About this episode

Yasmin Khan discusses her upbringing, food writing, and the challenges of being a public Iranian voice.

In this episode, Leyla sits down with Yasmin Khan — the acclaimed British-Iranian-Pakistani food writer, activist, and author of *The Saffron Tales*, *Zaitoun*, *Ripe Figs*, and her newest cookbook, *Sabzi: The Beautiful World of Persian Vegetarian Cooking*. Yasmin takes us back to her childhood in Birmingham, where her mother — a Gilaki nutritionist from a small town near the Caspian Sea — organized an Iranian community association so her kids would grow up with Nowruz, Shab-e Yalda, and Farsi language school. She shares the story of her grandfather driving hours to find the perfect oranges, bringing a five-kilo bag of Gilani rice on the plane to England because he didn't trust the rice abroad, and how a family farm still tended by her uncles ended up shaping the way she writes about food today. She and Leyla trace her unlikely path from a decade of human rights campaigning in conflict zones — Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine — to the burnout that pushed her toward her grandmother's kitchen in Gilan, where she recorded her first food-and-story interviews on an iPhone. That project became *The Saffron Tales*, launched on Kickstarter, and set the template for everything she's written…

More episodes of Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation

• Poetry | Simin Behbahani's dobāré meesāzamet vatan, Part 4 · July 20, 2026 · 19 min
• Poetry | Simin Behbahani's dobāré meesāzamet vatan, Part 3 · July 12, 2026 · 13 min
• Poetry | Simin Behbahani's dobāré meesāzamet vatan, Part 2 · July 5, 2026 · 18 min
• Poetry | Simin Behbahani's dobāré meesāzamet vatan, Introduction with Sahba Shayani · June 28, 2026 · 54 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation podcast page.