In Episode 004, Taryn talks to Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju from Urban Farmie about her foodie adventures and how she learned to grill meat for her carnivore husband! They go over Shruthi’s foodie background, the grilled foods she loves as a vegetarian, how she learned to cook for her Nigerian husband who loves to eat meat, and some of her favorite grilled foods. Listen in to hear some of her tips for getting started with grilling meat!
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Guest Details
Connect with Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju from Urban Farmie.
Bio: Shruthi is the recipe developer, photographer, and blogger behind Urban Farmie. There she posts vegetarian and vegan recipes that draw on her experience traveling to, living in, and working in over 60 countries! Her goal is to get people excited about cooking in a way that’s global, seasonal and sustainable. She has two graduate degrees from Stanford, one focused on food systems, and is a former employee of the United Nations World Food Programme. She’s been a vegetarian all her life and currently lives in the Seattle area with her husband, who is a meat-eater.
Resources mentioned
- Homemade Naan Bread by Urban Farmie
- Grilled Asparagus by Urban Farmie
- Thermoworks Thermometer (affiliate link)
Transcript
Taryn Solie: Welcome to the grill like a mother podcast.
Hello grillers. I’m so excited for you to hear the super fun conversation I had with Shruthi from Urban Farmie. She has such an interesting background and we had a great time talking about how she learned to grill. My mouth was literally watering when she described what some of her and her husband’s favorite grilled foods are.
And I am betting yours will be too, before we begin, a quick reminder to please rate and review this podcast. It really helps. And I would be so thankful for the support. Now let’s get to the interview.
Hello today on the podcast, we have Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju. Shruthi is the recipe developer, photographer and blogger behind Urban Farmie. There she posts vegetarian and vegan recipes that draw on her experience, traveling to living in and working in over 60 countries. Her goal is to get people excited about cooking in a way that’s global seasonal and sustainable. She has two graduate degrees from Stanford, one focused on food systems and she is a former employee of the United Nations World Food Program. She’s been a vegetarian all her life and currently lives in the Seattle area with her husband who is a meat eater. Shruthi, welcome to the podcast.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Thank you so much for having me on
Taryn Solie: I’m so excited to chat with you today. Um, I think there’s a lot of fun topics for us to kind of talk about, but I want to first get into your food background.
So maybe let’s start with your studies. How did you get into food systems?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I, my undergraduate background is actually in energy engineering.
Taryn Solie: Oh, wow.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: However, I think even when I was in college, I was always really interested in food and food’s kind of driven a lot of my decisions, both in like day-to-day life, as well as kind of these broad, you know, big life, life changes.
Uh, and I really got into the intersection of energy and agriculture. So when I was in college, I launched a startup in Kenya building small scale greenhouses for farmers. Uh, and then before I knew it, and one thing led to another, I was working for the United Nations on this topic, um, and then decided to kind of pursue my interests a little bit more systematically and ended up at Stanford, um, pursuing a joint degree, uh, one in food systems and the other’s an MBA.
So, and now I work in the space!
Taryn Solie: That’s. I mean, that’s really amazing. You’re saying, oh, one thing led to another and I started working for the United Nations and that’s not where my others tend to lead, but that’s pretty, that’s pretty amazing.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Thank you.
Taryn Solie: So then, um, what sort of – you traveled, you traveled both for work and pleasure. And how did that kind of influence like the food that you ate and just kind of your food philosophy in general.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, I was raised vegetarian, um, all my life. Um, part of that is cultural. You know, my parents are, there’s a religious reason behind it, but when I first moved to the U S uh, I was 17, uh, and my parents – um, I moved by myself.
And so there was just this sense of how do I feed myself.
Taryn Solie: Sure, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Having been used to, you know, mom’s amazing cooking all my life. Um, and I think I was, I was kind of, uh, hesitant to stray away from vegetarianism. I think partially it’s just my own philosophy that, you know, in order to eat meat, I should be okay with being able to say, for instance, watch an animal, get killed.
Taryn Solie: Right, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Very squeamish around that. So I think it was just a personal choice over time. And so, but then once I got here and then I started working for the UN and also like through college, I started traveling a lot for work. Uh, and for pleasure alongside, uh, and it was always kind of an adventure to find vegetarian options, in all these different places.
Uh, I started collecting cookbooks as a result in order to try and kind of understand if there’s like a traditional recipe and how can I make this vegetarian? How can I, you know, modify this so that I will be able to eat it. And it kind of became, like, this whole adventure, which I think eventually culminated in my blog as well.
Um, but I think that’s probably, you know, I’ve always loved good food and I’ve always believed that being vegetarian doesn’t mean that I needed to skip out on really good food.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: So yeah, I think that’s kind of been the philosophy behind a lot of my pursuits in life. Um yeah, and the blog.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, for sure. So now you recently got married. Congratulations on that. And your husband is a meat eater. So how – talk through how that’s been kind of coming – you’re a vegetarian and then you marry a meat eater and what kind of foods you cook and then also, you know, eventually we’ll kind of get into how you started grilling with that.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, so my husband’s Nigerian and in their culture, it is offensive to serve any meal without meat.
Taryn Solie: Oh goodness.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: So literally you could not find two polar ends of the spectrum.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: We would often joke when we first met and started dating that I come from a family that worships cows, he is, he does too, except on the plate.
Taryn Solie: Little different.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And so – I know – and so I think, I think one thing that was really important in our relationship early on was that I am, I’m not against eating meat, you know, I’m not, like – you know, I’m not trying to like espouse certain values of superiority in any way. It’s just, I’ve always made it clear that it is a personal choice. Um, and there are sustainable ways to incorporate meat in your diet and be respectful of what you’re consuming and all of that, um, in a manner that is sustainable and also just, you know, staying true to like the kind of foods you like.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And so I think, and also my husband cannot cook to save his life. Absolutely terrible. Like can boil water, maybe scramble eggs. That’s that’s the limit. Right. Um, and so I think what we ended up doing was, you know, when we started dating, it became very clear that I cared a lot more about food than he did.
And I also cared about what he was putting into his body, because he would just get all of this random stuff and I’m just looking at it and I’m like, what are you buying? Why are you eating this? And then so, but then, you know, of course I never cooked meat ever.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And so part of it became kind of almost like a scientific experiment of, you know, because I can’t taste it to tell whether it was good or not.
Taryn Solie: Right, that’s what I was thinking. I was like, how do you know if it’s done if it’s good, like, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: I know. And so I think it’s just relying on instinct in terms of like, you know, of course I follow a lot of big bloggers and, you know, trying to really understand kind of the science behind it. I love my thermometer, my meat thermometer, because I’m always cooking things to temperature.
Like I can’t tell – you know, I can’t rely on whether it looks done or it doesn’t look done. I usually just make sure that I cook it to a certain temperature. And that’s kinda how it started.
Taryn Solie: Which thermometer do you have? Do you mind my asking.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Thermoworks? I think.
Taryn Solie: Oh, they’re the best.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: I know. I like, I looked up best like meat thermometer or something. And then, you know, one of the bloggers that I follow had, like, literally had an Instagram story on this the same day. And I was like, oh, of course, like, yeah, I’m going to get this. And so I remained, uh, on the scientific side of things. And I think over time, you kind of start absorbing certain, um, instincts as well, you know, because I love to cook.
And so I think it was just kind of like extending that passion into an area that I, you know, of course I can’t taste, but that’s okay. Because I think the, the principles and the philosophy are still the same, you know, you kind of marinate something and the longer it stays marinated, the more flavorful it gets. Or slow cooking, or whatever it is.
I think you kind of just apply those principles for different things. And, and so now, you know, oftentimes like, and it’s funny because like when his family, when my husband told his family that he was dating an Indian vegetarian woman, that was their first question. Oh my God, is she gonna try to prevent you from eating meat? How is she going to cook meat for you?
Taryn Solie: The very first thing. Not is she nice.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Literally.
Taryn Solie: What about the meat?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: That tells you how important it is in his culture?
Taryn Solie: Yeah! That’s so interesting. Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And so now, you know, I’m very pleased to report that they have eaten all of my cooking and they are in love with it. So win win.
Taryn Solie: So how did you start getting into grilling. Did you start, you know, with like vegetables first or did you just go straight into meat and were like, we’re going to do this.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Jumped straight into it.
Taryn Solie: Okay!
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Because I think the funny part is like, I just moved to Seattle and you know, obviously Seattle has, has it’s weather, you know, and seasons.
Taryn Solie: I’ve very – born, born and bred here. I’m very familiar. Yes.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: That would be your Pacific Northwest, it is an acquired taste. But you know, my first summer here in April or so, I realized we were starting to hang out with friends and almost all it’s all outdoors. You know, you’re always outdoors. And I am such a big fan and I, it genuinely fills my cup and is so energizing to have people over.
I often say that food is my love language like that is how I demonstrate, you know, my affection for people. I am always understanding what they like and what they don’t like and making sure that I can incorporate, you know, allergies and things like that into cooking. And so it just was kind of one of those moments where we were like, well, you know, we want to host to people, but it’s kind of the summer.
And I was like, why don’t we just invite people over for a barbecue? Like, why don’t we just grill?
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And I used to live in Texas and you know.
Taryn Solie: Big barbecue down there.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Exactly. So one of my friends from – I called up one of my friends from Texas and I said, Hey, look. Never done this before. And so you need to explain this to me in as scientific a way as possible, because I have no idea if it looks good, what are I need to do?
And she was so patient and she sat me down, you know, we had a zoom conversation and she was like, okay, this is what you need to do. Here’s how you treat different types of meat. And I was like, why don’t we start with one, you know, I’m not going to like, go crazy. And so, yeah, we’ve picked up some meat and I, you know, the sides were kind of its own journey of like, okay, what do I eat?
And, you know, how do I kind of like incorporate my own dietary preference into this because I don’t want to just eat like raw, grilled vegetables.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Um, and so, but, you know, thankfully, like there’s just so many great vegetarian grilling options these days, like impossible burger, if you want to go kind of a plant-based meat route or, um, or even, you know, some of the like black bean burgers and things like that are excellent.
Really come a long way from back in the day when, you know, when I was in college and I would just be like, oh my God, this tastes like crap. Like I would rather just not go down this path at all. But yeah, I think that one thing led to another and before we knew it, we were hosting kind of a uh, grill party, if you will.
And we like took turns at each other’s houses. And then over the course of time, it also became a thing between me and my husband, like on Thursdays or Fridays, you know, when we are like winding down from the work week, he will go pick up like a really nice, you know, uh, cut of steak or, you know, ribs or whatever.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And I will pick up some burgers on the side and, you know, we’ll grill some vegetables. Usually I love making like grilled eggplant hummus.
Taryn Solie: Oh, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Or like asparagus, just like, you know, just kind of like slowly expanding. What we do and using the grill, uh, in a way to expand on my own culinary pursuits. Uh, yeah. Date night’s usually grill night at our house.
Taryn Solie: I love it. That’s great. So then what are some, what are some of your favorite things to grill for you to eat? And then what are some of his favorite things for you to grill?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: He loves, he loves a good grilled steak.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty good. So.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, I know. We got really like good kind of grassfed beef over here. And, you know, I had to get over my initial – there was a little bit of a hump in terms of like learning to cook beef, just because, you know, I come from a family that worships cows.
Taryn Solie: Right.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: But, you know, I think there’s, again, like I said, like there’s a way to respectfully do it. I’m very thoughtful in where I source the meat from. Uh, I have certain, like, stores that I buy from and, you know, things that I look for, I know now to look for marbling and what that means when you grill something. I know not to like, tamp down on it so the juices get away and all of these random things that I was like, That’s great.
Taryn Solie: Would have had no idea. Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: So I think for him, that’s probably one of the things that he loves grilling.
He also really loves, uh, bone-in like chicken drumsticks, um, cause it’s done a certain way in Nigeria, which is actually it’s grilled in Nigeria.
Taryn Solie: Ok.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Um,, and so he kind of marinates it in a, in a brine and then followed by, uh, a boullion and a pepper. Kind of like, you know, rub if you will.
Taryn Solie: Okay.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And it, it comes out, you know, it’s like a, it’s got a nice char on it. Uh, and he really loves it. It’s spicy. He loves spicy things. And so I think those are probably the two things, or actually there’s one more, there’s something called suya which is basically small cubed meat. So it’s almost like a kebab if you will, but it’s, it’s, you know, rubbed in dry spices. A lot of it.
I mean, it’s grilled. Um, and then you kind of like, have it in a plate then it’s like, you know, you eat it like with a little toothpick. It’s almost like a starter in Nigeria, which learned to grill. Um, so that’s probably his top three.
Taryn Solie: Okay. That sounds good.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah I know. It usually smells really good, you know, appreciating some of these things that I wouldn’t have thought about before. Um, I probably tend to keep things relatively simple. Like one of my favorite things to do is, uh, to make hummus with grilled eggplant. It turns out so good. The blistering of the eggplant, like I’ve tried it on a stove top many, many times, but for some reason the grill is always better.
Taryn Solie: How are you slicing your egg plant when you, or are you making –
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Oh no, the whole thing.
Taryn Solie: It’s the whole, you’re putting the whole thing on there.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah. You put the whole thing on there and you grill it and it like, you know, it just chars so beautifully. And then once it’s done, you kind of pick it up and let it cool down a little bit, remove the skin and then, you know, take out all the insides and make hummus with it. Smoky, just so luscious. It’s amazing.
Taryn Solie: Interesting. I have never, what, what else are you putting in the hummus? Are you putting like tahini in there or what else-
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Usually a little bit of tahini a little bit of, um, like obviously olive oil. Sesame seeds sometimes. Um, and just a pinch of like, red pepper also.
Taryn Solie: Any salt or no?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Um, usually not as much, we are – we tend to be low sodium. So sometimes we will like sprinkle when we are, you know, cause usually the bread or whatever we eat with tends to be savory enough. Usually finish off with a little bit of lime juice or lemon juice on top.
Taryn Solie: Yeah. Oh, that sounds so good. Now I’m getting hungry. Oh, that sounds good. I love that. So then what – these are some really great, both meat and vegetarian options. What sort of tips do you have for someone who is not experienced cooking with meat at all, but who maybe is in the same boat where they have someone they love that they want to cook for, or they’re having maybe people over and they’re like, oh, I should really learn how to do this. What sort of tips did you have for people?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: I’d probably say three things. The first thing is to not be afraid. I think there’s just this, I mean, grilling is such a kind of quintessential part of like American summer. Uh, and especially as an immigrant and someone who like, you know, did not grow up doing that. Like at the beginning, I was very hesitant, I would say, because it felt like, oh my God, what if I like, just completely mess it up?
Taryn Solie: Right? You don’t want to waste the food and you don’t – yeah, mm-hmm.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And so I think, but then in order to get better at it, like anything else in the world, you just have to do it and you might, it might not go perfectly the first few times. Like you just kind of have to like, let go off inhibition and, you know, realize that it’s just like any other cooking, you know, and, um, and just get into it.
And the second thing that I would say is kind of like what I did to find someone who is really into grilling. Talk to them about it, right. Because I think, I mean, I knew nothing at all about grilling, but now I feel comfortable enough where, you know, I will test recipes, like, you know, that I come up with and some of them go great, but some of them don’t go well and you kind of learn through that process, but really owe it all to my friend who was patient enough. It wasn’t a lot of her time. It took like 30, 45 minutes and we were catching up anyway. And she was actually grilling and she was like, showing me what she was doing
Taryn Solie: Oh, that’s nice. A full on demo.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Cause you know, in Texas you can grill pretty much any time of the year which is amazing. And so, you know, I think finding someone and just understanding, you know, how do they approach grilling is probably the second thing.
And then the third thing I would say is to like, not over do it. I think it’s, you know, it’s almost like if you really get good at one dish, you’re probably fine, you know what I mean? Like even for hosting people or whatever it is, if you’re really good at one dish you could, that could become your signature dish.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, for sure.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And in order to get good at one dish, like you just have to try a couple of things and, you know, I approach it super scientifically because I don’t taste the meat but as you mean you can taste it. You can also adjust to your own preferences, right? Like grills, um, and see whether it’s too done or it’s not done enough.
Like, do you like it charred or do you not like it charred, uh, and kind of like starting to go through that process of understanding, um, understanding what your own preferences are and not being afraid to experiment a little bit.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, for sure. Do you have, um, on your site, on your website, do you have some grilling, like not meat obviously, but, um, vegetable or fruit or any other sort of grilling recipes on your site that people can look at?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: It’s going up this month actually.
Taryn Solie: Oh, good. Okay. Well, we’ll definitely have to link to some of that in the show notes page when you have those up. That’ll be fun. Okay, good. So then last question for you. I think we’ve covered some really great things. Um, but the last question that I ask everybody is what is one of your favorite things? You mentioned the eggplant.
So we’ll, that’s a favorite, but also in addition to that, what are some of your favorite things either you’re currently grilling or just favorite in general.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: I’m going to go totally out of left field. This might not be something you’re expecting, but two of my favorite recipes to make on the grill are naan, naan bread.
Taryn Solie: Oooo.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And pizza.
Taryn Solie: Oh yeah. Pizza. Yeah. Okay. So similar, like both kind of like bread type things.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yup!
Taryn Solie: Did you start, was that kind of a, um, experiment to learn how to do those things?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, absolutely. Cause naan especially I think pizza is like kind of, you know, because I started making so much naan, we just expanded and ended up into pizza.
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: But naan is usually made in what is called a tandoor oven. So it’s like a round brick oven, um, that goes up to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, right?
Taryn Solie: Oh wow.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: It is hot. And what they do is they kind of like, you know, make they shape the non and then they’d just stick it onto the site of the drum and then pull it out with like a skewer of sorts.
Taryn Solie: Yeah, yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: And I was just thinking to myself, I mean, no oven is going to go to that unless you get like a specific pizza oven or something like that, we’re going to go to that, that level of heat. But I was like, hm. What if I just put this on the grill? You know, the grill gets really, really hot, probably a lot hotter than what I would expect from my oven or air fryer. So I was like, yeah, I was just gonna try it one day and oh my God, it just turned out so beautiful.
Taryn Solie: Oh, that’s amazing. Are you grilling like gas grill, charcoal grill.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju:Gas.
Taryn Solie: Gas, okay. And you were just putting it like on the grates.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah.
Taryn Solie: Wow.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Because it also gives a really nice…
Taryn Solie: Yeah.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: …char on it, which, you know, is something that you look for because when you, uh, when you make naan the traditional way, you also get those like a little bit of like burn spot or char spot, because it’s literally stuck to the inside of a very, very hot surface. And I find that the smokiness is really nice. It just comes out so wonderful. I mean, on a day-to-day basis or when it’s late raining like crazy in Seattle I make it on a cast iron skillet, uh, inside. But my preferred way is hundred percent to do it on, on the grill.
Taryn Solie: Oh, that is so interesting. So is that one of the recipes that’s going up on your website? Oh, it is no?
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: It’s already on.
Taryn Solie: Oh it’s already on the, okay. We’ll for sure link to that because that’s sounds super interesting and cool. I love that so much. Well, this is so fun. I’m so glad we got a chance to chat. This- I think there’s a lot of really great takeaways for people. Um, I want to give you a chance Shruthi, to let people know where they can connect with you.
Shruthi Baskaran-Makanju: Yeah, so I am Urban Farmie. So kind of like foodie, but farmie, because I also have a backyard vegetable garden, and I as, as do most Pacific Northwesterners, I realized after being here. Um, and so I’m just Urban Farmie on all of the social media handles.
So Pinterest. Instagram, all those things. So you can find me there. Um, and I also have a newsletter on my website, which, uh, I kind of send stuff out to every week. It’s usually very seasonal. Um, and it’s all of my best recipes. So if you have a chance, please do sign up.
Taryn Solie: Awesome. And we’ll include links to those in the show notes page. So people can go there and, um, click on over to all of your channels. And um, hopefully sign up your email because that I’m still, like, I’m thinking both about the eggplant and about the naan those both sounds so good.
What a fun conversation. I want to thank Shruthi for coming onto the podcast. You can find the link to her website, as well as some of the recipes she talked about on the show notes page, which you can get to by clicking the link in whatever podcasting platform you are listening from.
That’s it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep grilling like a mother.
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