The Diaspora Spice Co. cookbook celebrates the history of South Asian spices
This collaborative effort of CEO Sana Javeri Kadri and recipe author Asha Loupy is a love letter to the brand's farmer partners
From left, Diaspora Spice Co.'s founder Sana Javeri Kadri and recipe developer Asha Loupy.
Melati Citrawireja
Words by Aleenah Ansari
Food is deeply personal, often involving a delicate balance of adding spices, layering flavor, and using and evolving traditional methods of preparation. You might be using recipes that have been passed down for generations, or simply getting creative with what’s in your cupboard.
But when we reach for spices in our cupboard, how often do we know where they come from? If you buy them from a typical grocery store, they may have sat on the shelf for five to seven years before making it to your kitchen, where these spices will probably sit for a few more years.
But with Diaspora Spice Co., founder and CEO Sana Javeri Kadri wants to support a more equitable spice trade and bring fresh and single-origin products from farms to customers. And in the process, she promises that you’ll taste the difference when you use better spices.
As an extension of her brand’s mission, Kadri is releasing a love letter to her farmer partners in the form of The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook: Seasonal Home Cooking from South Asia's Best Spice Farms. To bring this book to life, Kadri and co-author and recipe editor Asha Loupy spent four months visiting 22 partner farms in India and Sri Lanka.
This cookbook features 85 recipes across multiple courses, complete with chutneys, veggie dishes, recipes from the land and sea, drinks, and desserts, all while keeping seasonality and bold flavors in mind. It also acknowledges the history of the spice trade in South Asia, and the fact that British, Dutch, and Portuguese colonizations of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka robbed South Asia of $50 trillion over the course of two centuries.
I sat down with Kadri and Loupy to learn more about how this cookbook came to be, their process for adapting the recipes they learned at the partner farms they visited, and why it’s important to recognize how women push cuisine forward in and out of the kitchen. And if you want to continue the conversation with Kadri and Loupy, their tour brings the cookbook to eight cities across the country, from Feb. 27 to March 29.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Aleenah Ansari: This cookbook has been several years in the making, which included time spent traveling to partner farms, cooking and modifying recipes in the test kitchen, and celebrating the launch of the book with a tour. How does it feel to be here today with the book being out in the world?
Asha Loupy: Exciting, thrilling, nerve-racking. We've poured so much into this with the travel and research involved, and we feel a strong responsibility to do right by our farm partners. I'm excited for everyone to have it in their hands.
AA: This cookbook is not just about food, but the history and culture that underpin it. How do you bring those topics to the surface for readers so they can understand the stories behind some of these recipes?
Sana Javeri Kadri: Many European countries have the privilege of a well-maintained archive of their food history, but because the South Asian subcontinent was colonized, we do not often have the privilege of an archive. So when you're asking where Kerala-style sardine curry or banana leaf-wrapped roasted fish comes from, we’re relying on anecdotal stories and oral histories. Publishing this book in America reminds us that we have a responsibility to help create the archive of the history of these ingredients and the simple, fresh, and seasonal ways in which you could use them.
AA: Not everyone knows where their spices come from, but that’s not the case with Diaspora Spice Co. Core to the ethos is sharing the stories of partner farms that grow and package spices, and that’s echoed in this cookbook. Why was it important to bring awareness to the partner farms you work with as much as the recipes themselves?
SJK: When we started working with our first farm partner, which is Prabhu Kasaraneni, who grows our Pragati Turmeric, we wanted to take his ingredient that people are excited about as a wellness powder and teach them about who grows it, their family, and how they’ve been using it for generations. That's the bridge I wanted to draw.
This also applies to other spices that we’re all familiar with. When I think about pepper, my mind goes to French food, which is a product of my own colonized education. But pepper is indigenous to the country where I grew up. Cardamom might initially make me think of Scandinavian pastries when, in reality, it is indigenous to Kerala and has been part of not just Keralan food, but also Indian food and subcontinental food for thousands of years. All of these spices come from the partner farms that have been core to developing this cookbook.
AA: The dedication of this book talks about how the work of women in the kitchen is rarely validated. Why was it important to challenge that narrative?
SJK: Growing up in India, I saw that women are the ones who feed families every day, but this is seen as an obligation. Contrastingly, men are often the ones who receive accolades and recognition for the cooking they do outside of their homes. I really took issue with that because women in South Asia are often the ones who uphold culture and push cuisine forward.
We also wanted to ensure that we paid every single contributor as close to American recipe development rates as possible. There was no expectation of unpaid labor, and everyone was compensated and credited. As a result, every single recipe has a name attached to it.
Kadri and Loupy visited 22 partner farms in India and Sri Lanka to write this cookbook.
Courtesy of Diaspora Spice Co.
AA: When I think about food, especially culturally significant food, there can be an expectation to prepare it the ‘traditional’ way, as in the way that their families or ancestors might have made these dishes. How can readers both embrace and evolve tradition in their cooking while still feeling true to their culture?
SJK: I often say that our job at Diaspora Spice Co. is to be equitable translators, which means there is always going to be some kind of translation and transformation. A recipe that's a good example is aloo gosht, or Kashmiri milk-braised lamb shanks. Asha had to take a sheep tail dish that is often one of the final savory courses in a Kashmiri wazwan, which is a multi-course feast with dozens of dishes, and translate it in some way because we don't have sheep tail here in America.
AL: We used lamb and heavy cream instead. The original dish used milk powder, but the fat content of milk powder in India versus the fat content in the milk powder that is readily available in the United States is different, so it just acted completely differently. The minute I added a little bit of heavy cream at the end, the dish worked.
AA: I love that you found ways to make these dishes work for the home cooks who will be making these dishes. How did you decide which recipes would make it into this final cookbook?
SJK: When it came to featuring partner farms, I started with the depth of the relationship, which led us to highlight the farms that source one of our primary spices. In our travel for research, we ended up going to 10 states across India and Sri Lanka and working with 40 different women. The ask of our farm partners was a pretty significant one, which was to spend several days cooking with them in their kitchen.
AL: We ended up collecting 170 recipes on the road, and I had a little pink notebook that traveled with me everywhere and eventually turned into a very large spreadsheet. I also kept a list of vegetables that were readily available in the United States. While we were traveling, I would think, “Who is the best farmer to teach us an okra dish? Who is the best farmer to teach us a dish with cabbage?” Cutting down the recipes was so hard because we loved so many of them.
AA: When you were in the kitchens of these partner farms, was there anything that surprised you about what you learned while cooking with them and using your spices in so many ways?
AL: Visiting the partner farms in India and being in the kitchen with these women was so rewarding. They were just so patient with us, even when I had to stop to measure ingredients or track the timing for specific steps. We were learning the building blocks of Kashmiri cuisine, and everything was just moving so fast.
Aaliya Mir, who works alongside her husband Raqib on their Kashmiri saffron farm, sat us down and laid out all the spices she was using for a dish on a stainless steel thali, or round platter. It was so educational. Then, I could quickly identify the five spices that almost everybody uses in different proportions on repeat, which were black cardamom, green cardamom, fennel, caraway, and cinnamon.
AA: Were there any parallels to the way that you might have prepared some of these dishes at home or in your own cooking?
AL: I had to leave all my preconceived notions about cooking at home, because there were times when someone would say, “I'm gonna make this pork dish,” which was made with just pork, salt, chilies, and water. Some kind of alchemy would happen, and those four ingredients would transform into something that was so much more than the sum of their parts. A lot of it was just being open to whatever they were teaching us.
SJK: I agree. I learned to cook mostly in Italy because I went to high school there, as well as in Californian kitchens that had Californian American or Mexican cuisine. What I knew about Indian food was specific to what I grew up with in my Mumbai, Gujarati, and Punjabi household. As a result, the way that I grew up eating was very different from what we've highlighted in this book at all, so I had to turn off all preconceived notions, start with what they gave us, and build from there based on the flavors and the techniques we wanted to highlight.
AA: What do you hope that readers take away from using this cookbook?
AL: I hope readers feel more confident playing with spices and are excited to experiment with them. Throughout developing the recipes for this cookbook and being in the kitchen with the women from whom we learned these recipes, I became a better cook. Similarly, the techniques that you're learning in this book work in these South Asian recipes, but they are just universal techniques that can be used in many different facets of cooking.
Published on March 3, 2026
Words by Aleenah Ansari
Aleenah Ansari (she/her) is equal parts storyteller, creative problem solver, and journalist at heart who's rooted in the stories of people behind products, companies, and initiatives. She’s written about travel, entrepreneurship, mental health and wellness, and representation in media for Insider, CNBC, The Seattle Times, Kulfi, and more. You can usually find her searching for murals in Seattle and beyond, reading a book by a BIPOC author, and planning her next trip to New York. Learn more at www.aleenahansari.com.