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This Boston Public Library branch wants to help you find more than your next read.
The Shaw-Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library is home to the city’s Nutrition Lab, a hub for free, public cooking classes, demonstrations and clinician talks to promote nutritional literacy and healthy eating habits. And for the third year running, the BPL is bringing in a new resource patrons can reference all year: A chef-in-residence.
Suman Shah, a culinary educator and founder of the spice and meal kit company Fork on a Road, was named chef-in-residence back in July. Like past chefs-in-residence, she’ll bring her own culinary background to the Nutrition Lab’s curriculum.
Field Guide to Boston: Discover — and rediscover — your Boston.
“Everything I do is rooted in Ayurvedic cooking,” Shah, who grew up in India, told me during a chat last month.
Shah and the library are also launching adult programming and consultations this fall to help bring people together and give them hosting help, as part of the Nutrition Lab’s “How We Gather” theme.
”There’s a sense of loneliness — since the pandemic, everyone’s been talking about it. The [former] surgeon general has talked about loneliness being as part of a disease that we need to battle. I think ‘How We Gather’ is an extension of that,” she said.
Here’s Shah on her plans for this year, including her focus on spices and how she could help you plan your next party.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hanna Ali: How does your heritage and Ayurvedic principles influence your cooking at home, and in the classes that you’re going to be soon hosting?
Suman Shah: “What I do in terms of my rootedness in Ayurveda comes from understanding what our heritage has available for us and what our grandmothers and mothers did for us in the kitchen.
“I’m a two-time cancer survivor. I’ve also been a caretaker for members in my family [with cancer], my mother, my mother-in-law. The emphasis during that period and the others has always been — as a caretaker, for myself as well — was what I was eating, and how it made me feel, how I was feeling and what I could do to make myself feel better. So I think that is the approach. How do we use black pepper for health? How do we use fennel for your tummy? How do you use fresh fennel versus spice fennel?
“I just taught a class last week where I taught people how to use fennel in the summer, and why it has digestive properties in both Ayurvedic traditions as well as [traditional Chinese medicine]. And also European herbalism uses fresh fennel as a digestive aid. So there are so many different ways you can find an ingredient in traditional heritages across the world.”
HA: What are some cooking techniques patrons can expect to learn from you in particular?
SS: “My approach to things is looking at what’s available, what’s fresh and how we make it shine using spices that support your health. So for example, the fennel class that I was talking about … it was a very simple Blue Zone-inspired Mediterranean recipe using cannellini beans and fennel, but then also using fennel seeds. Seventy percent of the class I taught had never used fresh fennel. They were like, ‘I get it in my CSA box, but I don’t know what to do with it. So I give it away or throw it away.’ So learning how to use unique elements, produce and whatever that you are not familiar with is part of the excitement, because I cook from all different cuisines and parts of the world.
“And the second part is how to use spices. What do you do with whole spices versus ground spices? How do you make your own spice mix? So I think those are my unique takes on recipes, and I’ll be bringing that to the table.”
HA: Roxbury is a very diverse neighborhood. How will your sessions and the demonstrations explore local patrons’ cultural heritage?
SS: ”The first set of classes that I’ll be teaching start in September, and they’ll celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. We’re also inviting a chef who owns a tapas restaurant to do a tapas demo.
“As somebody from the Indian diaspora, I look at things as an ingredient, and that is what excites me. I’ll look at the chickpea — and how the chickpea evolved in Indian cuisine versus Arab cuisine versus Middle Eastern. Then it moves to Europe and how Europeans use chickpeas, and so on and so forth. Then I get inspired to make something.
“For Hispanic Heritage Month, if you take a familiar ingredient like a bean, but then you look at how bean is used across this culture, you really start to pull on that thread and find a recipe that’s inspiring.”
HA: How do you plan to help people gather?
“As part of that theme, we’re going to offer a guidance service where individuals can book a consultation time with me, and we can talk about how they want to figure out a gathering of their own. Is it an all-girls gathering? Do they wanna do it in the park? Do they wanna do it at someone’s home? Is it an engagement? Is it a reunion? And then connecting them to resources, recipes, menu planning, having them basically set up for success to have a good gathering.”
HA: Does that involve an assessment of someone’s skills? What does that kind of look like?
SS: ”That would involve an initial conversation, just understanding what their vision is, who they want to have, how many people they want to have together. And then me and the library would come up with a list of different recipes they could try or keep.
“If it was a small group, maybe everyone could make something. If it was a large group, maybe it’s a potluck. If they wanted to have a block party, how do they go about getting permits with the city of Boston to do that? There are all these different resources and now that I’m part of the library, I can tap into and have those available to the patrons.”
P.S. — Have a fall block party or potluck coming up? Click here to schedule a one-on-one chat with Shah to ideate your menu. (No need to be a city resident!) Appointments and classes are both free and open to the public.
Dining and Cooking