hugh, my now husband. My friend said, oh, you should talk to him because he's really good at playlists. So I was organizing. I did have a couple of in-person events called Save the Date where, you know, you had to show...

the other, you know, who you were looking to date, like how good you were at like flipping pancakes, like blindfolded. And he did the playlist and he couldn't make it to an event, but we ended up getting married anyway. Have you started writing this story? This is a Netflix rom-com. Did any of the people you'd set up end up marrying? I know people who got together from a ping pong parlor that I had from the ping pong time. That makes you sound like a madame.

My parlour, the ping-pong parlour. Susan Sarandon has ping-pong tables. That's her business. What? How do you know that? What, like the bars in New York? Those ones? Yeah. Because it was so trendy at some point, wasn't it? How long ago was this? Good question. It was 2004, 2005, 2004. Okay. Yes, quite a while ago. And I say I kind of fell into the food thing...

It was a bit of an accident. Like, I've always loved food. Yeah. The fact that I've got books out was because of a two-minute conversation that just changed the course of my life. And so, like, I was working at Innocent Drinks, you know, the smoothie company. Oh, yeah. Of course you were.

And loved it there. It was like in their house. When they were really buzzing. Yeah, so it's number 55, I think, through the door. And it was just a brilliant place to work. And they offered this thing called a scholarship, which was £1,000 to make your dreams come true.

arguably I needed more than a thousand pounds but I was like I'll take it so you had to stand up in front of the company and pitch Dragon's Den style your idea and then people would vote and I said oh I want to go and meet my family in India that I haven't met in Gujarat write down the family recipes and then I'm going to you know make a book and give it to everyone and by that I meant like I'm going to write it up on the work on word on the work computers print it out on the work computers and then just give it to people who worked at Innocent

only one of the guys who voted for me a guy called Pete was fixing my laptop one day and he's like oh I voted for you and my wife's an editor at Simon and Schuster you should go and meet with her and I was like whatever please fix my laptop I need to go and get this PowerPoint presentation done and so I went to meet with her and not thinking anything of it because I'm a brown girl from Scunthorpe and like people like me didn't publish cookbooks and

And Bryony Gowlett changed my life because she said, oh, this could be a book. And, you know, I'll send you a list of agents and go home, write a proposal and practically kick me out of the restaurant. And so two weeks later from meeting her, I had an agent. And then five weeks later, I had five publishing deals on the table. And I...

I just still can't believe that that would have never have happened if I hadn't talked to... Pitched yourself to try and win a ground. But also talked to Pete Gowlitz, who was fixing my laptop. It was just a two-minute conversation. Are you still friends with him? I am still friends with him and Bryony. And I just think, you know, these things can just happen out of, like, magic out of nowhere. Yeah.

Kismet though, maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it was meant to be. What's kismet mean? Like serendipity. Really? It's kind of like what was meant to be. Maybe I wasn't meant to be like a tech entrepreneur. Maybe you still are. Maybe. Maybe you're about to be a big Hollywood producer, thanks. Because the story of your life is fascinating. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I was going to say, is there anything you've not done yet? We'll see what you're going to do.

I think partly what I found was, because I don't know if you know this, but like I had a breakdown. And so, and I laugh, but it wasn't actually a laughing matter. It was actually quite a horrible period in my life. Was this after your second child? It was, but I don't think it was related to her because it was, I did have her during a pandemic. And I think the reasons for why it happened are quite complicated.

It might have been burnout. It could have been, you know, intense work deadlines or having a newborn baby, etc. But I just didn't. I fell out of love with life and cooking and had to find my way back to the kitchen sort of step by step and meal by meal, which is what the book Dinner's about. So now I think my point of saying that is I don't really...

I try and sort of live in the little pockets of life these days rather than sort of ambitiously try and do new things. I'm presuming that's because you used to potentially think the other way and that was, you felt detrimental. Yes, I think what happened was, I think my identity was very closely tied to achievement and

And so I just like went through life thinking that I could do everything and then just trying to do all of these things. And I loved it. Don't get me wrong. I fed off it. It felt like I had like air in my lungs when I was doing all of this stuff. And I felt like invincible. And it's like, I'll go make documentaries. I'll go and do this.

I felt fearless like you do when you're in your 20s you know you just feel like you can do anything but do you think there's also pressure because you are second generation immigrant yes totally I just felt like you know my parents have sort of set the bar really high and they said you know we want you to be successful yeah we want you to and then they kind of laid out like a set of jobs that they wanted me to be happy and it came

from a place that was really good because they had had to like you know they were hiding from the milkman they didn't have any money and they just wanted security and safety for me so it came from a really good place what helped you get better so it was it all hinged on one day and uh so it's probably been in bed for I just didn't want to get out of bed I felt very lethargic and like all of my senses are just narrowed down to nothing and

and I felt really discombobulated about what was going on and then you know after months and months of the same thing Hugh my husband was starting to crack under the pressure because he'd been looking after our two girls including our little baby and me and also doing all the family cooking and he said I'd love you to cook me a meal and it was his way of saying I

I really need you to care for me. I need someone to care for me and to love me. And so I just woke up. I'd been so sort of in my own head and I ran into the kitchen and I grabbed some lentils and some coconut milk and then went to the freezer where I keep, you know, all my chilies, curry leaves, lemongrass, you name it. And then I made this like Malaysian dal that we'd eaten bucket loads of in Singapore. And I

When I made it, I just felt really like I felt like fresh air, like in my lungs. I felt like energy in my fingertips and I really loved doing it. And it felt so different to, you know, I felt energetic for a start and I loved cooking, which I hadn't wanted to do. And so I thought maybe there's something in this here and maybe I just need to cook for myself or for pleasure or for joy, but not for work, not for deadlines, not for books. And so I started like

cooking just kind of feeling my way through and you know it was typically fried eggs in like soy and butter over rice like we're doing really simple things like chafee fried rice or tomato pasta with a bit of kimchi in there and I just kept a record of these things and then this orange notebook that we keep by the microwave just started to fill up over time and

And then I was meant to be under contract to write another book. And I spoke to my editor and I was already like a year late at this point on this book. And I said, listen, I really think I'm... I feel like this is giving me such purpose. Like I felt like by planning dinner, I felt really grounded. And by cooking it, it was like a small sense of achievement in my day. And then with like coming around the table with everyone, it just...

was just magic. I just loved it, which I know sounds really basic. But before that, I'll say that like, I might have been working all day on a lime pickle recipe trying to perfect it. I couldn't give that to the kids. So then we'd give them pasta or something. Hugh and I would eat later. And it was all quite disjointed. But like, here we were just all kind of eating this one thing together. And so dinner just became this like,

What do you think was wrong with you?

I think it was stuff that I hadn't addressed from my childhood that, you know, and I think it was a lot of my identity was tied into work. And so I just kept on saying yes. And I'm like putting a lot of pressure on myself to do things. And then I think part of it was also writing recipes for, I mean, I've been in the game for 10 years now. And initially I started because I wanted to record my mum's recipes and I wanted to record them because I wanted to pass them on. And suddenly I found myself not cooking recipes.

The food that I'd grown up eating, the dal, the spinach and paneer curries, the aubergine and tomato curries that she cooked day in, day out. You know, the smell of charred chapatis on the toa that, like, just filled... You know, that's the smell of my childhood. And I just got so far away from that, I think. And it's not like I was, like, power-hungry, but you just can, like, go down a path and not... I just didn't look behind me until it was a bit too late. That resonates so much, that you...

You're on this hamster wheel where it's all good stuff. So therefore there's no reason to want to jump off until you burn yourself out. And I got to the point where, you know, I have wonderful management and supportive people around me, but I was just like, I, on the outside, everyone's going, yeah,

you're doing so well, it's so good and you're like you don't know what you're doing and also having young children that resonates so much, I mean I feel like this weight has been lifted that I have made this decision not to tour next year and that's just one aspect I love touring but the juggle of that with the podcast, making new music with promoting, with being a parent just even having that little bit has made me be able to feel like I can be a better parent and a better

Podcast artist, I don't know. Yeah. I think it's really powerful that you say that because I think there are lots of people who will look at you from the outside thinking, how does she do it all? Yeah. And I hate that because they go, how do you do it all? And I'm like, actually, I'm really struggling. Yeah.

And I'm sure it's similar with you. It's hard to have it all in one moment, isn't it? It really is. It really, really is. And we're part of this experimental generation, raising our kids and working full time. And it's really hard. I feel like I've broken free from it. I mean, I'm still a work in progress, but...

I'll have this idea that I want to create like, I don't know, a fresh supermarket doll range or something and then send out a few emails and then I'll think, crap, I need to delete those because I shouldn't really be starting a new project. I really need to, you know, leave enough time for myself to just enjoy life, feel the sun on my face in the morning, do the yoga classes that I love doing, spend time with my kids. Like my idea of success these days looks like being able to pick up the kids at 3.30am

And we do that on a Friday and then we have film night and I am just the happiest.

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Oh my god, it's the coolest thing ever. Hey guys, have you heard of Goldbelly? Well, check this out. It's this amazing site where they ship the most iconic, famous foods from restaurants across the country anywhere nationwide. I've never found a more perfect gift than food. They ship Chicago deep dish pizza, New York bagels, Maine lobster rolls, and even Ina Garten's famous cakes. Seriously.

So if you're looking for a gift for the food lover in your life, head to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code GIFT. Where do you think the best curry is in London? So my favorite place is Saravana Bhavan. Have you heard of it? No. Okay, so they've got, I don't know, about five branches across London. But the one that's closest to me is East Ham. And there's a big South Indian community there.

And the four of us, like my family, love to go on a Sunday early lunch. Kids eat early. But at the same time, all of these South Indian families are tipping out of the temples. The women have got fresh jasmine in their hair and all their beautiful temple jewelry on in their saris. And you're sitting bum to bum with them in Saravana Bhavan. It's more like a canteen, but it's really lively, like properly pumping in there.

And we order a big jug of mango lassi and then like rounds of doses and like dhal, butter fry. And you know, if you order a dose, it's not just a dose. It comes with beautifully spiced potatoes, all the fresh coconut chutney, the sambar. I mean, so good. And jalapeno. So it's not really a typical kind of curry house. Like,

It does the job. Yeah, that sounds great. Would you like a restaurant? No, I don't think so because I think if I had a restaurant, I'd probably feel the need to be in it every day. And also I cook home cooking. Like my food, the heart of it is like proper home food. And so my favourite thing is when people have cooked something and then it just becomes part of their like repertoire and something that they love. And so I think if I opened a restaurant, I'd feel the need to make it like...

fancy or fussy and that's not really who I am or what my food's about. Samira, if you invite me for dinner, what are you going to cook?

Not lunchtime. I want to come in the evening where I can not just have mango lassi unless it's laced with something exciting. So just tell me. What kind of stuff do you like? You can see I'm a difficult, tricky... No, she doesn't. I'm going veggie because she could... You like aubergine but it's not good for your arthritis. Yeah, aubergine's not... Nightshades. All the nightshades are not good for arthritis, so I try. I'm not supposed to eat potatoes. Oh, okay.

Tomatoes. This is getting hard. This is becoming quite a tight brief. You'd have to do your sexy chilli paneer, surely. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's what I would do. Not too hot for me. We'd maybe start with panipuri because they're loads of fun. I mean, we'd probably start with panipuri. Panipuri? Yes. Panipuri.

Are they little ones? Yes, I love them. So you make them and then I've seen people on MasterChef make them. And you make them and when you put them in the oil, they puff up. Yes. Oh, wow. I don't make them myself. I just buy them. And where can you buy them? Okay, so you can buy them from any Indian grocery store. But have a look at, pick up the box and have a look at the bottom. Make sure there's not too many shards because obviously it relies on the liquid staying in. Otherwise it goes all over your, whatever you're wearing. And then you poke a hole in with your thumb. Yeah.

I put them to one side and then make a gorgeous, delicious concoction of tamarind, like roasted cumin seeds, mint, coriander, a little bit of lemon and that sort of like panning, like a water that goes in and then sprouted mung beans, like voluptuous chickpeas, like the ones that we've just eaten. You are so good with your words. You're like freaking Nigel Slater. You, Nigel Slater, could have like a word off about how you speak about food. Yeah.

Voluptuous chickpeas. Voluptuous chickpeas. But they do taste like embarrassing... Take that, Nigel Leigh. Yeah, take that. Embarrassingly sexy, don't they? When you eat them and they're so creamy.

I love that. So you've got basically you get this shell, you put all the little things in there and you can sometimes get these like little chickpea crisps and you pour the water and it's got to go into your gob within about five seconds. And they are just amazing. They taste delicious, like a flavour explosion. And I'd make you a Naked and Famous, which is the worst name for a cocktail in the history of man. Oh my God, it's terrible. Do you know it? No, I don't. It's so good. I was going to have it.

though now it's like the kind of grown-up sexier cousin of a margarita and so you make it famous yeah who made this up i don't know how could they make a sexy and grown more grown-up margarita and then have such a bad name with this tequila the base so yeah it's mezcal and lime so you know component parts of a margarita in a way and then you add aperol and yellow chartreuse oh

Oh, my God. This is a shit mix. Yeah. This is like going to get you rocked. Yeah, it's kind of like can have one, shouldn't have two. Okay. Do you put lots of ice in? Do you shake it? Yes, yeah. And it's the colour of a Miami sunset and you have to sip it quite slowly, but it's so delicious. I bet. So good. Wow. So main course...

That's a good one. I think I might make you... I don't like it too spicy. Oh, no, it's fine. It's fine because Indian food doesn't have to be... Yeah, knock your head off. I mean, sadly, Asian food doesn't have to be spicy. No, it's not. I don't add it in for my kids. Like, I'll add a little bit in that they won't be able to taste.

But when I have people over, I like to bung things in the oven. Now, I used to make very elaborate five course meals and now post burnout and very much like, you know, assembly job or do it in advance. And so this butter paneer curry and the recipes in dinner is a really good one because you chuck everything into a pan and you don't normally make a curry in a pan. So it's quite a weird experiment for me.

But I love it because it's so easy and I can just, I'd be able to sit down and we could just chat away. Good. Drinking our naked and famous cocktails. Yeah. And actually, you know, before I used to be like a jack in a box, kind of jumping up and down. So I'd make that for you and it goes really well. I know it's not in season, but with an asparagus Thoran, which is a Keralan dish, like coconut, mustard, sea artes, cashews. It's real asparagus in Kerala.

No, but I... I mean, I cook quite like my mum. I use British produce. And then I will cook something Southeast Asian with that. And I'm a real tinkerer as well. So I'm not typically like an authentic cook in any way, shape or form. I'm just... I like to...

just cook. What would be for pudding? What would I make for pudding? Like again I try to make things easy on myself now and the ice cream that I love to serve people is the pistachio and lemon one that's the Hackney Gelato. Have you had that? I love Hackney Gelato. I like the banana one. Oh I've not had that. Oh it's like banana and peanut butter or something like that. It's so good. They are so good. They're bloody good. They're bloody good and so my sneaky hack is that I kind of whiz up some like brown sugar and pistachios and like

like throw it over the top so it looks nice and maybe serve it with some fruit. But I mean, if you were fully signed up, paid up member of the vegan experience or the vegetarian experience, I'd make you my cheesecake because it's not made with real cheese. Yeah.

And I just think... What's it made of? It's a good question. Yes. And it was just a mountain to climb. And I think partly that and my 18-karat laxer I just need to talk about because they're such absurd recipes. One's got a kilo of carrots in there. Oh, my God. That...

Vegan vanilla baked cheesecake looks sensational. How many times did it take you to get that right? Yeah, no, many, many, many times because no one's agreed on what vegan dairy is. And so trying to write a recipe around an ingredient that just, you know, is a shapeshifter is not an easy thing. But that's why I love the internet because someone, I think I might have posted that I was struggling to like write this recipe because it kept on splitting. And this guy, I'm trying to remember his name,

It will come to me. But he got in touch and said, I think I know what your problem is. It's like the ratios of this to this. And I was like, he's actually just made...

Like he's made my year, but the fact that we've created something now together and it's like this, like it's kind of a, it's almost like the state of affairs on vegan dairy and also the internet, because that could have only happened like now. Otherwise I would have failed and wouldn't be able to publish this recipe. I just think it's really great that we can get here because veganism is still relatively new in this country. And so I feel it's one of those ones where it's like, what are you grateful for? I'm like, ah.

Vegan dairy, this guy who helped me with this recipe.

You guys. I'm really pleased with it. That is amazing. Wow, Jessie. That is Ottolenghi levels of meringue. It's actually about to get. That's what Jessie thought. Wow. So it's brown sugar meringue with a mascarpone coffee cream cream. Cool. This is delicious. And cherries and grated chocolate. And I'm not a pudding girl and I think this, it was really easy. Go on. So shout out Ravni. That is unreal.

That is good. And that is like the perfect chewy meringue. I know. So good. She puts corn flour in hers. I have heard of that. Do you also use vinegar? No, she didn't. No. But this is banging. Mmm. So good. Can I ask you what your last supper would be? A starter, main, pud, drink of, I think I know the drink of choice. Is it going to be a Naked and Famous? It is.

You're going away to a desert island and you cannot have these delicious foods. Okay, so in 2013, I took a road trip around India with my then boyfriend, he's now my husband. And

And we ended up in Kerala in a place called Varkala. Oh, yeah. Have you? So we were invited to Kumari's house. Have you been to Kumari's house? I don't know. Damn, you need to go back to Kerala. You need to go back to Varkala. Her house is like paradise. Not only did she cook from scratch, but she grew everything from scratch. And I'm not just talking about vegetables. She made her own coconut oil. She had her own cow, like peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, everything.

And so she made us this beautiful meal with 13 different curries, like beetroot picciardi, black-eyed beans, cabbage leeks. Oh, my God.

like uphams, it's like fermented rice pancake. It was a sensational meal and like the best of the trip. And then after we'd finished, she fed the banana leaf that she served onto the cow. So it was like also a no waste situation. And so I adored that meal. And I've just, it's rarely been matched since. If I was, you know, if it was my last meal, my first call would be to Kamari to come and cook. It was just amazing.

Would she do the whole meal? She would. So I think typically with Indian foods, you don't really tend to have like starters, mains and puds. You just keep going. Yeah, exactly. You've just got 13 or 14 or 15 things in the centre of the table. So I think that's probably what I'd do. I'd have like a feed.

A feast. That sounds heavenly. And to finish? To finish, I think, well, I mean, this is quite incongruent, but if it's my last meal and we're just allowed to be whoever we are.

I would probably have a tiramisu, which sounds bonkers considering the meal that just preceded it. But it's one of the greatest desserts in the world. I mean, tiramisu is amazing, especially when it's made really well. And I had a sensational pistachio one recently. It was so good. Where from? So it was a girl called Rupa Badani who made it. And she ran a supper club in 56 St. James, which is in Walthamstow, like quite close to me.

And it was mind-blowingly good. Mind-blowing. And I'm kind of just trying to see if I can inch in and become friends with her so that she might give me the recipe. So imagine that, like coffee and pistachio cream. Oh. Oh. Mira, it's been such a pleasure hearing you speak and speak so bravely and beautifully about your struggles, but also about

a wonderful outcome which is dinner and thank you so much for being on and it's so your story's about food you make everything come alive the luxurious chickpeas I'm gonna bring that up again I love that I've absolutely loved it I love meeting you two I think what you're doing is amazing your food is sensational it was absolutely brilliant darling would you like me to put it in a doggy bag yes

Yeah, because I gave you a huge one. I'd like to be polite and say, no, don't go to the trouble, but it's just too good. Thank you so much to Mira Soda for coming on and being so honest and fabulous and generous. I mean, she came in, I have to say.

That's very generous by her. We haven't been getting as many prezzies from guests recently. Beautiful flowers. But what other guests have lacked in presents, she made up for in flowers. Flowers. Beautiful bottle of wine. Chablis and honey cake. Just a word for all the PRs that have their people coming on. Jessica, don't be grasping. No, I'm not. But that was very generous.

Yeah. And appreciate it. Yeah. And how thoughtful that we're recording this. Because she knew it was around Rosh Hashanah. And it's just so considerate. And it's the Claudia Roden recipe. Of the goat. The goat. Thank you, Mira. I loved hearing her talking about food and her upbringing and her relationship with ingredients and meals and... Very articulate, beautiful words. Oh my goodness, just like...

Yeah, and I'm going to finish the Chablis with you. Oh no, darling, I think I better not. Really? How's that fast going to be tomorrow? You're going to be dehydrated. I'm going to not drink tonight. Thank you to Mira Soda. Her book, Dinner, is out now. So if you ever... And as she said, she says she's a lazy cook. She wants to get the best flavour in the quickest time possible. That's my kind of gal. So if you're looking for a vegan, vegetarian recipe book...

This could be quite, well, I have to say, it's one of my favourite. I loved that. To be honest. Listening to her talk about food, I could have, I was annoyed that the cab was here, to be honest. She's also got a beautiful voice. It's very soothing. And you know you'd have a good night out with Mira. Yeah, naked and famous. I'm in. Thank you, Mira, and thank you to everyone that listened. Mira Stoddard's book, Dinner, is out now. Go and get it.

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