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-series: Andy Baraghani on discovering your household cooking model

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hi FT Weekend listeners, this is Lilah. I’m right here to welcome you to some summer-reward content. For 4 months, we will be publishing exclusive Food & Drinks-themed mini-episodes, mid-week just about every Wednesday. For every single one, I’m approaching a distinct skilled that I assume is seriously very good at a thing and asking them to instruct us about that factor. We’ll chat wine tendencies with just one of the world’s most influential wine critics, Jancis Robinson. We’ll communicate flavor and flavour with the chef of a single of my favorite dining places in New York, Ayesha Nurdjaja. And currently, on this extremely initially episode of the collection, I’m joined by Andy Baraghani. Andy is a chef and meals writer. He’s worked in kitchens from Chez Panisse to Estela, and he invested years building recipes and creating viral cooking video clips for Bon Appetit. This calendar year, Andy came out with a cookbook that I have been leaning on heavily. It is named The Cook You Want To Be. And I’ve had him on to study precisely how we can make all of our encounters into a own property-cooking design and style. It is a possibility to consider about what we’re picking out to prepare dinner and what will make these dishes or types of cooking especially really feel like ours. Okay. This is FT Weekend, the podcast distinctive version. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. Here’s Andy. Hi, Andy. Welcome to the demonstrate.

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

Lilah Raptopoulos
A single of the points that I truly preferred about your films and that I love about your cookbook is that it’s pretty straightforward and it’s sweet and it sort of will make me truly feel like my kitchen area can be a tiny chaotic and, like, I can have confidence in myself to improvise on the location and that I’ll be ok. And then I’m studying, like, not just like how to stick to this checklist of substances and the purchase in which I use them, but how to just do it myself without worrying. (Andy laughs) So I’m curious, like, you know, what information do you have for individuals who are hoping to discover their voice as a house cook dinner?

Andy Baraghani
Cooking is a lower-possibility financial investment, you know, it’s . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s true, yeah.

Andy Baraghani
It’s not one thing that . . . Normally it won’t price a ton of funds. It’s ok if it does not go ideal. Since with any luck ,, and what I truly like to assure people, is that even if something does not go suitable, you will probably master one thing. And it’s a lesson to have absorbed. And so that, you know, you won’t type of do that ever again and you will try a little something and do it a various way. So that is one particular matter. I also uncover that you have to be open and curious and challenge oneself. I seriously do suggest that this applies both in and out of the kitchen. Whatsoever kind of craft it is, I think, when I feel about my own lifetime and about the form of essential times and classes that I have discovered, it is when I’ve been the most variety of not comfortable or vulnerable.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So what’s an case in point of executing anything uncomfortable in the food realm?

Andy Baraghani
I would say a single of the less complicated matters is if you’re at a current market, whether or not it is a piece, a make product or a spice, I would, if it’s in your finances, I would obtain it and I would attempt it, and I would try out it on its individual. Just if it is a particular kind of citrus, I would, you know, choose a section and try it and see what it preferences. Is it sweet? Is it tart? In which does it tumble beneath that range? Is this zest a minimal little bit bitter or is it much more floral and sweet? Try out utilizing the zest in the salad, use the juice and lessen it down with a minor little bit of butter and see what that preferences like. But enjoy with it. Experiment.

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

Andy Baraghani
You can educate a dwelling cook about a new ingredient. It is difficult to explain to a household prepare dinner to teach them about a new component and then give them this truly technological recipe. So the first part is like, problem your self to try out a new component. Perform around with that. The 2nd aspect is see if you would consider a method you have hardly ever done, if you’ve at any time kind of made a aioli before. If you’ve completed that, just emulsifying, you know, oil with egg yolk and earning handmade aioli. And then you have this base and you can make it garlicky by including a bit of garlic or herby by adding some chopped refreshing herbs, a tiny bit of lemon juice. People two matters are pretty essential . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Uh-huh.

Andy Baraghani
In order to . . . comprehending what sort of cook you want to be, what your cooking design and style is, what flavours you are drawn to. And the objective is not for it to often be proper. You may not like each individual strategy and want to utilize it to your kitchen area. You might not like just about every ingredient that you buy or all of the flavour combinations, but by form of understanding what you’re drawn to and what you’re not drawn to, that’ll give you a superior definition of what your cooking style is.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Andy, I’d love to listen to how you 1st acquired intrigued in meals. Like, what are your earliest memories of food and of cooking?

Andy Baraghani
Which is a large query from the begin . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter)

Andy Baraghani
The food items that I was launched to at an early age ended up the meals that my mother and father brought and traditions they brought from their native dwelling country of Iran. They came to the US in the late 70s, just prior to the Iranian revolution. And so from my earliest recollections really are having a great deal of people in excess of at my parents’ household. They ended up the type of very first ones to depart Iran and come to the US and so there was constantly an supplemental another person to feed, irrespective of whether it was an uncle or aunt or cousins, grandparents. So a good deal of these dishes are Iranian from my earliest recollections.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I’m curious kind of . . . what your loved ones was cooking expanding up and what you took from that into your fashion?

Andy Baraghani
Very well, I feel the meals is . . . (exhales) acidic and large on herbs and a deep like for dairy in the form of yoghurts. And it’s truly a really delicate delicacies. It’s not intensely spiced. There’s no genuinely fiery heat to the flavours. You are going to see a very little bit of heat in the southern region of Iran. They adore rice and it’s in no way a aspect dish. It is generally the most important event. Many distinctive sorts of wonderful flatbreads as the very-seasonal stews built up of fruits and meats and herbs and a lot of yoghurt sauces that don’t just have yoghurt and cucumber but from time to time we’ll have walnuts and pistachios, raisins, sizzled mint, eco-friendly garlic. It’s a definitely, really wonderful cuisine that . . . part of my work as as a author and recipe developer is seriously variety of deliver that meals to people’s household.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I identified your do the job — deep in the pandemic really — I had all of these herbs likely terrible and I realized about kuku sabzi, a Persian dish, Iranian dish from increasing up. And I identified your Bon Appetit movie on YouTube. It’s like my favourite issue I created in the pandemic and I even now make it all the time. I’m curious about your knowledge placing that video out. You wrote a piece a several many years ago about how cooking assisted you be open up about your ethnicity and that rising up you preferred to cover your Iranian identity. Can you notify me about that and how that improved?

Andy Baraghani
So kuku is a kind of a style of egg-based dishes in Iranian delicacies, and sabzi suggests greens. I imply, that was definitely one particular of the more durable pieces of creating. When I did that online video, it was 1 of, basically, the initial video clips I ever did for Bon Application. And I try to remember pitching the video clip and it was variety of had a lukewarm reaction of even being embraced. I consider we have to don’t forget, like, it was a different time and . . . but I just had this sensation that one thing that I grew up was so quick to make and folks have been heading to be able to understand about this dish, make it, understand about this dish from a pretty special cuisine that, from a culture that hasn’t always been highlighted in the most positive light-weight in this nation. I finally shot that online video and it took off. And so that dish just adopted me pretty much all over my lifestyle. And the essay that you stated about conversing about my ethnicity, I must say that I’ve liked Iranian food during my life, but I never had a want to understand that food and to prepare dinner that food stuff. That was the food that I grew up with. That was my family’s food items. But that wasn’t my cooking model. But it variety of did transform when I experienced to do some exploration and operate with my mother on a story. And we finished up form of featuring, I really don’t know, it’s possible eight or 9 of my mother’s dishes. And I truly fell in appreciate with that foodstuff again. And so I started off incorporating those people strategies and flavours of Iranian foods into my possess cooking fashion.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
All right. Andy, I would adore to do a rapid speed round with you with the time we have left. Are you all set?

Andy Baraghani
Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Ok. What is the most underappreciated herb?

Andy Baraghani
Clean bay leaves.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Bay leaves?

Andy Baraghani
Yeah. Fresh new bay leaves are kind of astounding. I imagine contemporary mint is underused. I assume it’s looked at it as like a garnish or a tiny goes a extensive way, but I think it is so scrumptious in pastas or torn in salads or pounded to make like a very little bit of a minty basil pesto. I think it’s so tasty.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Use additional than you imagine?

Andy Baraghani
Use additional than you feel, generally.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, normally. Okay, great. Favorite summer season salad?

Andy Baraghani
It is a dish that I retain earning from my e book, really. And it is called . . . the recipe identify is juicy tomatoes with Italian chilli crisp, and you just just take good tomatoes, time with salt, splash them with vinegar — I like sherry vinegar — and then you make this spicy oil manufactured with more-virgin olive oil, sliced garlic, anchovies, and you cook dinner right up until the garlic is crispy, and then you add chilli flakes and fennel seeds, and then you pour this sizzling, garlicky, spicy, fatty oil on the vinegar tomatoes and sprinkle it with basil or parsley. And it’s fairly delectable.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What’s a spice that you would endorse people today experiment with? It doesn’t have to be the most helpful spice, but just like an attention-grabbing a single to play with.

Andy Baraghani
I use a large amount of turmeric, so that is anything that I feel individuals must be working with. Cooking in oil or butter or in and about yoghurt as a turmeric dip. Butter and tossing that with rice, sprinkling more than proteins, fish, meat, and put it on the grill or searing it — I appreciate it so a great deal. I also feel, and this is a really uncomplicated a single that a great deal of us have: entire black peppercorns. I signify, it adds texture if it is coarse. I believe cooking it in butter and oil and adding pasta, rice, it adds like a good lingering heat, gentle warmth that I actually, definitely adore. Black peppercorns are anything that I use a large amount of.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Andy, this is a enjoyment. Many thanks so much for staying on the display.

Andy Baraghani
Thank you for acquiring me.

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That is our initially of four mini-episodes on Foodstuff & Consume. You can check out back next Wednesday for the next. I am speaking with Ayesha Nurdjaja, chef of Shuka and Shukette, about how to flavour and how to flavor. I have put hyperlinks to almost everything that Andy and I mentioned in this episode in the present notes. This show was generated by Molly Nugent, executive generated by Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley, and engineered by Breen Turner with original tunes by Metaphor Music. Particular thanks to Alastair Mackie.

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