Ahead of the release of her long-awaited second book, “Good Things,” chef and author Samin Nosrat appeared on the podcast Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, where she dropped — at least to all of us here at Kveller — a bombshell: She has Jewish heritage.
Nosrat’s father, a Baha’i refugee who fled Iran and immigrated to the United States, died a few years ago. On the podcast, Nosrat explores their challenging relationship and her complicated feelings surrounding his death in a poignant and beautiful conversation about grief. During her father’s final days, while searching for a living will, Nosrat found a secret YouTube channel with hours of videos of her father “ranting.”
“That’s… where he revealed we had Jewish ancestry, which had always been kept from us, and that actually sort of tracked when I traced some of the stuff… I was like, this is so cool! This is amazing! Like, there’s just things where I’m like, wow, I wish I had known this about myself,” she says. Though she doesn’t expand on her Jewish heritage any further in the podcast interview, Nosrat does note that a lot of Baha’i were originally Jewish.
Allow us to be the first Jewish pop culture website to say: Welcome to the tribe, Samin!
In her conversation with Fragoso, she details how a friend gave her Heschel’s 1951 book, “The Sabbath,” and how it helped her stay grounded after the success and subsequent loneliness that followed her first book — and how it inspired her next book.
“So many people I know at this time are searching for a sense of meaning and sort of trying to answer for themselves the question of what is a good life,” she says. “Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about Judaism being a religion not of things, but basically of time. And a big practice — a huge practice — in that is the carving out of this Sabbath.”
That message stuck with Nosrat, and she wondered how she could use her own expertise and resources to share it. The result is “Good Things,” which is less about cooking technique, as her first book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was, and more about using food and cooking to gather your people, nourish your relationships and ultimately live a good life.
“In this book, one way in which we can express that value [of time] and share this most precious currency with other people who we care about, is by eating with them, or cooking with them. It’s about sharing this thing that we will never be able to get more of,” she says.
At the end of the book, Nosrat lists her references and influences and includes “The Sabbath” as well as Judith Shulevitz’s “The Sabbath World.” Earlier in the book, Nosrat quotes Heschel in an essay titled “How to build an oasis in time,” which encourages readers to start a weekly dinner ritual with friends — and stick to it.
“By committing as a group, you’re pouring the foundation for a cathedral in time, to paraphrase the rabbi-philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel. Over time, the day will begin to feel sacred,” she writes.
Personally, Samin Nosrat herself tethers me to a place and time: It was through her podcast, “Home Cooking,” which premiered in the thick of 2020 lockdowns, that I felt moments of peace. I saved the episodes for moments I was doing a dreaded task in the kitchen — mainly making another meal for a 5-year-old with extreme cabin fever — and listening to her contagious laugh and easy banter with her co-host, Hrishikesh Hirway, helped me stay present and even grow to enjoy the endless chores. I grew so fond of her voice that I downloaded the audiobook of “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” to listen to on the long end-of-day strolls we used to call Sanity Walks.
So as a Samin Nosrat superfan, I love this Jewish journey for her, can’t wait to finish reading her new book, and am adding “The Sabbath” to my reading list immediately.
