Part II: Simona Terron The Heart Chef of Mumbai

Michael Dugan: 0:52

Let's move to getting into my favorite section which is let's get cooking. I want to share your passion with our listeners. So are there any chefs that you follow? Let's start with clubhouse. Who do you love on clubhouse?

Simona Terron: 1:07

this time? Okay, so Who don't I love. In food is religion itself, there's so many incredible chefs, the chef Chris Martin, with whom I do my spice advice rooms. And he's got this incredible gift of literally being able to pull recipes out of his head, like a magician would pull rabbits out of a hat. And he's, he's there on stage, we're discussing an ingredient of the week. And whether it's cardamom, coriander, or cumin or whatever, and people are saying, oh, you know, so I would like to do a savory recipe. And then I'm gonna, hey, can we do something with pork? Or can we do something with seafood or you do something with veg and, and you just put stuff together and he just creates this beautiful gourmet meal complete with garnish sauces, plating, complementary flavors, contrasting textures. Oh, my God, this is the gift and he shares it so generously. And it's just it's magical to experience you know, even though you can't watch it. hearing him talk about food is amazing. It's inspiring. And yeah, sometimes it's downright annoying. It's downright annoying. I'm like, how does he do that? But you do it to Simona. The thing is, I don't have the commercial training. And I already industry experience I know. So I love playing with it. And this is where I became friends with Chef Chris, because I'm like, Whoa, your concept of he's building an app, which allows him to do that for everyone, right? Where recipes will be generated just with you entering your ingredients and telling the app what you want to create. Like, if you want a starter or main or, or something with a super whatever. Well, let's give a shout out. What's the app called? He I don't think he's named the app yet. But yeah, but Chef Chris Martin has his brand is called Saving the passion. And he's he's so good in the app, but it's there is a website, etc. will share the link with you. I had had a similar idea where I wanted to do this fun thing with my, you know, instant Instagram friends and stuff where I would just ask them to throw me some ingredients, and I would create a recipe for them. So I started doing it with one of my friends on Instagram called Vaidehi. And she randomly once asked me like, okay, so I have like this, this, this this, and I don't want to do and I'm not really a great cook, I'm a decent cook, but I don't have the creativity or the confidence. And I'm like, You know what, we can both make both happen together. She had a very simple example. She'd never heard of arancini but she had sticky rice already cooked. She had sort of some, I don't know, some some vegetables or something, something leftover. And I told her about this thing called Orange genie and said You also have cheese and you also breadcrumbs, blah, blah, blah. And so she took these very, very Indian cuisine leftovers and made this beautiful Italian yummy starter and she was in love the second time, so we thought okay, maybe it's a fluke. You know, it was fine. Fine. forgot about it. Next time. She said okay, so I we have this thing called paratus which is just spice dough, which we then roll out into take, you know, rotis or a flatbread, and it's sometimes stuffed with mashed potato, or spiced cauliflower or both or other things. So she had the dough ready. And she said, Yeah, but I, I just don't want to make what I cause. I certainly don't. So don't instead switch cuisines. She switched disease. And she made she made gnocchi, I told her just use the puratta dough to make gnocchi. And she'd again never eaten gnocchi. And I told her to make it in a simple garlic butter instead of doing the tomato sauce and all for which she didn't have the time.

Michael Dugan: 4:56

Awesome.

Simona Terron: 4:56

Maybe sometime in the future with better resources and more time. I would love to do that where I walk into people's homes and say, All right, show me what's in your fridge. Let's make something together. It's like art. You know, you can you can take a blank canvas and just make something beautiful with very little if you have the heart and soul

Unknown: 5:15

and

Michael Dugan: 5:16

You're you know, you're a culinary artist, right?

Unknown: 5:20

I don't know

Michael Dugan: 5:24

Like when you can bring these things together and create it's it's like a canvas. It took me a long time to realize that about myself. My wife had to tell me that I was an artist because my mom was an artist. My wife is an artist and I'm like I I can't draw. I can't paint but boy, you know, I love to create and then take photos of food. That's really really fun to me that just enriches my soul, and I never realized it. I never really thought about it that way. But it probably came from my mom. So thanks, Mom. I know she'll listen to this. So Mom, thank you so much for giving me the creative gene.

Simona Terron: 6:02

I think moms moms everywhere. I think they do so much amazing stuff without even realizing and you know, plays all these embed, I would say all of these nuggets that activate later in life.

Michael Dugan: 6:14

And now we move to my favorite part of the episode. And that's let's get cooking with Simona Simona. Why don't you tell us about a kitchen disaster in your journey?

Simona Terron: 6:31

Well, thank you for asking, Michael. Because I feel like a lot of the time people focus on the mastery and the perfection and the creativity when it comes to anyone, not just chefs, home chefs, anybody. And we never talk enough about all the stuff that goes wrong, because we're human. And one of the things about me is that I love cooking, because it allows me to switch off my chattering mind, and just helps me do the one thing that I find a little challenging in life, which is focus. And either I hyper focus, or I'm very scattered. And when it comes to cooking, I love that I just get lost in the in the process and the prep, you know, just celebrating all those ingredients, I typically have two or three things going together, something's in the pressure cooker, when something else is in the oven, something else is chilling in the freezer, it's not supposed to freeze, it's just supposed to chill there, and then get it out for the next step. And all of this doesn't allow me time to basically feel sorry for myself or think about bad things, sad things, mad things. And I love that. Now what throws me off my game is when the doorbell rings, either it's a courier or the post or a misguided person who's looking for a different apartment or a different house and comes to mind. All of these things are a phone call or some thing or the other, that there's no one else to deal with. You know, I mean, I live alone, so I have to deal with this. And when that happens, that's when things boil over, or burn or get frozen when they're not supposed to. And oh my god, I can take that in my stride. Usually, if it's for me, because then it's always like, sure, I guess we're eating instant ramen today. And I do regret and resent the food waste. But when you're cooking for an order, you know, when you have hungry customers waiting, when you have, you've orchestrated everything in such a way that. You know what time the delivery guys coming, you know how much time you're gonna factor in for packaging the food and first cooling it down a little bit. You have all of that streamlined. And then you get thrown off your game because something gets burned, boiled over and spilled or frozen, where it's not supposed to be. And those are the disasters that I really, really hate. I just do not look for

Michael Dugan: 8:57

Any particular food or dish?

Simona Terron: 9:00

I think. Yeah, all the stuff that goes into the oven. Like when you're when you're when I'm baking, typically with every other dish identical, a little extra, because I have to weigh everything when I'm sending it across the portions, it's and so on and so forth. But when I'm baking, Because I have just a one very non commercial, non industrial oven, I gotta be mindful of how much time everything's gonna take how many batches I can put in. And so I stick to more or less than number that I have to prepare. And then when something burns all dead starting from scratch is just not an option. So yeah, bakes goodies. I'm usually extra careful. And I'm saving up to buy what dish what dish would you say has burned or what dish? So mostly desserts. My crumbles tend to be a little on the delicate side simply because that crumble on top. It needs to brown evenly so you can't rush it and put it at a higher temperature. You gotta take it low and slow. And my crumbles are amazing because people don't care what fruit is underneath there. But it's the crumble itself. If I have a few customers who order and say please extra crumbly, you know, so they want extra crumble just because the crumble is what makes that dessert. Amazing.

Michael Dugan: 10:27

Whats a crumble for our listeners out there?

Simona Terron: 10:29

Okay, so crumble is like it's very similar to a cobbler, but a crumble is you you cook you cook down any kind of fruit that could be stone fruit like apricots, peaches or plums, or it could be some good old fashioned apples, pears, even banana and essentially stew them a little bit with either cinnamon or some kind of fragrant spice, lots of sugar, and then it gets caramelized that goes as the base. And then you top it with what is essentially flour. The most simple things which make magical stuff, flour, fat, and sugar, more sugar. And you got to slowly roast this down the sugar caramelizes the fat melts, and it binds all that flour which gets nutty and toasty. And all that becomes this sort of sand, so to speak. Which if you clump in your in your fist, it kind of holds the shape for about two seconds before it falls apart. So you take those little clumps, and you place it on top of a foil container or a baking tray, usually for containers because then I just package those and send them out there so that you can eat out of them. You top it up with these sandy clumps, the fruit stewed fruit that is put in the oven. And what happens is the stewed fruit bubbled a little more and kind of gets more gooey and yummy. And the steam from that cooks through the crumble from below. But the dry heat of the oven from above also toasts that crumble that sand. So it all kind of clumps together and becomes a sort of firm with crumbly topping to the fruit below when you take a scoop of that, preferably with vanilla ice cream. It just melts in your mouth, you have the stewed gooey, soft, beautiful fruit, which is a little spiced. And then you have this crunchy crumble on top, which is also melting everything and it's it's divine, I would call the ice cream. It's hot and cold mixed in your mouth. What could be more fun than that? Wow, that does sound amazing. And it would be horrible to screw it up, right?

Michael Dugan: 12:39

I'll share a quick kitchen disaster. And I wasn't going to do this. But it's just boiling inside me, okay? Because it'll make you feel better. Make your audience feel better. I was in college a long time ago. And you know, I was going to hotel, restaurant, school, Hotel Restaurant Administration school. And so we did some cooking and we had, you know, some college courses mixed in it was mostly college curriculum. But there was some some cooking on the side. And I was experimenting. And I think it was making chocolate dip strawberries. And I put chocolate in the microwave. And I went down the hall and it caught the microwave on fire. And I will never forget that as long as I live do not put chocolate in the microwave, unless you are standing right in front of the microwave to melt it. Absolutely one tip. So I'm just sharing that publicly now. And also I will hear from my listeners.

Simona Terron: 13:38

I will have to add to that that yes, you have to be standing there in front of the microwave, looking through the glass. Put your nose up to the glass because you know radiation and all that. Yep, stand a bit away and do it in 32nd bursts never tried to do any of these melty things for like one long stretch because that's when you can't control it. And yeah, yeah, it's Oh, I feel so bad. Burnt chocolate. what it was a

Michael Dugan: 14:06

long time ago. It'll never happen again. I swear. And it's, it's nothing like that has ever happened to me since but it was just one of those fluky things, you know. Anyway. So, so why don't you tell us about Food is Religion clubhouse and especially just give us a taste of your spice room? Because that is amazing when you host this room on clubhouse.

Simona Terron: 14:33

Wow, thank you so much for asking me that because I love clubhouse where we met. It's where I met all of the amazing people. And the food is Religion Club, which is a fantastic family of food lovers of food creators, food business people, food scientists, and even people who talk about, well, of course chefs, right? But it's also for people who don't know how to cook are intimidated by cooking and only love to eat. They love coming to our room simply because they have to learn. And sometimes they're inspired and motivated to either try cooking themselves and what could be better than that. So I think food is religion for me is my community online community. That feels a lot more real because it's an audio only app. And so there's not so much of the focus on visuals, which is very much the case with most social other social media like especially Instagram, etc. Very optics heavy. Here. I could read my pajamas, no pajamas chilling with my cats sweating in the kitchen doesn't matter. I'm present at present in those rooms in which I am just listening, which usually never is I can't resist jumping up on stage or the rooms I'm hosting. Yeah, all feels very much more real than a lot of social media which is very curated. And very, like, you know, you don't know how many pictures somebody shot before they posted that one perfect looking picture. And being able to listen to people's voices and talk to them in real time across the globe, I think was a massive gift for many people during the pandemic. But the fact that I'm still on clubhouse, even now, two years later, is simply because of food is religion. A lot of the other rooms just don't appeal to me anymore. But I'm consistently there for photos, religion rooms whenever they are in my timezone. And I learn a lot from that. And it just gives me so much joy because food is the one thing that brings people together in a magical way. Irrespective of gender, creed, class language. English language many, but I think I've seen people in rooms who are there just so they can improve their English and food is a fantastic topic everyone can connect to. Spice Advice is the room I host every week, we just finishedroom number 28. It's been 28 weeks of doing this. And there have been gaps of course for you know, falling ill going on holiday work, don't just sometimes burn out. But 28 rooms in spice advice talking about, typically one spice every week. And we jump into the health benefits the history, interesting trivia, some crazy trivia sometimes. And of course recipes, because nature has given us so many of these gorgeous treasures. And we just have to learn how to unlock them and gather their benefits be a little bit wary of certain, you know, doing it, overdoing it or making sure we don't have any contraindications. And there's just so many beautiful things that we can learn and gain from which help us heal, which help us grow, which help us become stronger, strengthen our immunity and post COVID I think everybody knows that you can't really take any medicine as such to cure yourself from COVID so much as just taking excellent care of yourself and resting. And of course making sure you don't catch COVID By just raising your immunity. So a lot of spices have incredible immune response.

Michael Dugan: 18:17

a good word.

Simona Terron: 18:19

And, We just can drink them in a tea even if you don't know how to cook, you can just sprinkle it on top of your food or take it like a supplement sometimes. And I think that is the joy of the spice advice rooms. We also have pretty much covered a lot of the Indians, typically known as Indian spices, and started moving along to Asian themes and condiments. We just did a room on seaweed. Because, oh, why it's not necessarily a spice. It is a wonderful ingredient that can be played with in so many ways. And I learned today that it's not just an Asian thing south east or, you know, West, it's, it's like in many cultures, including Scotland, and Russia.

Michael Dugan: 19:03

Oh, my gosh, you are so knowledgeable.

Simona Terron: 19:05

I am not I have incredible comods. We'll always have people who joined the room right up on stage, or put it in the chat facts that are just mind blowing, because you're like, whoa, I thought I did all the research. You can never know everything. And for me, that's why I love the app, right?

Michael Dugan: 19:27

Because you never know what somebody's gonna say what direction you're gonna go in. It's like having the food party.

Simona Terron: 19:35

Participation is what makes it amazing. But when people come on stage and contribute and share their experience, the common comment in almost every space advice room if you sit and listen to 28 replays is one. Wow, I didn't know that. And I thought I knew everything about this XYZ teammates. Wow, I learned something that actually makes sense and seems less intimidating. And I could actually do that. And and three would be like, Oh, I thought everybody knew this. And I'm so glad I could come in this in this room and share that. Because now it turns out that not many of you did. And I feel so happy that I came up on stage. You know, this always happens and I feel very grateful to be part of this, literally of this magic. So yes, that's by surprise every Friday clubhouse.

timings are I think 9: 20:27

30am EST. It's 730 in the evening for me.

Michael Dugan: 20:33

You're in India and what part of India and why don't you tell us a little bit about where you come from I would love to thank you, Michael.

Simona Terron: 20:39

And yes, I'm from formerly known as Bombay. Now, Mumbai in India, it's on the western coast. It's one of the probably most well known cities in India simply because of, well, it's the financial capital, but that's not the reason why it's famous is because of Bollywood.

Michael Dugan: 21:00

Oh, of course, of course. Okay.

Simona Terron: 21:02

Yeah. So that's where I'm from.

Michael Dugan: 21:06

And you, you were mentioning to me about East and West.

Simona Terron: 21:11

Oh, yeah, the East Indian community. So I come from a community. That sounds very confusing, because we call ourselves the East Indians. And there's a reason for that, which I'll come to in a minute. But we are on the western coast. So for a lot of people who don't know and even in India, a lot of people don't know about this community because it's It is also a minority because it is mostly Christian. And in India, that is one of the two. Oddly enough biggest minorities I know that's an oxymoron. But Muslims and Christians are the two biggest minorities in India. East Indians are very small, niche community that were formed, or other that got their name when my ancestors used to work for the British East India Company. And there is a connection. That's the short version, the short story. But the interesting part about East Indians is that we never gave up our Indian traditions and heritage and culture and language and cuisine and way of dressing. We simply blended it with everything that we got from our Portuguese colonizers. And then the British really neatly stepped into that role when the Portuguese kind of well left or persuaded to leave, and the British took over, because this community was already schooled in both Portuguese and English, mostly for helping the Portuguese to administrate, you know, the all of the stuff they were doing here. But also our cuisine, got a lot of Portuguese influences, and so did our language. So East Indian speak of Marathi, which is the state language of Maharashtra Oh, which has a lot of Portuguese inflections. And a food is totally full of a lot of Portuguese recipes and influences. And a lot of us have surnames that are Portuguese still today. De Lima De Souza, I can't think of more right now. But lots of Portuguese influence. Yeah, I see. So as we wrap up, I know that people want to connect with you in your spice room, and Spice Advice.

Michael Dugan: 23:28

I know they want to connect with you on clubhouse. How else can we find you?

Simona Terron: 23:31

Oh, that's easy. So my name is Simona Terron, I'm on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. But as my food avatar, I go by the name of the heart chef, like you know, H E AR T. And Chef. So the heart chef is an avatar I created when I was starting out with my little tiny indie food podcast called THC, which was a funny, pun, you know, not the active ingredient. In a lot of special herbs, let me say, what do you see as just an acronym for the heart chef. But as a joke that you know, both can get you high and happy. I love puns. Because as a journalist sound bites is something that people use a lot in the news in the past. And yeah, the Dow I know they spell it as be it. Yes. That's my first podcast. And the second one is called Metro Food Hoppers. And both are available on all the streaming platforms, podcast platforms. So the The Heart Chef is a good place to just google and look for me. And that's my email as well, TheHeartChef@gmail.com. And that's me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook again. Wonderful.

Michael Dugan: 24:53

Well, Simona I have been so excited to do this with you. You're so special to me. When I met you on clubhouse we connected so quickly. And I was like, wow, she is all the way over in India. And I'm like, I have to have her on the show. And it was so complicated because of our time differences. But I never like I'm getting up early. You're staying up late, you know, and we made it. We made it happen. It's so worth it. I am so grateful to you for sharing yourself, your stories, your passion, your purpose. You know, you're an amazing human being. You're a podcaster or a journalist. You're a foodie, you're a home chef, you wear so many hats, and you do so many incredible things. And you're a tour guide. I mean, oh my gosh. There's so many great stories in this episode. And I want to thank everybody for listening but especially I want to thank you.

Simona Terron: 25:51

It's been absolute pleasure, a privilege. And I have enjoyed every minute of this conversation. And I really look forward to feedback from your listeners because you've curated a beautiful show, a beautiful podcast and your audience, I'm sure shares the same love of food that you and I do. So that connection is very, very special to me. And one more thing I forgot to mention is if anyone's interested in learning how to cook Indian food, which without being confused with all the spices or feeling intimidated about all of these fabulous ingredients that are very exotic to people who are not from India, please feel free to reach out to me. I do zoom classes, I teach our clubhouse and I'm happy to do one on one as well. And I usually work with people who also have preferences or specific kind of dietary requirements like vegan gluten free, paleo, keto, all of that. Plant based is one of my favorites. So that's one thing I really would like to plug over there, because it would be a joy. It's always a joy for me when I can infect people with the love of food.

Michael Dugan: 26:58

Thanks for joining us today. Follow us on Facebook. Find our website in the show notes, subscribe on Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you listen. Leave a comment with five stars. And stay tuned for the next episode of voice for chefs.