Late Night host, Stephen Colbert, has touched the hearts of several Indian Westerners with his show’s recent segment - a cooking workshop with a local New York Indian immigrant.
In the segment, Colbert talks about an organisation called The League of Kitchen, which allows New Yorkers to take cooking workshops with people who have migrated to New York from all over the world, ensuring the recipes you learn are authentic.
Lisa Gross, the founder of The League of Kitchens, told Colbert the concept for The League of Kitchen came to her when she tried replicating her grandmother’s recipes with only a cookbook in hand and found all her dishes lacked an authentic touch.
"My Korean grandmother lived with us when I was growing up... [but] she always would shoo me out of the kitchen and said 'You should go study,'" shared Gross.
As a result, Gross never learned to cook Korean dishes in the authentic way.
“Wouldn’t it be amazing to find people like my grandmother, all over the world in New York City to cook with and to learn their family recipes,” she added.
For the show's segment, Colbert attend one of The League of Kitchen’s workshops – a five-hour immersive course on Indian cooking with a woman named Yamini Joshi.
Now a naturalised American citizen, Joshi moved to New York in 1999 from Mumbai, India, and lives in Queens with her husband and three daughters.
Colbert gets his dance on with cooking teacher Yamini Joshi. (CBS) Source: CBS
In 2009, she turned her passion for cooking into a business, catering for non-profit and corporate events around the city.
With The League of Kitchen, she holds intensive workshops on North and South Indian cuisines, all conducted from her home in Queens.
Once Colbert began the workshop, it did not take long for the jokes to start rolling in.
"Tumeric, garam masala, fenugreek – are all the spices in Indian cooking named after Game of Thrones characters?" Colbert jokes to which Joshi replies a with a cool “yes.”
When cooking some green chowli (or long green beans), Colbert asked, “If you cook it too long, will it be chowli brown?”
He even likened the billowing of roti breads under a gas flame to a “whoopee cushion”.
The entire segment comes after immigration issues have been at the fore of many US presidential candidates' speeches.
Through this segment, Colbert hoped to negate some of that hostility.
Colbert learns about Indian spices. (CBS) Source: CBS
Colbert and Joshi with some green chowli. (CBS) Source: CBS
“Wow that looks like a whoopee cushion!” said Colbert. (CBS) Source: CBS
Pointing to a fridge magnet, Colbert asks,“Where in Indian is that?” taking a jibe at cultural ignorance in America. (CBS) Source: CBS
“We’re all descended from immigrants,” he said, “so we should be able to find common ground. That we don’t immediately build a wall around.”
Watch Part 1 and 2 of Colbert’s cooking lessons with Joshi below.
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