Growing up mostly vegetarian, Khushbu Shah uses side dishes as the stars of the show

Food writer Khushbu Shah, former editor of Food & Wine, wrote one of the most fun cookbooks to come out in 2024, Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora. Khushbu has strong opinions about Thanksgiving side dishes. 

Evan Kleiman: Before we get there, can you just remind us what "Amrikan," the title of your cookbook refers to?

Khushbu Shah: Yeah, "Amrikan" is how Indians say "American" and so my book is all about the food of the Indian American diaspora — what Indian food looks like in this country, essentially, America with a desi accent.

Growing up in an Indian household in Michigan, what did Thanksgiving look like?

Khushbu Shah: I did not grow up with the standard turkey and the mashed potatoes and the cranberry sauce and the pumpkin pie-like situation. Things could have looked very different every year. Actually, usually it was just an excuse to gather with a number of family friends, and there was always Indian food. Then we usually would have pie at the end. As I got older, I would make more and more demands for things. Or we do mishmashes of things. We would do sweet potato samosas with a cranberry chutney, fusion-y twists on things. Sometimes we would make a bunch of Mexican food or Italian food. We would throw down, the table would be very full, it was just never quite the traditional "American Thanksgiving." I also grew up in a very vegetarian family, so turkey was of zero interest to us. 

I love the idea of your table so much.

Khushbu Shah: It was always delicious, and I took many, many naps. Also, the weird thing about my family too, is we would never eat at 2 or 3 pm. We would eat at 7:30 or 8 pm on Thanksgiving. So you eat the whole day, then you eat this gigantic dinner at night, and then you go to sleep. 

Growing up in Michigan, Khushbu Shah experienced her mother's Indian dishes, which featured products off American supermarket shelves. Photo by Alex Lau.

Let's talk about these sides. Having looked at some previous lists of yours, I have to ask, why does corn rank so low on the list? 

Khushbu Shah: Corn can be such a magical, starchy, wonderful vegetable. I just think the way it's often treated, especially on classical American Thanksgiving tables, it just doesn't get the treatment it deserves. Corn is like the tofu of the vegetable world, in so many ways. It could hold on to a lot of flavors and I think it's very underutilized. So I get kind of bored with the way people do it.

How would you do it?

Khushbu Shah: I would go the Indian route or the Mexican route. Cotija, a good amount of spice and heat, some cheese, some lime, an acid hit, kashmiri red chili powder. Toss that all together and make it a spicy, cheesy side. 

Would the Indian hit be like a South Indian poriyal situation?

Khushbu Shah: That would also be delicious, where you stir fry it with some coconut and some curry leaves, maybe some mustard seeds. That could be so good. But I actually love it Indian street corn-style, which is kashmiri red chili powder, a ton of butter, some salt, a lot of lemon, then shredded cheese on top for good measure.

Arielle Johnson: Is that on or off the cob? 

Khushbu Shah: Off, yeah.

It's so similar, the Indian and Mexican ways.

Khushbu Shah: There's a lot of overlap between Mexican and Indian cuisine. I think it makes a lot of sense why there's a lot of mutual love and appreciation for each other's cuisines between the cultures. 

What vegetable are you chasing as a Thanksgiving side?

Khushbu Shah: I love squash. I'm a big squash girl, and I think it's very seasonal in that regard, too. And do mashed potatoes count as a vegetable? I really love a potato in any format, multiple potato formats. In fact, mashed potatoes are also something I didn't really grow up eating but came to experience as a teen, and they've been in obsession ever since, especially when you finally get the Robuchon-style potato.

The potato with four pounds of butter.

Arielle Johnson: Yeah, equal weights, potato and butter or go home, right? 

Khushbu Shah: Yeah, exactly. The first time I really had mashed potatoes was at an Applebee's where they do it with skin on mash, but I also have a soft spot for that, too. I like them all.

You're in love with squash. Tell me what you would do with it as a Thanksgiving side. 

Khushbu Shah: I like to treat it like a main. I eliminate turkey from the Thanksgiving table. I just really don't care about it so much that it doesn't take up any space on the table for me. Instead, I like to treat a squash, or a larger format vegetable, or something like pasta, like a main. I would hasselback a squash, then maybe pour some sort of pomegranate-type glaze on there, a lot of fresh herbs or something like that. I always love cheese layered into things, so when you hasselback something, you can insert little cubes of cheese in between each layer for it to crisp up really nicely. 

Or, I actually have a version in my book, where I carve out an entire squash. You can use butternut squash. You can use an acorn, whatever squash you like, you'd use a pumpkin. I bake biryani inside of the squash. The squash cooks as the rice is cooking, so you just cut the squash into quarters, then you get this really nice layered biryani, where you can actually eat the full thing.

That sounds so delicious, and I'm sure it looks really impressive. Are there any tricks to making the squash and the rice be properly cooked at the same time? I would be fearful that my rice would be perfect and my squash would still be hard.

Khushbu Shah: Yeah, absolutely. Par boil the rice, always. That's a very typical biryani move. But the rice can handle quite a bit of cooking in the oven. The squash, make sure to poke a bunch of holes in. You also don't want one that's too thick. I make sure to really season the squash properly. I will rub a lot of oil. I'll rub garam masala, some salt all over the squash, too. You get a lot of flavor out of the squash. And then just a bit of patience.

Arielle Johnson: I'm pretty sure, molecularly speaking, in terms of overcooking rice in the oven versus on the stove top, I think it's a matter of putting too much water inside of the rice grain versus heating it for too long. Yeah, if there's a limited amount of water, it's gonna absorb whatever's there. So you can kind of keep heating it up and the starch granules aren't gonna melt into nothing the way they do if you over boil a pot of rice.

Khushbu Shah: I love this. I love when science can actually back up the thing that you feel like works.

Arielle Johnson: I don't think science makes any aesthetic decisions. I think you decide what you like, and then we try to figure out why it's different.

Khushbu, is there a food that you consider the official food of Thanksgiving? Pumpkin pie? Mac and cheese?

Khushbu Shah: Yeah, those two are non-negotiables for me.

Tell me about your mac and cheese.

Khushbu Shah: I love to do an Indian-American Thanksgiving. I have a makhani mac and cheese in my book, which is essentially all the best elements of a butter chicken or a butter paneer or a paneer chicken masala, that saucy, tomato-y, all the warm spices. 

"Amrikan" is how Indians say "American," explains Khushbu Shah, whose debut cookbook honors the Indian diaspora. Photo courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company.