7 questions with Yasmin Fahr!
plus her recipe for smashed turkey burgers with sumac onions + parsley!
Hi all!
I have a great Q&A with Yasmin Fahr for you today, plus her recipe for smashed turkey burgers with sumac onions + parsley (YUMMMM).
But first a few reminders:
My June class schedule is live! I’ll be teaching three times next month, starting this weekend!, and then will be taking my normal summer teaching break until the fall. So come join me and Haley once, twice or three more times before break!
SUNDAY JUNE 30: An Early Summer Picnic
Remember that even if you can’t attend live, if you sign up for class you’ll automatically receive the class recipe document and the class recording the same day class happens. As always, if money is a barrier and you want to come to a class, just let me know and we’ll work it out!
I am filling in for Daniela Galarza, who is on parental leave, over at The Washington Post’s ‘Eat Voraciously’ newsletter through July. If you’d like, you can sign up here (it’s free and you don’t have to subscribe to the paper to get it). It arrives in your inbox Monday - Thursday. Monday through Wednesday I feature a recipe from The Post’s archives and tell you all about it and Thursday I get to feature an original recipe (I’ve been doing a mix of my own and ones from friends, too).
If you want to hear more about the work I do every Monday with my friends at Common Table (Emmet, Stephen, and Timmy), sign up for Full Fridge Club: Dishing it Out. It’s a monthly newsletter and contains notes about our monthly menus, queer history from my pal Timmy, and at least two recipes written by me every month for paid subscribers. And more! It’s great!
Lastly, my recorded classes! You can browse all of previously recorded classes here (there are currently 99!!) — they’re all available for purchase and include the class recipe document + recording.
I am so excited to share ‘SEVEN QUESTIONS’, a short Q&A I occasionally feature here, with Yasmin Fahr. Yasmin is a regular contributor to NYT Cooking and her recipes and writing have appeared online and in print publications such as The Washington Post, Food52, The Kitchn, Guardian Feast, Today Show Food, Epicurious and others. Her third cookbook Cook Simply, Live Fully is out now! Yasmin recently moved to Menorca, the Spanish island in the Mediterranean, which is truly #goals.
I would honestly get the title of Yasmin’s new book — Cook Simply, Live Fully — tattooed. Cook simply, live fully, yes! That’s what I’m all about! Here’s the book:
And without further ado, here’s my Q&A with Yasmin and her recipe follows!
1. What do you hope readers will feel when they're in the pages of Cook Simply, Live Fully? Happy, supported and excited were my intentions with this cookbook. From a technical, cooking perspective, I really wanted it to be a "real life" cookbook, and I think that means capturing all of our different moods, emotions and needs, which I find, for myself at least, has quite a range. That's why the book is set up by the energy level you have to make dinner and your mood, with Lap Dinners not having traditional measurements and being more of a scoop from the jar and drizzle from the bottle type of recipe. Then there's a vegetable cooking chart for times when you just want someone to give you the answer and not think, which I get, too. It's also full of anecdotes and stories, which I think give life to a cookbook rather than it being just purely technical recipes.
From a life perspective, this book ended up being more personal than I had imagined it being when I first came up with it. I think, while this might sound really obvious to many people, it took me a long time (almost 40 years!) to realize that I could live life how I wanted to rather than what I thought was expected of me or how I thought "life should look" based on how I had grown up and my environment. My hope is that anyone reading it also feels inspired to do what is best for them, whatever that might be, even if it goes against "the norm".
2. How has working on this book impacted you? In an unexpected way, the book has taught me a lot about myself and pushed me to grow. I wrote it during such a transitory period of my life, in the midst of two moves and a general life upheaval/change, that it helped me explore what I wanted this new chapter of my life to look like and reflects this process. In many ways, the book is about being open and free and living the life that I feel inspired to live, even if that looks completely different than what I thought it would, but it still has remnants of the part of me that's organized, feels the need for a plan and safety. I think it has taught me to trust more, in myself and in life, rather than being so anxious about it all, which is hard as I'm an anxious, overthinking person! What I find the most interesting is that I wasn't really aware of this as I wrote the book—I just wrote what felt right to me and now that I've been talking about it and reflecting on it, it's clear that a part of me knew the change I wanted and needed to make, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time.
3. What would you say to anyone itching to move somewhere totally new? Do it! It probably feels impossible and way too difficult, and, yes, I won't deny that moving in general is an exhausting experience, but it's actually a lot easier than I thought. I think the most difficult part was getting out of my head, ignoring the thousand excuses I made for why I shouldn't do it, and actually committing to doing what I wanted. There are definitely adjustments now that I'm here, I don't want to say it's smooth sailing and life is perfect now that I followed my heart—there have definitely been some Under The Tuscan Sun moments when it feels like everything is falling apart. And it can be tiring to communicate as I'm still learning the language, but, overall, it's the best thing that I've done for myself. So, I hope you do the scary thing and choose what makes your heart sing!
4. You are such an avid traveler. Where are you off to next? Or where would you like to go next? I'm heading to London next weekend but, other than a trip to the States for a belated book tour in July, I'm visiting Normandy in September, which I'm excited about. If I can swing it, then I would really love to commit to spending one month of each year in a new country. Hopefully working remotely and then doing some local travel while I'm there. A good friend just moved to Melbourne, and I've never been to Australia or New Zealand, so I'm thinking January of 2025 might be the time to spend there. But, I also haven't been to much of Asia outside of mainland China, Hong Kong and Indonesia, so I would like to spend time there as well. Plus, there's so much of Spain that I haven't seen, and I'd really like to go beyond just the big cities and explore the countryside and lesser known areas as the more I'm learning about Spain and its traditions, the more I'm fascinated by it. So much to see in the world!!
5. What's always in your suitcase that might surprise someone? I have these little blue "foot savers" from Yamuna, who is based in New York. I started using them about 15 years ago as it was hard for me to be barefoot in yoga, which I got really into at age 23 and still continue today, because I used to wear orthotics in sneakers and thought I needed that arch support, which I couldn't get barefoot. A friend introduced me to Yamuna and this idea of body rolling and working your feet, and it changed my feet as I no longer wear orthotics and have no problems being barefoot. So they have literally traveled the world with me. They are always in my suitcase so I can do my exercises, which take about 2 minutes, even though I don't remember to do them every day (oops). I'm truly amazed that I haven't left them somewhere as they've probably been to at least 200 odd hotels with me over the years when I was doing my former hotel inspector job.
6. What was the last thing you cooked or baked? Last night I made a super lazy one-pot tomato pasta with kale. I essentially added tomato paste to oil, along with some anchovies, then added water and the pasta, stirring in the kale near the end. I had camped at my friend's finca (farm) the night before and spent the day helping him with his goats and other things on the farm, so I was super tired and just wanted a bowl of something comforting. Noodles of any sort are my comfort food.
7. First thing to come to mind right now: what was your favorite thing to eat when you were a kid? I loved and still love labneh and pita sandwiches. I was obsessed with our toaster oven as a kid, so I would heat up a pita and then add the thick yogurt to it so it becomes melty (same with Nutella). It's still something I eat when I don't feel like making anything and just want something simple and satisfying. Now, I might jazz it up a bit by adding a drizzle of oil and maybe some za'atar, but even just plain it is so delicious.
PHOTO ABOVE / HEADNOTE + RECIPE BELOW ALL FROM YASMIN’S NEW BOOK: COOK SIMPLY, LIVE FULLY
smashed turkey burgers with sumac onions + parsley
One of my favorite things to order at a Persian restaurant is some type of kebab. The meat usually comes with a giant mound of yellow-hued rice in the center of the plate and plump tomatoes, their skin blackened from the grill, and served with sumac. The latter is usually in a shaker-style jar, the purple-tinted equivalent of dried oregano, Parmesan, or red pepper flakes at a pizza place, except this is generously sprinkled on the meat, lending its lemony flavor and coarse, salt-like texture. Here sumac is used both inside the turkey to flavor it and in the lightly pickled onion and parsley salad. You can always swap the onions for thinly sliced cucumbers, if you prefer.
Serves 4
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
4 teaspoons ground sumac, divided, plus more as needed for serving
3 limes, halved
Salt
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Keep Calm & Cook On to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.