May 17, 2019
An Iranian-American chef who is the creator of the Netflix docu-series “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and author of The New York Times best-selling book of the same name—has been recognized by Time magazine as one of 2019’s top “influencers.”
Samin Nosrat was named to Time’s 2019 list of the world’s Most Influential People, along with the likes of environmentalist Jane Goodall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, filmmaker Spike Lee and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Nosrat was chosen for the annual list as a pioneer in her field for what award-winning chef Alice Waters called her “groundbreaking” understanding of the science and technique behind cooking.
Nosrat’s book, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking,” became the center of the national cooking spotlight when she received the James Beard Foundation award in 2018.
The book aims to teach cooking in a simplified way, by breaking ingredients down into her four title categories that, when mastered, can transform a dish.
Waters wrote in her entry for Time’s list that Nosrat had the ability to teach anyone how to cook because of her deep understanding of what was behind it.
In an article Nosrat wrote in the May 15 New York Times, where she is a food critic, she published five of her Persian recipes that took up two full pages. She said, “Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance—of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you’ll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.”
She said, “Though I am both Iranian and a cook, I’m hardly an Iranian cook. I’m more of an Iranian eater, so when The New York Times asked me to choose the dishes that somehow encapsulate Persian cuisine to me—the essential recipes—I interviewed my mother, surveyed two dozen Iranian and Iranian-American cooks and compared ingredient lists and techniques with just about every Persian cookbook published in English in the last 30 years.”
She concluded, “The task of distilling a 2,000-year-old cuisine down to a handful of recipes is a futile one, so think of this list as an invitation to cook, rather than a declaration of fact. It’s also an invitation to my childhood home, and to the Iran my mother built for her children out of rice, bread, cheese and herbs.”
Nosrat began training in the culinary arts in 2000, and simultaneously pursued a career in English—both passions of hers that lent to the creation of “Salt, Fat, Acid Heat,” according to her website.
Following the success of her book, Nosrat made it to television when her same-titled documentary debuted on Netflix in October.
In each episode of the four-part series, Nosrat visits with home chefs in one of the top culinary destinations in the world. She seeks to understand what makes each dish delectable and expands on the idea that each dish comes down to the four elements.
Through the docu-series, “Samin shows us what a beautiful experience it is to understand your ingredients—where they come from, who grew them, how alive they are, how people around the world transform them in delicious, diverse ways,” Waters writes in her Time piece.
Nosrat is already working on her next cookbook. While no release date has been announced, the author says “What to Cook” aims to simplify the sometimes tedious cooking selection process.
Nosrat originally wanted to set the Netflix episode for acid in Iran, but said that after some “political shifts” that plan was set aside and the acid episode was filmed in Mexico. Salt is set in Japan; Fat in Italy; and Heat in Northern California at the Berkeley restaurant where her food inspirations began.
Nosrat is the only Iranian to make Time’s list this year. Often some Iranian political figure makes the list, but not this year. The political figures who made the list from the Middle East this year are Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, UAE Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.