Food & Drink mini-series: Andy Baraghani on finding your home cooking style

This is an audio transcript of the FT Weekend podcast episode: Food stuff & Consume mini-collection: Andy Baraghani on locating your home cooking design

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hi FT Weekend listeners, this is Lilah. I’m here to welcome you to some summer-bonus content. For 4 weeks, we will be publishing distinctive Foods & Drinks-themed mini-episodes, mid-week every Wednesday. For each one, I’m approaching a unique skilled that I assume is seriously good at anything and asking them to instruct us about that matter. We’ll communicate wine developments with a single of the world’s most influential wine critics, Jancis Robinson. We’ll converse flavor and flavour with the chef of a single of my favorite restaurants in New York, Ayesha Nurdjaja. And now, on this quite very first episode of the series, I’m joined by Andy Baraghani. Andy is a chef and food author. He’s worked in kitchens from Chez Panisse to Estela, and he put in a long time creating recipes and producing viral cooking videos for Bon Appetit. This year, Andy came out with a cookbook that I have been leaning on heavily. It’s known as The Cook You Want To Be. And I have experienced him on to study specifically how we can construct all of our activities into a private house-cooking design and style. It’s a possibility to imagine about what we’re picking out to prepare dinner and what can make individuals dishes or designs of cooking exclusively come to feel like ours. Okay. This is FT Weekend, the podcast special edition. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. Here’s Andy. Hello, Andy. Welcome to the demonstrate.

Andy Baraghani
Hi, Lilah. Thank you for possessing me.

Lilah Raptopoulos
1 of the things that I definitely favored about your movies and that I like about your cookbook is that it’s extremely straightforward and it is sweet and it type of makes me truly feel like my kitchen can be a minimal chaotic and, like, I can rely on myself to improvise on the location and that I’ll be okay. And then I’m finding out, like, not just like how to follow this listing of elements and the order in which I use them, but how to just do it myself with no worrying. (Andy laughs) So I’m curious, like, you know, what guidance do you have for folks who are trying to locate their voice as a property prepare dinner?

Andy Baraghani
Cooking is a small-risk investment decision, you know, it’s . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s correct, yeah.

Andy Baraghani
It’s not a thing that . . . Generally it won’t price a ton of dollars. It is okay if it doesn’t go right. For the reason that ideally, and what I genuinely like to promise individuals, is that even if anything does not go ideal, you will most likely understand some thing. And it’s a lesson to have absorbed. And so that, you know, you will not sort of do that ever once more and you will attempt a little something and do it a different way. So which is 1 matter. I also come across that you have to be open and curious and challenge oneself. I truly do imply that this applies the two in and out of the kitchen. What ever kind of craft it is, I believe, when I assume about my individual lifetime and about the type of crucial times and classes that I have acquired, it is when I have been the most variety of not comfortable or susceptible.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So what’s an example of doing anything unpleasant in the food stuff realm?

Andy Baraghani
I would say a person of the much easier issues is if you are at a market place, no matter whether it is a piece, a develop item or a spice, I would, if it is in your price range, I would purchase it and I would try out it, and I would check out it on its possess. Just if it’s a precise kind of citrus, I would, you know, choose a section and try out it and see what it preferences. Is it sweet? Is it tart? Exactly where does it slide under that vary? Is this zest a tiny bit bitter or is it extra floral and sweet? Try applying the zest in the salad, use the juice and lessen it down with a little little bit of butter and see what that preferences like. But perform with it. Experiment.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What would be like a very simple way to experiment?

Andy Baraghani
You can train a residence prepare dinner about a new component. It’s difficult to inform a residence cook to educate them about a new component and then give them this seriously technical recipe. So the initially section is like, challenge oneself to try a new ingredient. Perform all around with that. The next part is see if you would test a strategy you have by no means done, if you have at any time type of made a aioli prior to. If you’ve finished that, just emulsifying, you know, oil with egg yolk and earning do-it-yourself aioli. And then you have this base and you can make it garlicky by introducing a bit of garlic or herby by adding some chopped contemporary herbs, a small bit of lemon juice. People two factors are incredibly essential . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Uh-huh.

Andy Baraghani
In purchase to . . . knowing what variety of cook dinner you want to be, what your cooking design is, what flavours you’re drawn to. And the goal is not for it to often be suitable. You may possibly not like every single procedure and want to utilize it to your kitchen. You may possibly not like every component that you obtain or all of the flavour combos, but by type of knowing what you’re drawn to and what you’re not drawn to, that’ll give you a superior definition of what your cooking type is.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Andy, I’d adore to hear how you very first acquired intrigued in food. Like, what are your earliest recollections of food stuff and of cooking?

Andy Baraghani
Which is a massive question from the begin . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter)

Andy Baraghani
The foods that I was introduced to at an early age were the foods that my mother and father brought and traditions they introduced from their indigenous home state of Iran. They arrived to the US in the late 70s, just just before the Iranian revolution. And so from my earliest memories genuinely are having a large amount of people in excess of at my parents’ home. They had been the form of initial ones to go away Iran and appear to the US and so there was normally an supplemental an individual to feed, no matter if it was an uncle or aunt or cousins, grandparents. So a lot of all those dishes are Iranian from my earliest memories.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I’m curious type of . . . what your household was cooking expanding up and what you took from that into your design and style?

Andy Baraghani
Very well, I consider the food items is . . . (exhales) acidic and hefty on herbs and a deep really like for dairy in the variety of yoghurts. And it is really a quite fragile cuisine. It’s not closely spiced. There’s no really fiery heat to the flavours. You’ll see a small bit of heat in the southern region of Iran. They appreciate rice and it’s never ever a aspect dish. It is normally the major event. Several different varieties of gorgeous flatbreads as the highly-seasonal stews manufactured up of fruits and meats and herbs and a large amount of yoghurt sauces that never just have yoghurt and cucumber but in some cases we’ll have walnuts and pistachios, raisins, sizzled mint, environmentally friendly garlic. It’s a actually, truly stunning cuisine that . . . part of my career as as a author and recipe developer is genuinely variety of bring that food stuff to people’s dwelling.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I learned your work — deep in the pandemic essentially — I had all of these herbs going bad and I knew about kuku sabzi, a Persian dish, Iranian dish from rising up. And I found your Bon Appetit video on YouTube. It is like my favorite thing I created in the pandemic and I however make it all the time. I’m curious about your experience placing that movie out. You wrote a piece a couple of several years in the past about how cooking assisted you be open about your ethnicity and that rising up you needed to hide your Iranian identity. Can you convey to me about that and how that transformed?

Andy Baraghani
So kuku is a form of a genre of egg-based dishes in Iranian delicacies, and sabzi signifies greens. I necessarily mean, that was unquestionably 1 of the more challenging parts of crafting. When I did that video, it was a person of, in fact, the initial films I at any time did for Bon Application. And I don’t forget pitching the movie and it was variety of had a lukewarm response of even currently being embraced. I think we have to keep in mind, like, it was a different time and . . . but I just had this feeling that some thing that I grew up was so straightforward to make and men and women ended up likely to be capable to discover about this dish, make it, study about this dish from a pretty special delicacies that, from a tradition that has not generally been highlighted in the most good light-weight in this country. I inevitably shot that video and it took off. And so that dish just followed me quite a great deal during my existence. And the essay that you stated about talking about my ethnicity, I should really say that I have cherished Iranian foods through my life, but I hardly ever experienced a motivation to find out that food items and to prepare dinner that foods. That was the foodstuff that I grew up with. That was my family’s food items. But that was not my cooking design and style. But it kind of did adjust when I had to do some study and work with my mom on a story. And we ended up sort of showcasing, I really do not know, probably eight or 9 of my mother’s dishes. And I definitely fell in appreciate with that foodstuff again. And so I started out incorporating people methods and flavours of Iranian foods into my possess cooking fashion.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Alright. Andy, I would love to do a brief speed spherical with you with the time we have still left. Are you prepared?

Andy Baraghani
Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
All right. What is the most underappreciated herb?

Andy Baraghani
Fresh bay leaves.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Bay leaves?

Andy Baraghani
Yeah. Refreshing bay leaves are variety of amazing. I consider new mint is underused. I believe it’s seemed at it as like a garnish or a small goes a long way, but I assume it is so delicious in pastas or torn in salads or pounded to make like a tiny little bit of a minty basil pesto. I feel it’s so scrumptious.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Use far more than you assume?

Andy Baraghani
Use far more than you feel, constantly.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, normally. Ok, superior. Favorite summer salad?

Andy Baraghani
It is a dish that I preserve earning from my e-book, actually. And it’s called . . . the recipe name is juicy tomatoes with Italian chilli crisp, and you just just take good tomatoes, period with salt, splash them with vinegar — I like sherry vinegar — and then you make this spicy oil produced with added-virgin olive oil, sliced garlic, anchovies, and you prepare dinner right until the garlic is crispy, and then you include chilli flakes and fennel seeds, and then you pour this hot, garlicky, spicy, fatty oil on the vinegar tomatoes and sprinkle it with basil or parsley. And it is quite delicious.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What is a spice that you would propose people experiment with? It doesn’t have to be the most beneficial spice, but just like an appealing just one to engage in with.

Andy Baraghani
I use a large amount of turmeric, so that is something that I consider persons should really be using. Cooking in oil or butter or in and over yoghurt as a turmeric dip. Butter and tossing that with rice, sprinkling more than proteins, fish, meat, and place it on the grill or searing it — I adore it so significantly. I also imagine, and this is a really easy just one that a great deal of us have: total black peppercorns. I necessarily mean, it provides texture if it’s coarse. I assume cooking it in butter and oil and incorporating pasta, rice, it provides like a good lingering heat, mild heat that I genuinely, truly really like. Black peppercorns are some thing that I use a good deal of.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Andy, this is a pleasure. Thanks so considerably for becoming on the demonstrate.

Andy Baraghani
Thank you for having me.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That is our first of four mini-episodes on Foodstuff & Drink. You can verify back up coming Wednesday for the second. I am speaking with Ayesha Nurdjaja, chef of Shuka and Shukette, about how to flavour and how to style. I have place one-way links to all the things that Andy and I talked about in this episode in the demonstrate notes. This exhibit was made by Molly Nugent, executive generated by Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley, and engineered by Breen Turner with initial audio by Metaphor Music. Distinctive many thanks to Alastair Mackie.

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