- I'm Padma Lakshmi and this is everything I eat in a day.
So somewhere around six or 6:30 I usually have
my first cup of tea.
It's a masala chai called Buckery tea and then I have
that with whole milk and honey.
10 to 15 minutes later I will have my second cup of tea,
same tea, usually with a big bowl of vanilla yogurt
with cinnamon and sliced banana or a big bowl
of blackberries and cottage cheese or toast with avocado
and slices of cheese or sometimes I will start out
with the fruit and cottage cheese or yogurt and fruit combo
and then an hour later I will have something that's savory,
like an egg in a hole which is basically a big slice
of sour dough bread fried in a pan with a circle cut
out of it and then an egg cracked into it
and then you have to shake your pan so all the bread
gets covered with the white and then you have to gently
take the spatula and flip it so you don't break the yolk
and I like for the egg white
to get really lacy and crispy.
So all the white has to be cooked but the yolk
has to be at least jammy if not runny
and jammy in the center.
I take that and I put it on a plate and then I drizzle
that with a little bit more raw olive oil
and then I use sea salt from Cyprus or Maldon flake salt
because you want something gritty.
I have a lot of salts.
I have like 45 different kinds of salts
I like a real gravelly, nuggety black pepper grind
so that when you bite into a little shard of it
you are really getting that pepper heat.
And then on top of that I've put something
called Maggi Hot and Sweet and it's like,
if Ketchup and Tabasco had a baby and then I just kind
of Jackson Pollock that all over the toast.
If it doesn't make a lot of noise when I try to
make that first cut with the knife, I didn't do it right.
And then, that's my part two of my breakfast
with the third cup of tea.
Then if I'm working, if I'm filming either "Top Chef"
or "Taste the Nation" then I will go into glam
and as I'm getting my hair and make up done,
I have my fourth cup of tea.
When I get to set I usually have my fifth cup of tea.
(mellow music)
So let's say I'm on "Top Chef".
I really try not to eat too much, in spite of everything
I just said because I want to give the contestants
the full audience of my appetite.
Especially in the first half of the season,
I have to sometimes try 19 dishes in that quickfire alone
and I will sometimes have to take one bite or two.
So depending on the challenge it could be anything
from Mexican food to doughnuts to ceviche
and so I usually try and take one or two bites,
I try and chew slowly so I don't have to take a third bite
and I get the full mouth-feel experience of whatever
they're giving me and then I get off work and I usually
do a quick lap around Krafty and I usually make
this funky drink to clean out all that stuff.
And that drink is four ounces of green tea with honey,
three ounces of raw unsweetened cranberry juice,
one vitamin C packet and one big heaping scoop
of fiber powder and then I mix that all up
and depending on how fast I can drink it
from when it's made it will either still be liquid
or literally turn into a sludge because the fiber
will expand so it's important to drink that fast.
It's not very pleasant, and so this is not a treat,
this is medicine for my body because I've had to eat
whatever food, funky food that I've had to eat.
When you're eating that much food,
your system expects more food and so then I'll
usually have either a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
or I'll have an open faced grilled cheese
which is called the chili cheese toast,
which is basically like a green chili paste
or some hot sauce if we don't have fresh minced chilies
that we can kind of jam into some olive oil, salt and lemon.
And then we put cheese on top of that and then we put
it in the toaster oven because I hate microwaving cheese,
don't do it, it's horrible, sorry Michelle Obama.
If I feel like I should be virtuous then I usually
just eat a Granny Smith apple sliced with a cup
of peanut butter and I don't like that oily,
separated, good-for-you peanut butter,
I want like the industrial Skippy or Jif
and then after that we usually go back
for judges' table or we go back to do the interview portion.
I find it's often easier to interview somebody over
a cup of tea with some biscuits or some chips and salsa
or some shots of tequila, it just loosens everyone up.
Every interview is like a first date,
it's hard for me to have food in front of me
and not nibble on it, so I try to make it healthy.
What does that mean?
That means cashews or dried apricots,
but sometimes we do have a weakness
for Vick's jalapeno potato chips.
My crew keeps getting a kick out of seeing me eat
Flaming Hot Cheetos.
I'm not sure why, but they're fine, they're not great.
Then I go home and I have another cup of tea.
And I usually had another cup of tea on either side
of that interview portion and if it's judges' table
then I've usually had a cup of tea for every contestant
that we call up there.
And then there's a point at which if judges' table takes
too long I switch from tea to a glass of champagne
or wine from one of our sponsors.
It doesn't count if it's a sponsor.
And then I usually go home and when I'm home
I don't wanna eat any of that fancy, over-seasoned
goofy food, so for dinner I just eat a simple bowl
of steamed Basmati rice with dal or yellow lentils
made with lots of ginger and cumin that's been tempered
and fried in a pan with dried red chilies
and fresh green chilies, that'll be my dinner
and I'll usually have a cup of tea before dinner
and then after dinner I'll have my last cup of tea
so I think we're at like 12 now, tea, right, yeah.
And then, if my daughter's up then we have nacho night.
We usually use two or three different kinds of cheese,
we use a mild cheddar and then a pepper jack
and then we take pickled jalapenos, not raw,
and we sprinkle those on and then we usually chop tomatoes
and make guacamole and we always keep little containers
of black beans that we've boiled, and then depending
on how hungry we are, we either put them in the oven
or if we're really jonesing and it's one o'clock
in the morning, we are night owls in my house,
I'll just stick it in the microwave.
I didn't talk about dessert so much because I'm not really
a sweet eater,
but I do like a good hunk of dark, dark chocolate.
There's this chocolate that has cloves, and cayenne
and crystallized ginger so my only real sweet treat
on a regular basis I mean, will be just like a half
a bar of chocolate.
Usually around the corner from wherever my daughter
is sitting so she doesn't see.
And so, that's pretty much what I eat on a day.
(upbeat music)