[seagulls squawking] I went down to the Berkeley Marina, then a breeze came from the bay, and I got my first whiff of seawater, bay water, that salty, salty water smell, which is a very, like, core, core, core smell.

Like, that is in the atoms of my soul.

It's like a savory, salty, slightly funky smell.

It's not super strong, but it's just enough for me to pick up on my nose, and what that brings up for me is tide pooling as a kid, and you kind of saw what in Southern California is called the marine layer, this thick layer of fog.

We would be driving into the marine layer in the mornings.

That was just such, like, a fundamental memory.

[laughs]

So I got out of the car.

Oh,

you grated the garlic.

Yes, that way there's not like big chunks of raw garlic.

Those are some spicy chilies, which you can leave out unless your kids like spicy.

Put them on the side.

But you can also have them on the side and then add to some of the plates, right? And then this is a fresh grated ginger, also finely grated, so we'll add that in.

And then we just have a super simple dressing of lemon juice and olive oil if you wanna maybe whisk it up before you add it in.

I feel

Okay, so what's the next step?

Next, we're gonna make what I call the aromatic base.

So this is some ghee.

If you don't have ghee or clarified butter, you could use nice neutral oil or even olive oil.

Throw those onions in there.

There's already a little bit of coriander in there getting flavorful.

Let's make this nice and warm.

much.

Okay, so what's the next step?

Next, we're gonna make what I call the aromatic base.

So this is some ghee.

If you don't have ghee or clarified butter, you could use nice neutral oil or even olive oil.

Throw those onions in there.

There's already a little bit of coriander in there getting flavorful.

Let's make this nice and warm.

Yeah, it's like we're layering all those

What's that?

It's called a flexitarian.

Look up the definition.

"A flexitarian diet, also called a semi-vegetarian diet, is one that is centered on plant foods with limited or occasional inclusion of meat."

Oh, that's right, the Jonathan Safran Foer vegan until sunset?

Mm-hmm.

I was like, "Oh yeah, I'll just be a daytime vegan, and nighttime..." And it's not even that I wanna eat meat, it's more that I just wanna drink milk and eat cheese.

Why was the food market so quickly popular? Or were there any particular reasons that come to mind?

I think part of it was timing of it.

So what it was, was I was really good at making pasta.

That's like, I lived in Italy for two years.

I made pasta every day for 10 years.

I really love making pasta.

And when the restaurant closed, I would sort of bump into people in town, and they'd be like, "Well, we really miss your pasta." And I really enjoy the like beautiful sort of manual labor of making it and the folding and the cutting and the whole thing.

All right.

Huh.

And, um, to the point where like, at some point [laughs] she turned to the director and she said...

She was trying to figure it out, that's right.

She said, "Caroline, like, whose show is this?" And everyone on set, at this point, this was our last ep- no, it was the third episode that we filmed, and by this time we were all very tight and everyone was so sort of like, "Samin, what do you think about this? Samin, what do you think about this?" We'd been to Japan, we'd been to Italy [laughs] together.

You know, like, um, we were ver- they saw me speak different languages.

They...

And then so I remember Luke, my director of photography, his jaw just fell 'cause he was like, "Wow, your own mom doesn't understand this is your thing." Right? Like, um, and I, and I kind of threw like a te- I totally like a teenager threw a tantrum.

Do you still believe that?

Mm-hmm.

So then when I got to do this scene with this baker in, in Liguria, and we, I, I knew I wanted to make focaccia, I mean, he was just, like, the local baker in that town.

It was not some well-known person making super special...

He was just doing it the traditional way they've been doing it forever.

And then he came, and I truly had no idea what he was gonna do.

He showed me how to make dough.

Okay, I've seen that.

Mm-hmm.

Can you share a little bit about that moment and what led up to it?

Yeah.

So I'm the child of Iranian immigrants.

And I think one sort of fundamental thing that I learned as a young person kid was, do your homework, study, get into a good college.

That is the most important thing.

And so I really took that to heart.

And I did that.

Talk to me a little bit more just about this notion of cooking as a metaphor for building time into our lives.

He says, "How wonderful it is that you could have the poetry of music, or poetry, or music, that actually makes you think you're touching infinity." So I'll ask you, do you think that cooking can help you touch infinity upon occasion?

I totally do.

I mean, last week, I made basil pesto, and there was just something about the way that it came together that day.

I actually broke a lot of my own rules.

I, I was in such a hurry, I was so hungry that I, like, toasted the pine nuts, and then I didn't wait for them to cool before I put them in the food processor, so they sort of turned-

Mush, yeah.

But I actually think that was part of what made the pesto so good.

And we kept eating it, we're like, "Whoa, this is so good." (laughs) There was just something about that moment that felt so sort of sublime.

And you needed to go to the FedEx store.

Yeah, which was my own stupidity of like why did I even start this? But sometimes it's like my personal needs are overridden by like how I want to show up for people.

I mean, I don't know how not to.

Like I can try to do as much therapy and meditation as I want and be aware of it, but it's like so deeply embedded in me.

You know, like I feel like, so here's a story.

I've told this a couple of times, but this is sort of in some ways like the, I don't know, the way I have been trying to think about this book.

And in a way, in ways small and large, I think the thing I'm trying to communicate with this book is but also communicate to myself.

for whom? For whom has your whole life been about that?

Mm-hmm.

Um, (laughs) my dad, who was a very complicated and abusive person died in a really, like, long, drawn out, complicated, traumatic way a few years ago.

And while he was dying, I was staying at my, um, aunt and uncle's house in San Diego for the last several weeks, like for six weeks or something.

And they were both outta town.

And the day after my dad died, my uncle's wife came back from her trip.

So I went to the airport to pick her up and we were sort of just talking through a bunch of things.

And this is not somebody I'm, like, incredibly close to, um, but she, you know, I sort of was like, I just had been working through so much both in the sort of dying of my father and trying to understand that as a thing in my life, and also in the previous several years I had been processing a lot just about my family, my childhood.

She recognized herself.... and started realizing all the ways that her own grief about losing her older sister when she was very young had left a mark of loss throughout her childhood.

Um, so just- ... kind of thinking about dishes that have like, you know, more flexible timelines, whether you can do prep ahead of time, or that, you know, have like, are more forgiving on the like getting everyone to the table part of it, or...

Mm-hmm.

I think in some ways, all of the things that we think of as the grand holiday sort of centerpieces are exactly the wrong kinds of food for what you're talking about, specifically roasts.

Any roast is really, in so many ways, requires so much attention during the cooking, so much perfect timing, and then you really kind of uh, gotta eat it while it's...

You know, then you have to rest it, and then you have to eat it while it's hot, and it's sort of...

Especially something like turkey gets a lot less pleasant-

Yeah.

... them warm, like, you would either maybe pre-warm a ceramic bowl or something and put them in there.

Can you tell us about it?

Well, I mean, um, my family's from Iran and my parents came to San Diego sometime in the mid '70s.

In 1979 there was a religious revolution in Iran so a lot of people sort of sensed that coming and my parents', uh, my father's side of the family, um, was a, practiced a religion called the Bahá'í Faith and they were persecuted so they all fled and were re- religious asylees.

And my mom like came after, followed my dad here.

And so I was born here and this...

And I was born here to a family who, um, wasn't entirely like willingly, you know, in San Diego.

Like it was just, right? There's the trauma of leaving your homeland behind.

Yes.

So first of all, why is marinating feta such a smart approach for home cooks?

Well, for me, it's a great idea because I love feta cheese.

Again, like my, my family's from Iran.

I grew up eating feta cheese every morning for breakfast, and I've never shaken the habit of buying a big block of it for myself, but I live by myself, so I don't always make it through the whole block before it starts to turn sour.

So, um, I realized that if I precut it up and marinated it, it would really extend the life in addition to adding all this flavor and turn it into something that I could, you know, put on the side of a big like cheese or crudite platter or incorporate into other ingredients or eat with my morning bread.

And the way this recipe, in particular, came about is I was looking at one of Yotam Ottolenghi's marinated feta recipes, but I was sort of just, again, it was whi- peak pandemic.

I was looking at what I had around and because I live in California, I always embarrassed to admit this on the East Coast, we had a kumquat tree in our garden, and so (laughs) I had kumquats.

(laughs)

Yeah.

There's labor involved.

You still have to wash the stuff.

But also, sometimes having a slightly nicer thing or having a tool that can perform a function that saves you time is gonna make the entire experience much nicer or allow you to get a result that you couldn't otherwise get.

So to me, I don't think everyone needs to start out with all the stuff at all.

If, for example, you find yourself eating a lot of shaved salads.

You wanna eat a lot of salad.

Ooh.

So, first of all, why the hate on recipes?

(laughs) You know, basically, I feel like they trap us or people can get trapped in a recipe and feel so bound to the written letter and to following them (laughs) to the letter and that that's the only way to do it or that's the only way forward.

It- they feel really constraining, and that constraint hurts my heart because a joke that I say and a lot of the cooks I know say is kind of like there's only seven recipes in the world.

There's only seven or eight ways people cook things all around the world.

And so if you can sort of zoom way out and see how all the things are connected, you can understand how, you know, um, a braise is a stew, is a tagine, is, you know, uh, like a simmered meat for tacos, (laughs) is the same as, like, a delicious pot of sukiyaki.

So all around the world, people are doing the same thing, and that's not by accident.

It's because there just are-... a certain number of ways to cook things that result in deliciousness, and that was my goal, that's always my goal, is to show how all of those things are connected, and to show you how you have so much more power and knowledge than you think you do.

Well, so do you- how have you folded in this Jewish ancestry into your understanding of yourself?

No.

I'm not misleading (laughs) you.

So, there's only so much that, um, sorta quick and easy will get ya (laughs) in terms of cooking.

And a lot of what I do in writing recipes and in deciding what to include or how to shape a recipe is weighing, you know, the value of asking you to wait or asking you to go look for a special ingredient or asking you to, I don't know, do something a little more labor-intensive or complicated.

And in this focaccia, which evolved out of the focaccia that I made in Italy on the Salt Fat Acid Heat documentary, um, I have found that the time really does make a big difference.

And in fact, the time (laughs) saves labor.

So by not...

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And so those are kind of some of the most wonderful parts of the, let's say, achievements and success and praise.

But, um, no, it didn't make me happy, and I, I, what's crazy is, like, I'm highly therapized, so I knew I was very achievement-driven, and I knew on some level that achievements would not, like, make me happy.

But I think on some level, I still believed if I just managed to do these things that I've been trying to do for so long, then these other things (laughs) underneath that have caused me so much pain in my life, um, and sadness will no longer make me feel bad.

I thought maybe if I achieved everything, I would finally get the kind of love and feedback from my parents that I've probably been seeking my whole life.

And it didn't work that way, and I think what was shocking was that it wasn't conscious, right? I wasn't consciously seeking that.

I was subconsciously seeking that.

Right.

Right.

And so those are kind of some of the most wonderful parts of the, let's say, achievements and success and praise.

But, um, no, it didn't make me happy.

And I, I...

What's crazy is, like, I'm highly therapized, so I knew I was very achievement-driven and I knew on some level that achievements would not, like, make me happy.

But I think on some level, I still believed if I just managed to do these things that I've been trying to do for so long, then these other things underneath that have caused me so much pain in my life, um, and sadness will no longer make me feel bad.

I thought maybe if I achieved everything, I would finally get the kind of...... love, and feedback from my parents that I've probably been seeking my whole life.

Right.

(clears throat)

Uh, like, my girlfriend does...

Is a knitter.

She's a big knitter.

And for a while she had, like, a big Instagram sort of knitting and sewing following, and then she sort of, like, pff, stopped that.

And now she just sort of looks at other people.

But she still knits a lot.

Like, is it a judge of you're doing the right thing because you're pushing yourself into discomfort?

... got a power to it.

I think another part of it too was there was anger in that room, right? There was an anger as she sang.

There was an anger that people were releasing when they would sing it with her.

And certainly by the time it became my anthem, like, I had anger that I was letting out.

But as much as I've always had kind of a bad temper, I would say anger in that way, like, super, like, feeling it to my bones and letting myself feel and express a feeling was not something that ever happened for me in my home-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then when she says, "Fuck you," there's just a...