A Nice “Cronchy” Salad
From Diaspora Spice Co. founder Sana Javeri Kadri on this week’s Radio Cherry Bombe
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Sana Javeri Kadri never takes the easy way out.
The founder of Diaspora Spice Co. could have written a cookbook with a bunch of recipes that use her spices, shoot it in a studio, call it a day. Instead, over the slow process of six years, she collected recipes from 40 of her farm partners. “It was madness… but it was also epic,” she tells Kerry Diamond with whip-smart humor and brutal honesty in today’s episode of Radio Cherry Bombe.
She realized that the “best meals for the past nine years of my life have been sitting cross-legged on our farm partners’ floors, eating super fresh, seasonal, delicious farm food,” and she wanted to share those unique recipes, like the crunchy cabbage and noodle salad singju we’ve excerpted—a dish you’d be hard-pressed to find on a menu in the States. This book is a goldmine.
Sana worked with recipe developer Asha Loupy to cross-test and write them in the formal cookbook style because “not a single one of our farm partners has an oven.” The book isn’t about Sana, but her farm partners: “It’s a book about the women who both run and work on the farms that we work with. Their labor is so often uncompensated, taken for granted—whereas they’re really the ones pushing culture forward.” She was adamant that each partner be paid standard recipe developing rates and that their stories be prominent in the book. Photographer Melati Citrawireja traveled across India and Sri Lanka to meet them, and her photos capture the farmers with ear-to-ear grins that made us tear up a bit. It’s beautiful work.
Snag it: The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook
Seek it: Five Morsels of Love by Archana Pidathala is the “IYKYK cookbook” that’s Sana No. 1
Cook it: This recipe for singju was inspired by one at the Ukhrul Ava Women’s Market, the largest entirely women-run market in Asia. It’s a mix of “cronchy” cabbage (thanks for that word, Sana), beans, instant noodles, and a nutty black sesame dressing. Meet your new summer slaw.
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really interesting interview — didn't know much about Sana, but also revealing info about the cookbook-making process, and food biz world too