Inside Priya Krishna's Kitchen | NYT Cooking

oh, shoot, oh, hello, come on, well, hello, how are you in Korea? a little warm a little toasty it's hot out there my name is

priya

krishna

I'm a food writer and Indian cookbook author and we're in My apartment in Brooklyn is conveniently here. I live in New York City and I'm sure, as you know, the apartments here are small, so doing what I do, which is a lot of

cooking

, is really difficult, but another part of my job is going out to eat. Restaurants New York City has so many restaurants per capita. I mean

kitchen

s being small is not ideal, but I have to say that the New York City subway allows me to do my job in the best way possible.

I love it. For 275 I can go from here to Sunset Park or from here to the Bronx. I have a roommate. His name is Seth. He loves to bake. I hated Instagram until I started documenting Seth Baking. Personally, I find it very funny. He hates everything. he bakes so I love the endless seeing the endless frustration is there's a setback right there oh yeah he made donuts this morning but these are usually pretty good although I'm sure he hated them yeah very good what you want to see? First I think we should start in the refrigerator, that seems really good.

Well, this is probably the most loved property. The first day I moved to New York I went to the Book of Mormon and won the lottery and I thought, "Oh my God." God, New York is going to be amazing. You can win Broadway lotteries. I also bought a cronut. My first day in New York. It was a great day for me. Our refrigerator is messy. The things you will always find in our refrigerator are yogurt. I probably use two or three tubs a day, I use two, oh, sorry, one week a week, we have a lot of butter, peanut butter and jelly, refrigerated peanut butter, yeah, because that's what my mom did, no.

I know how I should I shouldn't stop. I'm one of those people who likes everything my mother did when I was a child. I assume it as a fact and do not question it. I decided I was going to get into pickling, so whoops, I made them like pickled onions. in vinegar and turmeric and peppercorns and bay leaves and they actually get better oh the other thing that was really cool about being on the book tour is random like Indian aunties came and gave me things so someone gave me this like mango achar these are like all seth's condiments don't buy bottled lime juice what's been here the longest there's a really old sandwich here that I'm afraid to throw away because I feel like I'm going to get yelled at but it's literally been here for one month sorry, whose ham sandwich is this?

Oh no, it's well molded. I should probably throw it away and then it will freeze or burp. I'll do it while we discuss this. I'm going to throw this moldy away. sandwich oh, I mean, I'm not trying to like it, yuck, yummy or anything, but that was no, it wasn't my, it wasn't my sandwich, honestly, maybe we should clean out my refrigerator right now, Marie Kondo really he would have a great time. I don't even know what this is. I feel like this is really demystifying, like you think cookbook authors have well-organized, stylish

kitchen

s. Well, I don't rely much on frozen vegetables.

We have so many frozen vegetables here. my roommate bakes bread so we always have some type of bread which is usually girl scout cookies for breakfast of course um yeah uh you just want something salty okay maybe like mascarpone olive oil , salt and pepper. Sounds good if someone comes at the last minute. I eat whatever's on the toast, so you and your mom cook with it a lot, it's probably true, much better cook, I mean, my mom obviously isn't a question, so she's the one who says you can cook it, Oh, that's her, she's like an Indianized rose. the riveter when I was a kid, like the most basic snack, we called it toast with namakali marriage namak means salt and Hindi kali merch means pepper and just like salt and pepper, it was all what I grew up with, you can give the bread to Seth, you are honest. he probably hates it so it's a good toast and what everyone else is making is people like to pull bouillabaisse out of their asses in these videos like not telling Seth I'm giving him the bread oh awesome there's your starters of sourdough, oh well, speaking of which.

Can we take a look at how you organize yourself? Yes, organization is a vague word in this apartment. These are all Seth's spices. Your speculum spice mix because everyone uses it regularly. This is the only thing I have here. It's my my heen my aspatite smells pretty intense this is what makes Indian food taste Indian it's like the Indian version of msg right I totally couldn't live without my king I don't like having him in closed spaces because I'm just worried that the smell invades the entire cabinet. Can we look and see what your spices look like?

Let's talk about this for a second. You've probably noticed that these first two are extremely organized, everything is as it should be and these, this is my comfort zone here, you know, and it totally works for me. I'm completely fine with my mess, so when I moved to New York, my mom basically took a bunch of spices from her cabinet and put them in. these tupperware containers and labeled them in both Hindi and English. One thing my mom taught me that I think is just brilliant is storing spices in old pill containers because they have like a child lock.

This is our ajwain. Here is turmeric. This is our secret family spice. It's called adam masala, it tastes like a more original and spicy version of chaat masala, but it's been in our family for about 100 years and only one person knows how to make it. It was made in India and shipped to me. it's the spice you probably use the most, this is my chat masala, whether it's mtr, that's my other favorite brand or bud shot chat masala which I use all the time, you can smell it, what would you say are your five pantry essentials? garlic chaat masala my turmeric cumin seeds, you are about to see how well organized my pink masoor dal kitchen is, it cooks very fast, this is my sophisticated organization system, which is medicine jars, quart containers and bags ziploc, oh this is the other thing I like, actually you should have made it, this is a snack because it really is my favorite snack.

These are idlis from Italy, they are rice cakes from South India and I never don't have an Italian rice mix that is an Italian manufacturer that I bought for like a dollar in Delhi, Italy, usually. The kind of thing that you spend a lot of time steaming, it takes a lot of active effort, but I just mixed that mixture with water, but in the Italian machine you put them in the microwave for a minute and out comes magically fluffy Italia. How does that sound? Yes, do you want me to do it? It literally takes a minute.

Yes, let's do it. Do you need me to come to this? Can? My most used kitchen appliance is my microwave. I love microwaves. I know there are people who do it. I'm very snooty about microwaves, like we don't use microwaves, I think everyone should use their microwave more, I really got this down to a science, you're going to say how to cook Italy in 50 seconds, you're about to watch while This is microwave, we have 24 seconds to make chutney. I will mix this chutney powder with olive oil and that is literally how the chutney is made. Our Italians are ready, so you open this and then they come out like I'm telling you this. it's like a magic device oh it's divine, you could use a light on top of hot garbage and it would taste great, yes, it's a great snack prepared for that moldy sandwich we found in the refrigerator, okay, let's talk about the methodology behind it. how you decided where things go, I wish there was more rhyme or reason, like here are the things I reach for a lot, like knives, cutlery, cutting boards that I put there, it's funny that the cutting board is like it's from the my parents' kitchen. which they bought when they immigrated to this country in 1980. a lot of these things are like this, like these, these are the other most used items in my kitchen, they're called katori, they're these stainless steel bowls that you can buy them for. like 50 cents at an Indian grocery store, I think these came with my parents from India, like a single scoop of ice cream would fit here.

I love it, I love little kitchen appliances like this, it's great because I make a lot of chunks, which is tempered spices it's like when you just heat up some oil or ghee, add spices to it, toast it and then I usually pour it on top of the dal, it's perfect, who doesn't want a small pot and I'm left handed? and many of them are designed for right-handed people, but for some reason the slots on this Turkish coffee warmer are left-handed friendly If you were a kitchen tool, what would you be my garlic press? I know it's very controversial but I love hot garlic presses, take 2019.

I know what I love as it makes a roll and does it very well. I'd like to think that's hopefully what I'm looking to do, since most of my kitchen organization isn't great. I feel like it's hard to have skeletons in your closet when all your closets are full of skeletons. Yeah, I'm not very proud of this cabinet. We simply have too many measuring utensils, like all the teaspoons you could ever want. The cup measures another game. cup measures another set of cups more measures more teaspoons icing tips, you know, when you want to casually frost a cake, I use my blender, my Instant Pot, but of course, the stand mixer gets pride of place because you know it's the stand mixer.

I'm not allowed to use the stand mixer. Fun fact is that this toaster oven didn't fit in this kitchen, so I literally took a saw and shaved it to make it fit. What a load of soda would I have bought this if it hadn't been free? maybe not, I mean it feels a little luxurious. I love collecting little novelty glasses, this one is from the US Open in 2013. Like I'm totally the person who would spend like 12 on a beer at the Broadway show to get the glass. comes with it, this is where we keep all our tupperware.

My family used to live in the Philippines and my mom found these really fun tupperware from Manila. This is probably my favorite storage item and it just reminds me of living in manila which was amazing I love these again my mom bought them for me like any item in my kitchen which is good my mom is usually connected to it from somehow I love quarter sheet pans again, it's like the small kitchen items thing, I cook a lot To start with, these things are very useful. What is your least favorite part of your kitchen? Oh, so many things.

I don't like the lack of counter space, although we've made up for it with this kitchen island. I used to hate that fact. which, like the living room and the kitchen, were the same, but now it's nice for entertaining because people are sitting on the couch and you can cook or snack or prepare and people are hanging out playing the piano. I can play a thousand miles on the piano it's a song by vanessa carlton heading downtown while the roommate literally plays like chopin thank you so much for coming to my kitchen uh i think i'm gonna go eat some more bye bye Italy, I'll be back for a bit more, yes, please come back in a minute or less.

This is funny, it feels funny.