(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
"The Great British Baking Show" (ph) or "Bake Off" as it's known across the pond, has featured many contestants who have become fan favorites for surviving bread week and battling pies prone to soggy bottoms. But perhaps none is more beloved than the mom of three who wowed judges with her triple-tiered lemon drizzle wedding cake - 2015 winner, Nadiya Hussain.
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NADIYA HUSSAIN: I am never, ever going to put boundaries on myself ever again. I'm never going to say I can't do it. I'm never going to say maybe. (Crying) I'm never going to say I don't think I can. I can, and I will.
MCCAMMON: And she has. Ever since then, Nadiya Hussain has become a culinary star in the decade since, with multiple TV shows and cookbooks. And she joins me now from the U.K. to talk about her latest book, "Cook Once, Eat Twice: Time-Saving Recipes To Help You Get Ahead In The Kitchen." Welcome, Nadiya.
HUSSAIN: Thank you so much for having me. What an introduction.
MCCAMMON: You know, one of the things I love about this cookbook is that it really seems to be all about simplicity and efficiency. You know, it's divided into these sections with names like Back To Basics and Loving Your Leftovers. But I went straight for the chapter called Two Dishes because, like you, I am a mom. I'm busy. I just love the idea of getting more mileage out of a round of cooking. So what inspired this approach to cooking?
HUSSAIN: Essentially, all it is is I'm making a huge batch of something and then I'm splitting it into two and then turning it into something else, so it doesn't feel like you're having the same meal twice. So you've got something like a beef stroganoff, which I'll turn into a stroganoff pie, or a Bolognese that I'll turn into a chili, or a carrot soup that I'll turn into a carrot and cod curry. One of my kids' favorite is the corn chowder that I turn into little individual pies that we take to the park. So, yeah, there's so many ways of being inventive and creative with one dish.
MCCAMMON: Just so you know, last night, I just wanted to try this out, and before I went to bed, I made the chicken curry.
OK, so the first step for this one is to heat up the oil and add garlic, ginger paste and then, eventually, onions and salt. So we'll start with the oil.
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MCCAMMON: The onions are starting to boil.
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MCCAMMON: They're not quite golden yet. It might need a little bit longer.
I'm a big fan of curries. I loved this one. I have one question, though. So the onions - it says to wait till they're a golden brown. And for me, like, they just kept cooking and they got really soft, but they didn't turn brown. And I have to confess, I quit before they turned brown. I didn't quit the recipe, but I moved on. What did I miss there?
HUSSAIN: Sometimes, you just have to crank the heat up and get it really caramelized because everything has a little bit of sugar in it, and it needs, like, a high heat and get them to color quickly and then turn it down. And that's when they'll start to brown. But well done for persevering. The thing is, with onions, with any good curry, the onion is the start. But if you don't show your onions a little bit of love, you don't get the best out of them. And I always give myself a good 15, 20 minutes to really cook down the onions. And when you've done that, you have the start of a really good dish.
MCCAMMON: So that was the first step - the curry. You set that aside and make this second dish, the orzo.
I made the chicken curry last night. I've got half of it put away in a storage container, putting that in the refrigerator. And then this is part two. So this is a whole separate meal. So it says, start by putting half the curry in a pan, adding the orzo and cooking over high heat until the orzo is combined. OK.
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MCCAMMON: How does this typically play out for you? Do you make it one night, feed it to your kids, put it in the refrigerator, come back?
HUSSAIN: Yeah. So what I tend to do is make the chicken curry, see how much of it they eat. And normally, with a dish like this, they would normally eat half of that in one night, and then I'm usually left with the other half. That's why I've kind of increased the volume of the curry. Once it's cooled down, I might pop it in the freezer and make the chicken and orzo another night. That's why I kind of bulk the recipes up, so you can get two dishes out of them.
MCCAMMON: That's what I was going to ask - you can freeze it?
HUSSAIN: Yes, absolutely. There's very few things that you can't freeze. I love my freezer. It's one of the best ways to save money, to save time, to save ingredients. I save everything, down to my potato peelings. When I peel any root vegetables, whether that's parsnips, carrots, potatoes, swede, I will pop the peelings into a freezer bag, put it in the freezer, and then take it out and make a huge soup with the peelings afterwards.
MCCAMMON: You're really serious about not wasting food, and you have a whole section devoted to just that idea. I mean, you're doing really interesting things - even making a curry out of banana peels. Tell me more about where that sense of frugality comes from for you.
HUSSAIN: I think it definitely comes from growing up in an immigrant household. We did not waste anything. You know, I grew up with my grandma. She spent a lot of time with us. She essentially raised us when my parents weren't able to be around. So they had very little, and the little that they did have, they never, ever wasted anything, whether that was ingredients, whether that was old clothes - they would cut them up and turn them into blankets. And I always found that so intriguing. And it's something that I thought I'd never picked up until I had my own family and realized that actually, what I'd watched had been somehow, by osmosis, ingrained into me, and I just took to it. I love the challenge of asking myself, is there any way I can use that? I make prawn oil, which is delicious when you're making noodles as a condiment on top. I never chuck away my garlic peelings because you just pop them in the oven, roast those, and then grind them down with some salt, and you've got instant garlic salt. There's so many ways of saving and not wasting.
MCCAMMON: The one in that section that really caught my eye is the chickpea meringue. I love garbanzo beans - chickpeas. I use them all the time. I'd never thought to do anything with the water.
HUSSAIN: Yeah, so it's aquafaba, and when you pour that liquid out, it looks very much like egg whites. And there's some magic that happens when you whip that up and add a bit of sugar, and you have vegan meringues. I have a little tub of meringues that I make every time I drain a can of beans. No matter what kind of beans they are, I always make little meringues because I just can't throw them away. I just think, what a waste of a brilliant, magical product.
MCCAMMON: You know, we're speaking during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and I know you have another cookbook that's devoted to that. That book is called "Rooza." Is there one recipe that you particularly cherish this time of year, maybe something you like to break the fast with?
HUSSAIN: Well, we always break our fast with cold water and a date. But the one thing that we have to have on our table every year is samosas. Every culture has its own version of a pastry filled with delicious things. Often, they're filled with, like, spiced lamb or spicy potato and peas or chicken, tuna. There's so many variations. And my kids absolutely love them, and I make them by the hundreds.
MCCAMMON: OK, let's end on a sweet note. Your father ran a restaurant. I want to know more about this ice cream recipe that I gather he used to serve.
HUSSAIN: What they used to sell is kulfi, which is an Indian ice cream that's made with thick cream, lots of ground, whole spices, and it's made with bread. So it's got a lovely kind of just delicious, moreish texture when it's frozen. My dad would buy these prepackaged kulfis, and I was like, no, I've got to make my own version, so I kind of mastered my own version. It's so much better than the prepackaged stuff, but I think anything that you make from scratch is always going to be better than anything you buy from a shop.
MCCAMMON: Nadiya Hussain's new cookbook is "Cook Once, Eat Twice." Well, Nadiya, it's been so nice talking with you. Thank you so much for your time.
HUSSAIN: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBERT MAALOUF'S "ANA WIL LEYL (INSTRUMENTAL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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