"Your Mama's Kitchen" transcript: Episode 16

Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 16: Samin Nosrat

Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.

Samin Nosrat Come on in. Come on in.

Michele: Today is an extraordinary day. I’m with the chef Samin Nosrat. She wrote one of the most acclaimed cookbooks of the past 50 years. And we are in her kitchen—a place she rarely invites anyone into. So this is a special treat for you, listeners. This is where Samin creates, tastes and perfects her famous recipes... And today Samin shares a recipe that’s especially important to her ...

Samin Nosrat Chicken soup.

Samin Nosrat Yeah. So.

Michele Norris And you walked in here with are those lemons?

Samin Nosrat Oh, yeah. We have a lemon tree.

Michele Norris Okay. Those are post-nuclear lemon. Yeah. I've never seen a lemon that big. The soup just hit some magical space where the aroma just filled up the kitchen. My senses are on overload.

Samin Nosrat There we go.

Michele Norris Oh, my goodness. The lemon. That is delicious, delicious.

Samin Nosrat Oh, good. My mom would be like, Need more lemon! It's not sour enough.

Michele Norris No, it's perfect.

Michele Norris: Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast where we explore how the food and culinary traditions of our youth shape who we become as adults. I'm Michele Norris.

We’re gonna learn more about the origins of that de-licious soup, and why it’s so important to Samin, in this episode.

But first, a word about her background. It was her breakout cookbook that first made Samin a household name. That book—Salt Fat Acid Heat—opened up the eyes of home cooks everywhere on how to elevate flavor by mastering those four elements.

A good cookbook is almost like reading a good memoir. You learn something about the author. And hidden inside Samin Nosrat’s pages, a very personal journey that started in her mama's kitchen. That lemony chicken soup you heard us tasting at the top of this episode. That tart, savory, and then tart once again, soup was inspired not just by her mother's Iranian home cooking, but also by a long hidden memory. A very special trip that Samin took with her mother back to her native Iran when she was just a kid. It wasn't until recently that Samin realized that trip changed her life and Samin's golden chicken soup and those giant lemons we squeezed in it are both a result of that epiphany and a love note to her spiritual home.

Now, Samin, you will hear, is a BIG personality with a waterfall of a laugh, and her excitement is contagious—she is a fast talker but ALSO a calming presence.

After we sampled that DELECTABLE soup in Samin’s test kitchen, we shuffled over to a cozier spot in her Oakland home. The place where she cooks herself much simpler meals throughout the day.

And when I saw THAT space I could not believe that—for a woman with so much culinary prowess.

Samin Nosrat Yeah. This kitchen is tiny...

Michele Norris: It IS tiny, it looks almost like a galley kitchen on a boat. Lots of wood, lots of hanging pots and pans and utensils. But like most of our kitchens, she even had an appliance that needed fixing.

Michele Norris I assume someone's going to get on that and fix that.

Samin Nosrat We're working on it.

Michele Norris We settled into her big oversized couch. Pot-bellied fireplace in the corner, shoes off, socks on, and a steady rain tapping at the window. With her dog Fava Bean cozied up at my feet, I learned more about Samin's story.

Michele Norris Tell us about your mama's kitchen.

Samin Nosrat Growing up, my mom's kitchen was absolutely the center of our home. It was always every day filled with so many good smells. My family's from Iran, and my mom is an extraordinary Persian cook, although she cooks all sorts of other stuff, too. And I didn't actually know until much, much later, actually, just a few years ago, that she was mostly self-taught. Once she came to the States because she wasn't really cooking when she was still in Iran, you know, there were people who did that for the family. And so I have two brothers. We had sort of our kitchen table in the middle of the kitchen, and we had our spots. Our assigned seats that were, you know, with our placemats and our things that we like to use. And so every morning we'd come out and have Persian breakfast, which is like flatbread and cheese and tea and jams. And it was just a warm place, you know, every day my mom asked us she had a she's all about fairness. And so she was all about rotating. Like, now that I write for people, I understand like a huge part of the tiresome part of cooking is deciding what to make. And so my mom put that on us. I wasn't that picky, but one of my brothers is really picky eater. And so she's like, You're going to be picky. You guys have to choose. And then like, if we chose, she would make that thing. So there were sort of these like rotating days of my brothers and I choosing. And I grew up in San Diego and it was a strange combination of full on immigrant family mixed with only shopping at the hippie natural grocery food store. So like there was a lot of like carob and psyllium hippie.

Michele Norris Natural food store? This is before Whole Foods?

Samin Nosrat Yeah. Oh, well, before that, Yeah. So we had to, like, cross town to go to the co-op or cross town to go because.

Michele Norris Or everything was in bins.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, and my mom, you know, I mean, I immediately understood it instinctively as soon as I started working as a cook and understood the importance of sourcing your ingredients. But, you know, my grandparents had a citrus orchard in the north of Iran on the Caspian Sea. And so the thing is, like all the immigrants everywhere always are like after that taste of home and like the highest compliment a thing could get was, this tastes like Iran. She was always after the taste of the produce that tasted the most like the stuff from home. And that was usually the organic stuff or the like, fresh from the farmer's market stuff. And it wasn't even necessarily some sort of like ideological choice that she was making. It was much more about taste.

Michele Norris She was looking for home.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, yeah. We spent a lot of our time as kids in the car driving all over Southern California to all of these stores.

Michele Norris To source food.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, to like Middle Eastern stores or, there were a lot of Mexican groceries. My dad would actually drive to Mexico to get citrus fruit that you can't find in the states, like sweet limes and sour oranges and things like that that we had back home that you can't just like readily find at the grocery store here. So that we could always have those tastes in our kitchen. And I remember my parents eating persimmons. I just remember as a kid thinking persimmons were like the grossest thing ever because I had a bite of that.

Michele Norris They do have a particular taste.

Samin Nosrat I must have eaten a super unripe chia persimmon, which is the kind that has to be really soft and almost like putting texture when it's ripe. I don't know if Iranians, all Iranians eat them when they're not ripe or just... My family gave me a piece before it was ripe, but if you eat it before it's ripe, it's very tannic and dries out your mouth. So as a kid, I was like, persimmons are disgusting. You know? And now I understand there's two different kinds. But there was just a lot of exposure to tastes and smells and ingredients that were absolutely not the things I encountered at school.

Michele Norris So tell me about that. What was it? First of all, what are your lunchbox look like? How old are you?

Samin Nosrat I'm 43, so I definitely had, like, a metal lunchbox.

Michele Norris I had a Flying Nun lunch.

Samin Nosrat Oh, that's amazing. I do know what the Flying Nun is, but I didn't watch that show. That was before my time.

Michele Norris With Sally Field.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, totally. Yeah, but.

Michele Norris I went to a little Catholic school with a Flying Nun lunch box.

Samin Nosrat That's pretty rad. I probably had Care Bears or something like that.

Michele Norris And they always get rusty.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, they would get rusty.

Michele Norris Funky on the inside.

Samin Nosrat Totally. And one thing we have that my mom would make that makes a good leftover lunch is these little sort of almost like little meatloaf patties called cutlet. So I would take those and then people would be like, ew, what's that? It looks like poop. You know, I remember being in kindergarten and coming home and being like, Oh, the kids said my lunch looks like poop. But then also I was like, Well, tastes good. Like, I also I didn't I wasn't that upset, you know, for that long because I was like, My lunch is good. So it was fine. But yeah, I definitely didn't have the standard. Eventually my mom did make us PBJ, but because shopped at the hippie store, it was like on the driest whole grain. With peanut butter. Stir the oil in.

Michele Norris Peanut butter.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like clinging to the roof of my mouth the whole day.

Michele Norris But the jam was probably jam.

Samin Nosrat Jam was actually jam. Yeah, totallyMy brothers and I talk about this a lot. Like, definitely her love language was cooking for us and taking care of us through food. And I don't think that was ever a life that she foresaw for herself, you know.

Michele Norris Because someone was cooking for her.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, because there's people coming for her. And there were a lot of unexpected sort of turns in her life that led her to where we ended up. And so I don't think she expected to end up sort of spending her days in the kitchen. But she did. And that was absolutely like an incredible gift. And I know it's something a lot of people don't have is somebody at home cooking for them every day of their whole childhood. So I definitely appreciate that.

Michele Norris: Knowing who Samin is today, it might come as a surprise that despite being gifted with so much home-cooked Persian food while she grew up, being a chef was not even on her mind when she left for college. She had big plans to head in a different direction until she tasted one meal that was so delicious that it blew her mind and changed the rest of her life.

Samin Nosrat I've wanted to be a writer since. Well, first I was like Iranian. All Iranian kids are like, You got to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer. So most of my childhood I was like, I'm going to be a doctor-lawyer.

Michele Norris A doctor-lawyer—whoa!

Samin Nosrat So I knew even though I, I don't know… And a lot of like, initials after your name. But then I had this amazing English teacher in 11th grade and I was like, I don't actually want to do any of those things. I want to be a writer. Like I love writing, which was a huge disappointment to my family. And so I came to school in Berkeley and I was an English major and I wanted to write and I'm the oldest kid in an immigrant family. And like my dad was not super present in my academic life and my mom was busy sort of raising three kids. And so I definitely had to figure out everything on my own, like how to take the PSAT and the SAT and the AP tests and all that stuff and get myself to college. And I was sort of watching all my friends do that. And I did. I was always like the best student. And I got myself to school and I got a scholarship in the whole thing. But then I was like in college as an English major, and I was like, Then what do you do? You know what I mean? Like, I guess I'm just going to go to more school. I guess I'll just keep going and become a professor.

But then my main sort of professor mentor was like, Oh no. He wouldn't write me a recommendation for a PhD. He was like, No, you love writing too much. You care about it too deeply. Academia will squash your soul. So he was like, This is not for you. Don't get a PhD. So I was like, truly didn't know what to do. I thought maybe I would get an MFA in poetry. So I applied to that and I got accepted. But by then I had had this sort of life-changing meal and in my family we did not eat in fancy restaurants. That was not a place where we spent money. We like a round table pizza on Wednesdays, and when we went out for a celebration, it was to a Persian restaurant. Usually we'd drive to Orange County and have like chelow kebab up. I was not eating in any fancy white tablecloth places. Like I didn't even know that that existed. What if that was? So there's a restaurant in Berkeley called Chez Panisse, which was founded in 1971 by Alice Waters. And so when I came to Berkeley, my freshman orientation, at some point somebody was like, Oh, and there's this fancy restaurant in town. It's a place your parents should take you called Chez Panisse, and I was like, not my parents. So I was like white people's parents. And so it kind of like went in one ear, out the other. And then my sophomore year, I had this boyfriend and we really bonded over eating like, our love of food. And he had always wanted to go to Chez Panisse. So we saved our money for eight months. We saved $200 so we could go there. So we went there and it was this very special meal, very amazing. It was really.

Michele Norris What was special about it?

Samin Nosrat You know, the building itself is an old home, and so you really feel that still, I think, when you go in.

Michele Norris It's actually really small. Very cozy

Samin Nosrat Yeah. I mean, for me as a 19 year old, it felt incredibly fancy, but I think it also just felt cozy. There's like copper light fixtures, all the light is really warm and it's a fixed menu. So it's kind of like you're eating at someone's house and you're getting what they're serving. And we had a friend who was a busser there, so they had told them that we'd saved our money for so long, they thought it was really charming. So they were so nice to us. And I think they were doting on us a little bit extra. And also, I think it was very funny that these two young people, we were out of place in this room.

Michele Norris Do you remember what you ate?

Samin Nosrat I think it was like frisée au lardon, which is a classic sort of French bistro salad, and it maybe had chanterelle mushrooms in it. So it's a frisée, it's like a white curly endive, and it had little pieces of bacon or pancetta and chanterelle mushrooms. And then I remember being really nervous because the second course was halibut, which is just like a simple flaky whitefish. I think it was in a broth. But I was so sheltered, I had really only ever had salmon, trout, and shrimp. I really ate very little seafood. So I was like kind of nervous. I was like, Am I going to like this? So I had it and I totally liked the halibut. The main course was, I think quail, it was a little bird. And then the dessert was chocolate soufflé. And I had never had soufflé before. So when the server brought it, she was like, Oh, have you ever had souffle before? And I said, No. She said, Would you like me to show you how to eat it? And I was like, okay. So she said, You poke a hole in it with your spoon and you pour this sauce in so that every bite has sauce. And it was like a raspberry sauce. So I did that. And I took a bite and she said, How is it? I was like, Oh, it's really good. But you know what would make it even better? She was like, What? I was like, Oh, glass of cold milk. Because I was like, It's this warm, chocolaty thing, you know what I mean? Like, warm brownie, cold milk. And she was just like, What? Like. She was like, you want milk?

Samin Nosrat I was like, Yeah. And I mean, I was so innocent, I didn't know. So she brought me milk, and then she brought us each like a little sip of dessert wine to show us the refined accompaniment.

Michele Norris What most people would want with their souffle.

Samin Nosrat And later, only later did I realize, this was, like, totally uncouth. But it was just this sort of very warm, loving experience. And I think for me, what stayed with me much more than any of the food was nice, but like, it wasn't by any means, like the most delicious food I'd ever had. I just never had felt like, Oh, everything is so thought through and taken care of. If we ran out of butter, the new butter appeared. If we ran out of water, new water. Like, every detail was so thoughtful and loving, and I always worked through college. So we had friends who were bussers there. So I applied to be a busser there. And so I wrote a letter and I was like, Dear Ms. Waters, I had the most magical dinner.

Michele Norris I'm the one who asked for milk.

Samin Nosrat I didn't actually say that in the thing. And then I brought my resume and they were like, Oh, you have to bring that to the floor manager. So then they like brought me over to the former Andrew. When she opened the door, it was the souffle lady. And so she was like, Oh you, and I was like, Oh, you. She hired me. I started the next day and I bused tables for a year. But pretty immediately I was so curious about the kitchen. And that sort of coincided with my senior year of college when I'm like, Wait a minute, I'm an English major. Like, What am I going to do? Like, all my friends were graduating, becoming consultants. I didn't even know what that I still couldn't tell you what a consultant does. And like, I would go to a job fair and I was like, I don't even have clothes from Ann Taylor. Like I didn't have any, you know, just in my heart, I was like, I'll die if I have to sit in a cubicle. And then I would go bus tables and walk through this kitchen. And it smelled so good. And it all the food we got to taste was so delicious. These people just were so passionate about what they did. And I was like, What if I did this? It wasn't that I had some lifelong dream to be a cook. It was just that I had no idea what else to do. And this was this kind of amazing, inspiring, beautiful thing right before me.

Michele Norris So you went to Berkeley thinking that you were going to be, for a time, a lawyer-doctor and then a writer. But now you are an author, a teacher, and you're a chef. When and how did you make that leap?

Samin Nosrat I asked a lot of questions. I volunteered for a long time. I asked what it would take for me to get an internship, and they were like, Give me a list of 30 books. And they're like, Go read all these books and cook from them. You know? I think they also probably were like, She'll never do this.

Michele Norris It sounds like you were obsessive, though.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, I am.

Michele Norris I read somewhere and let me get this right. Did you did you miss your college graduation because you took a shift?

Samin Nosrat Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Norris What? What's the story? And, how did your parents deal with it? I mean, I have so many questions. How do you not go to your college graduation?

Samin Nosrat I've never been like a super school spirit person. And, you know, like, I think I've kind of laid out how my family's a little bit disconnected. And so it wasn't going to be everything where, like, my whole family came to town and took me out to dinner and celebrated this achievement. Anyway, to me, it just felt expected that I had to graduate. I didn't feel like it was something that I deserved acclaim for. And so then I went to work. And then later that summer and summer was the 40th birthday of Chez Panisse, and it was this really beautiful party on the campus. We're cooking like 20 lambs and a huge part of blueberries. And it was right in front of the English building. In my mind, I was like, This is my graduation, You know? I just was like, This is where I belong. So it was.

Michele Norris That's beautiful.

Samin Nosrat It was okay. It wasn't a sad thing for me at all. It's funny, I have this like two parts of me, and one of them is I feel like I've just been invisible my whole life and like, not ever getting credit for the things I do. But then the minute I become a visible person, I'm like, Stop looking at me, you know? So like, I wouldn't have I think I would have been deeply uncomfortable with everybody staring at me for my like, that gives me it's not what I want. I'd want it. Like, I just would prefer people to see me for who I am.

Michele Norris: Immediately after graduation, Samin’s career took off. She volunteered in the kitchen at Chez Panisse, the famous restaurant run by Alice Waters. The chef and author who's credited with creating America's farm-to-table movement that led to an internship and a job. Then the renowned Tuscan chef and writer Benedetta Vitali showed up for a book signing. Samin begged the chef to let her apprentice with her in Florence. And it must have been a pretty good speech because Benedetta agreed. After two years in Italy, Samin returned to California and went back to Chez Panisse to work for her mentor.

She cooked and cooked. She began incorporating writing into her practice and became the Samin we know today. She's an American cook, strongly influenced by French and Italian culinary traditions. But recently, a long-forgotten memory of a special trip Samin took with her mother resurfaced in her thoughts and gave Samin a new understanding of what some of her most important influences might have been all along.

Samin Nosrat So I've always in my heart been like, Wow, my aesthetic education really came from Chez Panisse, and it really came from my time in Italy, which was at this very formative age, learning how to love flowers and gardens and textiles and just surround myself with artists and makers. That was I felt like these values that I learned in my early twenties. And recently I had this memory of when I was 14, I went to Iran with my mom. We went and visited one of her best friends and who's since passed away. And she lived in a neighborhood in Tehran. So this neighborhood's kind of like in the foothills of the mountains. And it's a very old and beautiful neighborhood and the homes are really old. And we went there to visit her friend who was one of her two best friends. And she had these two daughters. I was 14. The daughters were maybe six and eight. And we got there and I'd only ever heard of these people, you know, I'd never met them. And we got there and we get out of the car and these girls start just running me around and showing me around the property. And there's just trees everywhere. There's all these fruit trees everywhere and apricot trees and almond trees. And it was probably May, June, July. And so a treasured snack in Iran is to eat almonds before they're fully ripe. You pluck them in their green almond. So what becomes the shell is still kind of like a green fuzzy skin and you can bite into it. And the whole thing's crunchy and you sprinkle salt. So they showed me how to pluck those from the tree and eat them. They're like, Oh, these are apricot trees, these are this. And I was like, That was my probably my first time in or I mean, I grew up in San Diego, so I was a lot in citrus orchards, but that was my first time in a stone fruit orchard. And they had this pool, this beautiful pool that was like handmade, hand-dug. And they would drain it every day and refill it with mountain water, fresh mountain water because they were at the foothills of the mountain. And it was the coldest stream water, but so refreshing. It was this huge, dark, beautiful pool. And the house was this style of house, it was like a two-story home that was built in four sides around a central atrium. And a lot of the outward facing walls would just be sort of like indoor/outdoor spaces with old Persian carpets and there's just ceramics everywhere. And also their rooms were filled with NSYNC posters, you know, I mean, they're still girls. And I think we spent the night there, and I remember they were showing me after running around all day on the farm, they're like, oh, like we go to the bathtub and we wash our feet. And I'm like, You wash your feet. They're like, You don't wash your feet? You know?

And it was such a sweet thing. But their home was just so filled with all these beautiful textures and colors and handmade things. And their mom was an artist, and there was this little boy who lived nearby, and he came over and his name was Dastan. And in Farsi, I'd never heard anyone with that name because that word just means story. And I remember thinking about that for a long time and years later, realizing like, Oh, they were hippies. That's a hippie name to name your kid a word. You know, they were artists, they were creative people.

And I've had no access to that my whole life because I've been so confined to just a very limited portion of our people and a very limited picture of who we are and what we have in the world and also being pelted by what everyone else is pelted by. That Iranians are terrorists and whatever. Trying to defend myself from that, you know. And so here I am thinking everything that's good about me comes from Alice Waters and Italy and Europe and white people. But actually, when I was 14, this magical thing happened for me. And these people who are so special that it's stayed with me for 30 years. And what else could there have been? What else? Who else is there like that? So then I maniacally started trying to find that neighborhood on Google Maps. I have one Persian friend who's an artist who lives here who I called and I was like describing this home to her and she was like, Oh, that's where my grandparents lived. And she said, You know Samin? When I met you ten years ago, you were always like, I don't trust Iranians. I don't like being near them. They're so hard on me. And I always was really sad about that because there's so much beauty in our culture. And she's like, Now, I've lived here long enough to understand your skepticism, but I always wished you could see, you know? And I'm like, No, I get it.

So I have a lot of sadness about the thing that I never got to see. And also probably that's been wiped away from our country. I don't know. I'm still figuring out what my relationship to Iran is via cooking and what my way there will be through that. But I do think like there is something in me, for lack of a better phrase, this is so cheesy because I feel so lost, I'm always looking for that wherever I go. Like I feel very much like citizen of the world, you know, when you're like, my mama’s kitchen, I'm like, well, what about Gary's mom's kitchen? What about so-and-so's mom's kitchen? Like, I could tell you about all these people. You know, I can tell you about my Korean mom's kitchen or my Indian mom's friend's kitchen, because I'm always just like, Tell me about your life. Tell me about your life. Tell me about your life. Because I've had so little access to my own past.

Michele Norris Did that memory come back to you recently?

Samin Nosrat This summer? Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Norris Memories visit us sometimes when we need them.

Samin Nosrat Yeah.

Michele Norris And clearly, this was something that I don't want to say. It filled a hole.

Samin Nosrat But yeah, it was really moving. It was really moving.

Michele Norris: Remember that chicken soup I got to savor at the beginning of this episode? Let's get back to that...

Michele Norris Samin, do you think your mother knew that there was something that would be missing in your life because they had fled their country and was food away, that she tried to give that back to you?

Samin Nosrat Absolutely. I think food was the main way she tried to give it back to us. And it worked. It really worked. I would say it's my main way that I feel familiar with my culture. It's the main way that I feel a connection to my culture. Certainly my palate is very, very Iranian. Iranians have a very acidic palate. And I would --

Michele Norris Say more about that.

Samin Nosrat Iranians don't really love sweet things, although I love sweet things, but they just want everything more sour. Like more sour, more lemon, more lemon. Squeeze of lemon, squeeze of lime. Squeeze a lime, more vinegar. Put a pickle on it, put yogurt on it. And I have an incredibly acidic palate like I always want more lemon. That's just I grew up. My mom would sit in a lemon tree and snack on lemons as a kid.

Michele Norris My face puckered when I heard you say that.

Samin Nosrat A snack that we have is called lavashak, which lavash bread is like thin bread. So lavashak is kind of named for that. It's fruit leather because it looks like lavash bread. The most traditional one is made with really sour plums. It has almost no sugar in it. And so it's just the most sour. It's kind of a treat to get that thing where your cheeks are so….

Michele Norris In the back

Samin Nosrat You know where your cheek…

Michele Norris In the back of your throat.

Samin Nosrat You're like, ow, ow you're cramping!

Michele Norris You don't know if you want it to go down into your throat!

Samin Nosrat Yeah. And so people are like, I just want the more sour treats, you know, sour cherries. We were like, Screw regular cherries. I want sour cherries.

Michele Norris So it's amazing to hear you talk about this because, of course, many of us know you through your work on Netflix. But also we were in many cases, myself included, first introduced to you through your cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat. So you were basically helping people understand...

Samin Nosrat Acid. Yeah. And that's definitely a big part of my palate. Like I would say, the acidity and like my relationship to acidity is for sure my Iranianness like, 100%. And that was not something I had to be taught by cooks.

Michele Norris So we want to gift our listeners with a recipe.

Samin Nosrat Okay.

Michele Norris And particularly when we talk to someone like you. So when you think about your mom's kitchen and the throughline from her world to yours, is there a recipe you would want us to share with our listeners?

Samin Nosrat Absolutely. I definitely do. And actually when I got this question, I was like, What? Perfect timing, because I actually have something that I can heat up for you. Last January, February, I started making chicken soup a lot. And this is one of those things where I had in my head that because I had learned in the French, Italian style way of cooking, right, that you have to make your very rich stock and that's the base for your chicken soup and all of this stuff. And then anytime I would try to make, say, a matzo ball soup and I did it that way, it never tasted right. It always tasted too cloying and I couldn't figure out why. So then I went down this matzo ball soup rabbit hole sometime in the early pandemic, I think. And I started reading a lot of Jewish mom blogs, you know, and some matzo ball soup experts. I realized, oh, wait a minute. They don't start with a rich chicken stock. They start with a chicken and water in a pot. And they only cook it for 90 minutes and it's a much lighter, cleaner-tasting broth. So I started making a lot of chicken in that kind of soup, which is a much easier way to make soup, honestly, than to spend all day making stock and then make your soup. So then I was like, Well, if I were going to make this, what would it be? And so then I started putting other things in the pot, and somehow I don't know how I got there, but it was just this thing where I started just putting things in the pot and it was also gray, rainy. It was kind of a day like this, cold and rainy. And so I put some ginger and some turmeric and a whole bunch of saffron and cardamom, and I halved a lemon and put a lemon in there. And then I was started eating it and I was like, Is this a weird, like nouveau Goop recipe? Or you know, whenever I put turmeric in something, I'm like, am I just being like a white lady putting turmeric in things, or is there a reason for it to be here? And then I was like, Wait a minute, my mom always made, like I actually hated chicken soup when I was little because my mom put so much lemon in it, back to the acidic mouth. She would make this kind of barley and chicken soup and then just squeeze so much LEMON. And it probably to give us the vitamin C to kill whatever was sick.

But I was like, This is painful to eat. I don't want to eat it, you know? And there was always saffron and turmeric in there. And so there was a thing where I was like, wait a minute, actually in a weird way, I've circled back to my childhood through this strange journey. And my mom certainly would never have spent an entire day making a French stock. Like my mom would put chicken in water and make chicken, but she calls it like a broth, basically, she would just make a broth and that would be the base of her soup. So there was this way where I was like, This is my version of my mom's chicken soup. So that's what I have.

Michele Norris That sounds delicious, do you put as much lemon as your mom did?

Samin Nosrat I put—and then when I sit down, I squeeze more lemon into it, and then I have some cardamom ghee. I like to sizzle and put that in there.

Michele Norris Cardamom ghee?

Samin Nosrat Yeah, it's so good. And then, I don't have rice right now, but it's nice with a little rice or I'm working on like a crazy spiced matzo ball, but a matzo ball in there with all the spices. That's good too.

Michele Norris Oh, how delicious.

Samin Nosrat Yeah.

Michele Norris Samin, I have loved talking to you.

Samin Nosrat Thank you so much.

Michele Norris I could, I could spend all day here.

Samin Nosrat Oh please, you’re invited.

Michele Norris And Fava Bean just chilled out right here.

Samin Nosrat Beanie is like, Beanie could sleep all day. Beanie is just like, Don't ever make me get up.

Michele Norris It's a good life.

Samin Nosrat Yeah, she has a good life.

Michele Norris And this has been a great conversation.

Samin Nosrat Thank you so much.

Michele Norris I love talking to you.

Samin Nosrat Me too.

Michele Norris: Sometimes it takes years for us to cherish the things in our lives that are most sacred. Sometimes those things have been inside us all along. Samin’s path to finding that sacred part of her center, her soul, was circuitous, and listening to her unlock that journey was a privilege. And the byproduct of that journey, that delicious, tart, savory golden soup that we tasted with her is something you can bring to life in your own home. Check out my Instagram to find her special recipe so you can slurp some of it up in your own kitchen with extra lemon. Of course.

My dad used to have this saying. He'd say that really good food, the stuff that made him think about his mama's kitchen back in Alabama, tasted like a letter from home. As a kid, I used to think that that saying was kind of weird. As a teenager, I'd roll my eyes because he said it all the time. As an adult who would give almost anything to have another meal with him, I totally get it. Sometimes food does feel like a letter from home. Special delivery. Food for the soul.

Thanks so much for joining me today on Your Mama's Kitchen. I'm Michele Norris. Come back next week.

Michele Norris When you open the cabinet there's like a wall of aroma just…

Samin Nosrat Oh, there's so many spices, all the spices.

Michele Norris It's very well organized.

Samin Nosrat I have a good assistant. Not me!

Michele Norris I appreciate your honesty in there.

CREDITS: This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original, produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior producer Natalie Rinn, producer Sonia Htoon, and associate producer Angel Carreras. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eappen and Roy Baum. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camilla Thur de Koos. Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman and me, Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Nick D'Angelo and Anne Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media. Our talent booker is Angela Peluso and special thanks this week to Threshold Studios. Chief content officer for Audible is Rachel Giazza. And that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Make sure and come back to see what we're serving up next week.

Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound Recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC.