Going meatless doesn’t have to be boring, says ‘Today Food’ correspondent Samah Dada
As a food blogger and an advocate for plant-based eating, “Today Food” correspondent Samah Dada is all about easy and healthy recipes. In fact, her go-to snack is pretty healthy as well.
“I could eat hummus for every single meal and be totally happy,” she admits. “And I think that might be weird for others but for me it’s perfectly normal. It’s just so good and it’s interesting because depending on where you are getting it, there’s just a lot of different variations . ... You know, I was actually in Spain with my family and I was in Grenada and there is, of course, a lot of Arab influence over there. And eating hummus there is so much different than eating it somewhere else.”
Now in her third season as the host of “Cooking,” Dada travels the U.S. to explore the meatless food and culinary industries, interview farmers, chefs and experts and then use what she’s learned to create recipes that viewers can make at home. From meat substitutes to vegetarian comfort foods, the California native of Indian descent endeavors to sort out the substance from the hype while exploding a few myths about going meatless.
“I think the most important one for me,” she says, “is this idea that plant-based cooking and eating is boring, that it’s a plate of steamed broccoli or that it’s a salad. And I think that really misses a huge portion of plant-based cooking, which is being able to work with vegetables in a way where you can add heat, you can add spice and it totally transforms the flavor profile of a dish.
“I obviously am Indian and I’ve learned to work with spice for as long as I can remember,” she continues, “and I think a lot of people are kind of intimidated by that so they don’t really know how to work with spice in order to amp up the flavor of their vegetables or in order to make it more interesting.”