“Amrikan” Will Delight Anyone Who Loves Indian Food

Welcome to One Quick Bite, where we share smart, cool, and weird conversations with our favorite authors about their new cookbook and beyond.

Khushbu Shah’s debut cookbook is highly personal, yet it lovingly encompasses the entire Indian immigrant community in America. While restaurant touchstones like tandoori chicken and chicken tikka masala are great and all, Amrikan proves that the most exciting and heartfelt Indian food in America comes from home kitchens—soon, perhaps, your own home kitchen.   

Amrikan derives its title from the word Indians use for American things (say it UM-ree-kan). “It’s America, with a desi accent,” Khushbu writes. This is why you’ll find recipes for tamarind chutney made with apple butter and the savory-sweet snack mix chevvdo made with an assortment of breakfast cereals, à la Chex mix. According to Khushbu, adaptation is “the main ingredient in the Indian American culinary lexicon.”

If you’re not of an Indian background, making Indian food at home might feel impenetrable, but Khushbu packs the book with easy weeknight dinners and quick comfort food meals that make you feel like she’s your neighbor inviting you to pop over. And lots of them are vegetarian or vegan, which is fabulous for flexitarian households. 

With her schedule filling up from interview requests, Khushbu and I had to switch our phone interview to an email one―proving that I’m hardly the only fan of Indian food who’s smitten with her book. Below, Khushbu talks about the virtues of always having three snacks available for guests, the comfort of yogurt rice, and her pièce de résistance recipe for saag paneer lasagna.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

One of the things I love about your book is how the recipes feel like I’m dining with an Indian family in their home, and it’s a peek at all of these awesome hidden gems like the breakfast cereal chevvdo and pav bhaji that aren’t on the mainstream radar. So many Indian cookbooks for Americans tend to have recipes that are more like Indian restaurant greatest hits. Why do you think that is?
I think when writing about Indian food for a Western audience, it is easy to focus on dishes found in restaurants because those are the dishes that the Western audience is most familiar with. But that is such a small percentage of the vast culinary legacy that India, and South Asia at large, has. There is so much magic in Indian home cooking, and I tried to highlight as much of it as I could with the confines of the book, but even after packing in 125 recipes, that is just the tip of the iceberg. 

After an exhausting day, what’s your go-to meal? You have a few simple comfort food recipes in the cookbook, and I seem to recall you saying you make them for low-lift meals.
My go-to meal is always yogurt rice. Sometimes, I add stir-fried cabbage (cabbage nu shaak in my book) to make it a more complete meal, or I will add a spoonful of aachar. If I have a bit more energy, I will make a tadka or temper things like curry leaves and mustard seeds in a bit of fat like ghee and pour that over the yogurt and the rice. Yogurt rice is really satiating and also a very easy lift. 

Is there a dish that Indian families in America tend not to make at home the traditional way, but either use a shortcut or buy instead? 
Yes! Pav bhaji is typically a street food but is a common quick weeknight dinner staple. Instead of making the bread (pao/pav), we often turn to burger buns as a quick and easy stand in.

You recently served as Food and Wine magazine’s restaurant editor. Clearly, you cook a lot, though. Did you ever find it difficult to balance the demands of eating out for work with the desire/need to make your own food at home?
Absolutely. I would do both things in spurts. So I would alternate between several restaurant meals when on the road scouting, and then when I was back home in L.A., I would try and cook as much as possible. You tend to miss one when you’re in a block of the other. After a few too many days of restaurant meals, I found myself craving simpler home cooking, and after too many days of making meals for myself at home, I would miss the energy and excitement of a restaurant. 

I have yet to meet a person of Indian background who is not obsessed with food and delightfully opinionated about food. Is this just because of the people I’ve met, or are people from India generally obsessed with food?
Food is a huge part of Indian culture and South Asian culture in general. It’s at the center of every gathering and every celebration. Our meals are communal events and consist of many small dishes instead of more Western eating styles focusing on protein, starch, and a vegetable. There isn’t as much value placed on a one-pot dish. Food is also how we show hospitality—there should always be more than enough for everyone, and no one should go hungry, even if it is as simple as someone coming over for a cup of coffee or tea. Even then, I will make sure to have, at minimum, three snack options on the table. 

Can you make a case for growing a curry leaf tree? A while ago, I bit the bullet and got one. For years, when I cooked Indian food, it tasted like it was missing something, and now that I have easy access to curry leaves, I know what that something was. 
Curry leaves are relatively easy to find these days, frozen or dried, but there is nothing like fresh ones. The aroma alone is worth it, and a few leaves can take a dish to a new level—just as a few sprigs of fresh mint can. Curry leaves add a lovely depth to so many Indian dishes, and the plants are also really pretty! They can also grow indoors if you live in a cold climate. My mom has a curry leaf tree in Michigan that she has kept alive for over 12 years.

What’s one of the recipes in Amrikan that you’re proudest of—whether it’s a traditional recipe or one of your own creations?
I am genuinely obsessed with the saag paneer lasagna in the book. When the idea hit me for the dish, I could not believe that a version did not already exist online. I scoured the internet, went deep on Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and looked at every cookbook and Indian restaurant menu I could, but I could not find what I was looking for. The flavors really meld together beautifully, and it doesn’t feel like a dish where two cultures are mashed together in a forced manner. It’s true third-culture cooking! The dish is also such a great intro to Indian flavors for someone who might be skeptical, and it’s relatively easy to throw together but very impressive for a crowd. I made it for Thanksgiving last year, and every single piece was gone — there were zero leftovers. 

BUY THE COOKBOOK: Amrikan