The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters · American Public Media

805: Amrikan with Khushbu Shah and Koreaworld with Matt Rodbard and Deuki Hong

·50 min·4 clips

Khushbu Shah uses peanut butter in cilantro mint chutney for a rich, creamy twist on traditional Indian flavors.

Francis Lam opens the episode by noting his love for Korean and Indian food and introduces two books that show unfamiliar sides of each cuisine. Khushboo Shah joins him first, arriving to make chili cheese toast and discuss Amrikan. She opens by walking through four pantry items that headline the book: peanut butter used in place of roasted peanuts in Gujarati chutney because it delivers the same richness without requiring whole nuts on hand; Bisquick as the shortcut ingredient discovered by Indian-American aunties for making gulab jamun, bypassing the hours-long process of reducing milk to khoya; dinner rolls as a substitute for the Portuguese-influenced pav in pav bhaji street food; and ketchup used both as a condiment and as a key ingredient in Indo-Chinese sauces like cauliflower Manchurian. Shah explains that the Indian-American pantry reflects what was available at U.S. grocery stores when the first wave of immigrants arrived in the 1970s and 1980s before the internet and before Indian cookbooks were widely available, so cooks traded knowledge across regional lines they would never have crossed in India. Her Gujarati mother became a master of South Indian dosa despite never having grown up making it, sharing her trick of fermenting dosa batter in the oven with only the oven light on for warmth. In the kitchen together, Shah demonstrates chili cheese toast, a highly adaptable snack she describes as an ideal introduction to Indian flavors for anyone unfamiliar with the cuisine, pairing well with chai and ready in minutes. The episode then transitions to the Korea World portion, where authors Dookie Hong and Matt Rodbard discuss the book's range from ancient Buddhist temple cooking to the way Korean BBQ in America has absorbed influences from Southern American smokehouse traditions.

As heard by us

Two cookbooks, two cuisines, and a conversation that keeps finding history in the details of flavor.

Francis Lam frames this episode around two cookbooks, one on Indian food and one on Korean food, and the conversation does the useful work of showing how much history can sit inside a recipe.

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Two cookbooks that open up Korean and Indian cooking.

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