Padma Lakshmi Was An Ice Cream Mule (Reheat)

Serious XM podcasts. [MUSIC]

“Hey everyone, Dan here with another Reheat for you.”

And look, obviously as part of my job, I get to eat a lot of good food. It is one of the perks. But it's very rare actually that a guest brings me food in the studio. That has only happened a handful of times. At least Whitney showed up with a bunch of dips.

I'm having trouble remembering another one other than the one that you're about to hear, which is my conversation from 2016 with Padma Lakshmi. We started chatting and pretty soon I was eating tamarind rice from her fridge. And as still here, that's not the only food that it turns out we both love. Padma, of course, you know, is a cookbook author, food writer, former top chef host.

We talk about everything from her memories of her grandmother's kitchen to a Justin to life in the U.S. after moving to New York from India at age four. And a quick update on Padma, she left top chef back in 2023. And she's now hosting a new reality cooking competition show called America's culinary cup. It's on CBS, New episodes, air Wednesday nights.

And of course, as always, if there's a sportful episode, you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat.

We take requests, send me an email or voice memo to [email protected]. Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear and why. Thanks so much and enjoy. I've had to learn how to eat on television and not soil my garments. This is Padma Lakshmi, cookbook author, writer, and host of the TV show Top Chef.

After 10 years hosting that show, she's learned how to eat on camera.

“I think you just want to make sure that you open your mouth wide enough.”

So that you don't, you know, I mean, it's harder for me than it is for you, say. I mean, you have a beard which provides its own obstacles, but, you know, when you have lipstick and stuff, I try not to wear it to bright of lipstick so that, you know, I'm always going like this trying to wipe it off the wine glass or something. But I think it's just to take a small bite and eat slowly so you can really absorb the experience. Because Top Chef is unlike other competition shows on TV, like on the voice, you can hear them sing for yourself or on, you know.

So you think you can dance, you can see them dancing. But Top Chef, you're really relying on the judges on, on Gail and Tom and Hugh and I, whoever the fourth chair is, to describe the experience with you and carry you with us. Right.

That's very interesting because I never really thought of it that way, but it makes total sense.

Because so much of watching any of those shows is, you know, you pick your favorite and you root for the person. You root for the contestant that you decided to root for. And as those judgments are because you like so and so is backstory better. But sometimes the judgment is, I think that person was the best dancer. That's the, that's the deserve to win.

And often we want you to really like or dislike somebody because that means you're invested in the show. From my point of view, I'm the host of the show. I don't know their backstory. And I don't want to. There's a reason why Tom and I are not involved in the casting because we don't want to have someone we're rooting for.

Right. You know, halfway through the season, you know, I, I may root for somebody, but it's not even, some, often it's not even the guy who's the best. It's that guy who can't get out of his own way and you know is better than this or is making silly mistakes. I spend more time with these chefs than anybody else does.

I see them the first morning they enter the kitchen. They are like shell shocked children. They've had their phones taken away from them. They don't get newspapers. They are sequestered like a jury, you know.

And so I try to calm them down and, you know, I'm a daily presence in their lives. It's hard not to empathize. Today on this pork full, I sit down with Padma Lakshmi. She'll talk about adjusting to life in the US after moving here from India when she was four. You know, little kids in my class who, you know, we're coming in with these neat little

crust cut off sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly or baloney. We're really cool. Like, what is that?

“Should discuss her transition from modeling to the food world?”

My career in modeling honed my skill as a food writer. Because I was the one thing that any season chef will tell you is travel. And she'll share her leftover rice with me. It came from my fridge, but it was made this morning. That's all coming up.

Stick around. From WNYC Studios, this is this pork full. It's not for food. It's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman.

Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Padma Lakshmi was born in India when she was four. Her parents got divorced and she moved with her mom to New York. She went back to India every summer, though.

So she was always sort of straddling, east and west.

She talked a lot about that experience in her memoir. Love, loss, and what we ate, which came out this year.

She was telling me about this tamarind rice that she had made that morning. And it sounded so good.

“And I was asking her all these questions about it.”

It's something she said, you know what? I want you to try some. So she turns around and asked her assistant to go back to her apartment to get the tamarind rice from the fridge. So as the interview began, I was getting excited for that tamarind rice. Until then, we talked about some of Padma's earliest food memories in India.

My grandmother and my aunts cooked constantly. There were 10 of us at any given time that lived in a two bedroom flat in Madras, which is now called Chennai. So by the time she was clearing the plates after breakfast, she was thinking about Tiffin, which is kind of like lunch only.

It happens at four. So it's a derivative of British tea. And then, you know, dinner. So we had a rolling meal constantly. And in fact, we had so many people that not all of us fit around the dining table.

So the men and the children would eat first.

And then I would eat next to my grandfather.

“And my grandfather and I were very tight.”

I loved pickles and anything spicy or sour as much as he loved anything sweet. In fact, my grandfather had a mighty sweet tooth. And so a lot of my food memories are about procuring contraband sweets for my extremely diabetic grandfather on the sly. You were like his foot soldier, basically.

Yes. I used to run to the all-in-one barefoot. And if I ran as fast as I could, I could make it there just before I burned my feet on the hot sand. You know, the streets weren't paved then in my part of the neighborhood in Madras.

And then I would get a single serve that'll softy. I screamed paper cup with the wooden spoon taped to the bottom. One for him, one for me. And we would eat them silently. And, you know, one time we got busted and that was the end of that scheme.

We, you know, we'd be like your grandmother. Yeah, it was the only time I really, really saw them. I don't think fight is the right word, but I felt the energy in the air. Like, holy, you know, we're in trouble.

Or it's like, I'm, you know, I'm not just never heard her verbally cross him like that.

Although it was no doubt to anyone who held the power in that house. Yeah, she just didn't need to wield it. And that this point, you actually saw her sword. At this point in the conversation, Padma's assistant came into the studio with the Tamron Rice. It was in a reused takeout container.

Pretty good. So you can have a taste there. So this is basically a tamron paste that's cooked down to a pasty foot. That is kind of like what happens when you don't change your oil on your car. That's, you know, that, like, really thick gooey.

“That's what it should be with fried curry leaves and red dried chilies and peanuts,”

and chana lentils, split chana lentils. And it's also been coated with sesame oil. And you basically cook rice normally, like steamed rice. And then you toss it with this condiment. And it's great. And traditionally we make this dish also when we go on a train journey.

Because when you took a train from Delhi down south to Chennai, you had to have your own food. Nobody would trust the food that you could buy in these various train stations. And it was a long way. It was like two nights and three days or something.

So you packed food that would keep, especially in that heat. Is it spicy? I mean, I, I, I like spicy is not too spicy. It just hits you right in the back of the throat. Yeah, if you're not. I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no. Don't apologize. I love it. It's fantastic. I would love. And it's like, it's like this dish that sort of reveals itself to you so slowly. There's so much going on here. First, you get the oil and the fat.

And you get the, then you get the tamarind sort of tart sour thing. And you get the crunch of the peanuts. Then you get the peppers coming in. You start to feel the kick. Yeah.

There's a lot going on here. It's a whole train song every time you listen to it. You get a little more flavor of it. So Padmas still eats a lot of favorite Indian foods from childhood. But her connection to that food is complicated.

Because she essentially grew up partly in India and partly in the US. She remembers being four and getting ready to move to New York with her mom. I was going toward something. But I was also leading behind everything I knew and all my cousins and the comfort of living

in a joint family and never being alone and sleeping with three of your cousins.

And I was leaving all of that behind and I didn't know what to expect. My grandfather was very much an American America file. If I can say that, you know, he loved America and he prepared me as much as he could for my age. He made me memorize every state capital and capital and state in alphabetical order. He told me, you know, to be careful about food because there was always hidden meat lurking around.

And when he described large and if you were vegetarian and an idea of, you know, eating meat is very close to cannibalism, you know, you realize you feel like you're going to this strange hostel land that somehow is somewhere that your mother has to go to make a life for us because, you know, she and your father are no more.

“But I think my grandfather was very prescient and he knew that once I had tasted the West,”

once I had watched American TV, you know, had all these experiences,

it was going to also be hard for me to come back to India that I would always feel a little bit of an outsider in both countries.

And that certainly has been the case until very, very recently. And I think the point at which I achieved, you know, some modicum of success in my career and enough success to where I could create my own environment. I very much felt like an outsider in both places. Let's talk about young Padna in grade school in the U.S. event.

Do you have memories of bringing food to school? Yes, and not very happy once. You know, the same container that you just opened that is filling this sound studio with smells and aromas that you find perhaps inviting because you, you've been exposed to it. You like it, you're an adult, you're not even going to be, you know, you're not going to be rude to me.

Even if you don't like it because I brought it from my home. I do like it for the record. Thank you. But go on.

“But I mean, you know, when you're in fifth grade, that's not the case.”

And, you know, it's not in fifth grade in the 1970s or early 80s is not like it is now.

You know, kids aren't exposed to sushi and vegan. And, you know, little kids in my class who, you know, were coming in with these neat little crust cut off sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly or baloney were really cool. Like, "Yeah, what is that? How can you eat that?" Right.

You know, and it kind of, I didn't want to try that mystery meat that was lurking between two slices of soft pillowy bread. You know, but I kind of forced myself. I, you know, it was easier for me to eat baloney than peanut butter peanut butter was something I just couldn't run. Now I love peanut butter, but, you know, that, that was something I didn't understand. [Music]

Coming up my conversation with Padma Lakshmi continues. We'll learn about the Indian street snacks that are wonderful favorite foods in the world. And, when you're a former model, people make judgments about your looks and your brains. Padma will talk about how she deals with both. Stick around.

[Music] And now, a delicious word from our sponsors. [Music] Welcome back to another Sportful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman.

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So, there are a lot of benefits and you can sign up right now while you're listening. Head on over to sportfull.com/newsletter to sign up today. Again, that's sportfull.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Padma Lakshmi.

So, I have just started to learn about this family of Indian street snacks called Chot. They're sold from carts or stalls. There are a whole bunch of different kinds of Chot. But they mostly all involve some kind of crispy fried dough. Then there's often potato and or chickpeas.

And then some combination of salty, sweet, tart and spicy seasonings. Chots are full of flavor and they really scratch all the classic snack food itches, especially in hot weather. But while I will admit that I am still a Chot novice, Padma. I love Chot.

If I could have one thing for the rest of my life, I would probably want to have a Chot stall so that I could make, you know,

the 15 million combinations of the same 17 ingredients.

But it's kind of sort of like tacos or notches.

“You know, it's not expensive, but so, you know what?”

I've been, again, and I'm far from an expert in any of the food.

That's my favorite. Seriously? Yeah.

Let the record reflect that at this very moment Padma Lakshmi and I high-fived

to celebrate our shared love of Pani Pori. Oh, that hurts playing what it is. It is a crisp puffed-up, little crunchy ball that's made with flour. That's fried, whole wheat flour that's fried. It's almost the size of a golf ball, but a little flatter.

And hollow in the middle. And hollow completely hollow, very thin. Poked the top of it with your finger, fill it with chopped boiled potatoes, fresh cilantro, boiled usually if it's really authentic, black chickpeas, which are smaller, and they're much more flavorful.

And there meant to be a little more chewed some. Anyway, you fill that. And then there are two different sauces that you put. One, which is a tamarind sauce, which is slightly sweet.

And then there's a second thing, which looks like swamp water,

you know, or really, really old-bong water. And it's wonderful. It really has an army green, murky color to it. It's thin like a broth, but it's cold. It is made of pureed chilies and mint and black human, which gives it that sulfuric thing.

It is wonderful and very refreshing if you're living in hot India. So they put, like, I would say, an espresso spoon of the sweet and sour sauce first. And then dunk the whole puff into-- Oh, you do a whole puff dunk. Yeah, into what is traditionally a clay pot.

And you dip inside and you're all standing there in a semicircle in front of the chatwala or the chat guy's stand.

And with little ever silver bowls waiting for him.

And so he goes one by one by one. And the next time if he comes to you and you're still chewing,

“because you have to put that puff, it's like a soup dumpling.”

Yes, I'll get it going in your mouth all the time. It's a crispy, cold soup dumpling with a ton of flavor. And that bite, like, you put the whole thing in your mouth. You bite the crunch of the outside and the softness of the potatoes and the tang of the tamarind. And the cold water and the butteriness of the potatoes, it's all good.

And I knew where to go. Every time I came back from New York when school it out in June, I was on a plane back to India and I had a mental list. I think, like, we all do when we go home of what I was going to eat. And certainly chat and Pani Puri is on the top of that list.

Now, most Americans aren't familiar with chat. It's not exactly chicken-tick and masala at this point. But if anyone can help chat cross over, it's Padma Lakshmi. She's become one of America's leading ambassadors for Indian food, as well as flavors and spices from all over the world, where she's lived and traveled.

She's done it in her cookbooks, tangy, tart, hot and sweet and easy exotic. Last year, she launched a line of frozen foods at Costco called Easy Exotic. Now, she has an easy exotic line of house squares, a Walmart. We talked about the challenges of translating other cultures and cuisines for a new audience.

“I think it's easier to get people to try something new if it comes in a vehicle they're familiar with.”

So, if I want my daughter to have sumac, which is a beautiful berry that has a lovely vermillion color, it's dried and powdered, it's used all over the Middle East. It says old as the Romans, they used it before citrus was discovered. It's one of the key ingredients in Zatah, right? Yes, so it's easier for me to put that sumac on a sour cream dip that I know she's going to want to dunk her cauliflower into.

If I started doing something funky and perhaps more authentic, she's going to be like, "What is that on my meat kebab and she's going to rub it off?" You know, we did that with tangy, tart, hot and sweet. We made a Mexican macaroni and cheese because, you know, by using pickled jalapenos and, you know, shallots, which are closer to Mexican onions, they have their less sulfuric than the white onions that are left raw,

and things like that, you can get somebody to try something and it becomes almost a gateway. It's what happened with Chipotle. You know, I think a lot more people were eating Chipotle mayonnaise before they actually went out and said, "What is this Chipotle?"

“And when you do those things with food to make them more accessible, do you put it back from the Indian community?”

I will say this, that you'll have Indians all over the world contradicting themselves, because you can drive by car for an hour, and people are speaking in different language, praying to a different god, dressing a different way in eating completely different food. It becomes very hard to make any kind of generalization about, you know, anything Indian, but especially about Indian food for that reason.

But so when you make these changes to a dish to make it more accessible, have there ever been times in your work that you had misgivings.

quotes authentic?

“Well, it's not authentic. I would be the first person to say that it isn't.”

It's also not a fan of Tenderi Chicken Pizza, you know, because I spent my 20s and Italy, that's like, you know, blossom is to me.

But for me, it was always coming from the point of view.

I guess, you know, I'm a good cook, and I love to cook all kinds of things with my friends and family come over. And as a food writer, I'm looking at what would be interesting, rather than writing another cookbook and teaching you how to make carbonara, or, you know, vindaloo, which by the way, nobody actually calls it vindaloo, but, you know, like, for me, I'm coming at the point of view where,

what do I want to eat? I have a very specific point of view, and it's very idiosyncratic, and I am my best customer. So I'm often creating things that I just want to eat at midnight. And then if they work, I serve them to my friends.

And if they like them, then I write them that I write the recipe down. And, you know, so it starts like that. And often it comes from a place of longing. It comes from a place of wanting to feel closer to home. I want to segue a little bit talk a little bit about body image and femininity.

You should talk about it. So eloquently in your book, and that you write in your memoir, since I can remember, people have asked me the same question. How do I eat so much and stay slim?

The answer is simple, a lot of hard work.

Much of the work is physical, some of it mental. All of it involving vast amounts of willpower and discipline I don't always have. I'm curious to know, where do you think that willpower and discipline to stay slim come from?

“My vanity, you know, I think it's as simple as that.”

I think I have enjoyed a successful career in front of the camera as a model. I think it was easy to eat whatever the heck I wanted when I was 20 or even almost 30. You know, mother nature is a very good equalizer. At the same time that my metabolism was changing, my diet was completely exponentially much richer

because of doing the show. I consume like 7 or 8,000 calories a day. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean, it's fun for the first 20 minutes, and then it's not fun.

Top chef is fun for the first 4,000 calories. Exactly. Especially the first half of the season when they're that many more chefs who have not yet been eliminated. They don't care about my waistline, right? They want to make it as juicy and succulent

and luxurious as they can, and I don't blame them.

“You know, they want to win, and I would too.”

So it is very hard to keep my figure. I am still a woman on television. It is still a visual medium. It is still entertainment. You know, I'm not under a chef's coat in the back of a restaurant kitchen.

Is there any part of you that resents having to look a certain way as part of your job on television? I don't resent it because I would be disingenuous if I didn't. If I didn't acknowledge the fact that I also am on TV, probably because of my physical likeness as well.

You know, I'm self aware enough to know that I've probably had advantages because of that. But I do think, you know, because Bravo had so much success with our sister show project runway, and they had a model helming that, which made sense, because, you know, she knew about fashion

and whatever, that because I had also modeled, they figured, "Oh, Bravo's just taking another model and, you know, put her in the template with food." Right, just a pretty face. All right, so it took a long time for me to gain the acceptance either, you know, empirically or in my mind, from an audience that was or wasn't judging me,

and also just feel that I had a place at that table at that judges table. And, you know, somewhere along the line, I just realized that I don't have to be a chef to know what good food is. You know, when people say, "Oh, what does a model know about food or what is, you know, all that, my career in modeling, honed my skill as a food writer."

Because I was the one thing that any season's chef will tell you is travel, and just eat your way through the world, and see how other people live, see what grows on the other side of the planet, you know, see how other people peel potatoes, you know, versus the way we do it at home.

You say you've always associated food and cooking with womanhood and femininity.

Can you elaborate on that? There was a definite hierarchy in the kitchen, in my grandmother's kitchen, like there is in most professional French kitchens. You know, she is certainly the chef, and she has her lutenants or sous chefs,

and then they have their comies, and then the comies have me. Which, you know, I'm running to the store 15 times to get, you know, the knob of ginger that they forgot or whatever. And you were only allowed to do certain things in the kitchen

You know, first, I could only break the ends off beans.

Then I got to peel potatoes.

“Then I actually got to measure out the spices,”

but I was not allowed to touch the chili or any of the spices until I was probably like ten or something. And then, you know, about the time when you went through puberty and started wearing a half-sari seed. And traditional South Indian culture, you know, when a girl has matured because they're asked to dress differently. They were a half-sari, which is a long, maxi skirt with a veil that's wrapped around and thrown over

one shoulder rather than a full-sari. But, um, so you got to make, you know, you got to finally stand by the stove and make the doses or the rice grapes. Then, you know, at a certain age when they started to look, not even when you went to college when they started to look for your groom.

That's when they gave you the secret recipe for the sambar powder. You know, and every household had its own unique recipe for the sambar powder to the spice blend. It's a South Indian spice blend that's used in all kinds of sauteed curries as well as lentil soups.

“So that's why I think I associated food with femininity.”

You know, it's like a little girl who always wants to grow up and wear makeup.

You know, when can I wear lipstick, when can I wear your heels? For me, it was like, when can I be at the stove, when can I hold the ladle? When do I get to stir the sambar? [Music] That's part of my Lakshmi.

Her memoir is called Love, Lost, and What We Eight. We came out earlier this year. And she has another new book that just came out this fall. It's called The Encyclopedia of Spices and Irbs, an essential guide to the flavors of the world.

This shows the production of WNYC Studios in the Sporkeful.

It's produced by Shoshana Gold and Sandy and me. Editing help from Dan Charles. Music help from Black Label. Music special thanks to Paula Shuman. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

And I'm Dylan James from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. And I'm Amanda from Binghamton, New York. And this is Cedric Chang from Melbourne, Florida. Reminding you to eat more. Eat better and eat more better.

[Music] This re-heat was produced by Yana Palmer. It seemed that producers of the Sporkeful today includes me along with Managing Producer. Emma Morgan Stern.

And Senior Producer. And Grace O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkeful is a production of Sirius XM podcast.

Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.

“And hey, did you know you can listen to the Sporkeful on a Sirius XM app?”

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