Asma Khan Says Women Shouldn't Cook For Free

The London restaurant Darjeeling Express is the place to go for an outstanding mutton kebab, and for celebrity sightings. But the chef behind this hotspot has no formal culinary training. Asma Khan started her cooking career hosting secret supper clubs in her apartment, when her husband was traveling for work. Now she's staffed her restaurant entirely with women, all of whom learned to cook as housewives and nannies. As she tells Dan, her advocacy is driven by the pain she faced as the second daughter in her family, in a society that prized boys over girls. We also hear the unlikely story of how her restaurant was funded and why she will absolutely never put papadams in a tuna sandwich. This episode originally aired on May 16, 2022, and was produced by Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O’Hara, Johanna Mayer, Tracey Samuelson, and Marcus Hahm. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Kameel Stanley, Jared O'Connell, and India Rice. Right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful . Get all your favorite podcasts, more than 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, and live sports coverage with the SiriusXM app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can listen to Asma Khan Says Women Shouldn't Cook For Free online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Asma Khan Says Women Shouldn't Cook For Free is an episode from The Sporkful by SiriusXM Podcasts.

This episode is 00:32:17 long.

This episode was published on Mar 9, 2026.

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