After revisiting her “Cooking With Kamala” series on YouTube from four years ago, I’m reminded that Harris knows how to be in the kitchen and have genuine conversations with people—an important skill many politicians lack.
Now that Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee, here are three fun things about her you should know from rewatching the “Cooking With Kamala” series. If Harris becomes the president-elect, she might just be the most culinary-skilled commander-in-chief to serve the country’s highest office.
3 delicious reasons to revisit “Cooking With Kamala”
1. She appreciates a comforting South Indian meal
In case you didn’t know, Harris is Black and South Asian-American, making her potential presidential nomination especially historic, as she’d be the first candidate with that specific background running for the top job. Her mother emigrated to the U.S. from India, and Harris grew up eating a variety of South Indian dishes, including rice and yogurt, dal, potato curry, and idli (savory rice cake).
In her video with actress Mindy Kaling, the two bond over their South Indian roots as they prepare masala dosa, a potato curry with dosa (a sourdough crepe). As she and Kaling cook, Harris gets nostalgic and reminisces about how her mother would make all of their meals from scratch, including fresh-baked cookies, and jokes that because of that, she has become quite a food snob.
2. She makes home-cooked meals and hosts Sunday family dinners
Much like other American families, home-cooked Sunday dinners are at the heart of Harris’ week. Every Sunday, Harris will host a large family dinner with her stepchildren, in-laws, and close friends. She’ll start meal-prepping the night before and make sure there’s plenty of food to go around.
During her video with Chef Tom Colicchio, which was filmed during the height of the COVID pandemic (so the two cook together virtually), Harris cooks up meatballs, a Sunday favorite, with onions, ground beef, cilantro, green onions, clove, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, and habanero peppers. Her pro tips for meatballs: She shreds onions when making meatballs because they infuse some moisture, and she saves the ends of bread loaves to make breadcrumbs (a great use for stale bread).
3. She has a sweet tooth
As a child, Harris’s mother would make apples with bacon, and in her video with her then-Iowa campaign chair Deidre, she whips up this wildly delicious sweet and savory dish to accompany a stack of flapjacks (scrambled pancakes, anyone?). Are you drooling yet?
Harris chops Iowa apples and sautés them in a hot skillet, seasoning them with a generous amount of nutmeg. Then she adds in cooked bacon bits and lets the mixture thicken and caramelize together, then uses it as a topping on a stack of pancakes.
And if you’re a fan of oats, chocolate, and peanut butter (who isn’t?), you’ll love these monster cookies Harris bakes up with 17-year-old Avery, a high school campaign organizer in Iowa.