- [Danielle] There's an ancient Ayurvedic proverb that says, "When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use.

"When diet is correct, medicine is of no need."

We explore the idea of functional foods and tell stories of individuals who are looking to heal the body, spirit, and global community, one meal at a time.

Accomplished multihyphenate, Waris Ahluwalia, celebrated chef, Su-Mei Yu, along with Nimay Gupta, a farmer who is dedicated to practicing Ayurvedic agriculture, shows us that consciousness and intent are two of the most powerful ingredients in life.

(orchestral music) We meet with Waris Ahluwalia, actor, designer, creator, bon vivant.

as he embarks on his latest venture, House of Waris.

One where he gets to pursue his lifelong mission of embracing joy and thoughtful living, while offering respite from the complexity of modern day life, through the simple and ancient ritual of tea.

- So you're like the most incredible renaissance man.

Like a modern day renaissance man.

You're an actor, you are incredible designer, you have this beautiful jewelry line.

What's the House of Waris now?

- I mean, can we just maybe keep going with the, what I am?

I'd love to hear it.

- And your new venture, hopefully, will sort of follow the same path.

- Yeah I hope so too, yeah.

- [William] So tell us about that.

What is the House of Waris now?

- Well, it's a platform for experimentation and exploration.

And looking at ideas of thoughtful living.

We started with jewelry.

But for me, jewelry was not just about the shine or the bling, but it was about my craftsmen that I worked with.

In Jaipur, in Bangkok, in New York, in Rome.

It was about them it was that story.

It was the story of humanity.

And now, as we're gonna soon learn, I'm working in plants and botanicals.

And to tell that same story of thoughtful living.

I go through life celebrating.

And so if I'm having something, I wanna enjoy it.

It's about joy, it's about celebration.

So we're not in the, we're not in the wellness business.

We're in the celebration business.

- I love that.

- It's time we take back control of what we put in our bodies.

I'm talking about the healing power of plants.

- Waris' new jewel box at the tea salon on a historic block in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, is a quiet oasis lined with beautiful celadon jars containing the teas.

- It needs to be an oasis.

Right?

It needs to be that center of calm for people.

It needs to, that feeling that's slightly monastic.

- What happens in this oasis?

- You can come in, it's meant to be a place, an oasis for the neighborhood.

So you can come in and have one of our teas.

Let's sort of think pass just the tea.

We have a range of, boosters we like to call them.

So calm adapt, energy adapt, metabolic support, skin tonic, that you can add to, mushroom immunity, that you can add to any one of your teas.

Smell that.

- Good choice.

- Mmm.

- This is the first tea being brewed here in this high tech.

- [William] That's very high tech.

- Feels space agey.

- Why tea?

I mean this oasis could really be a sanctuary for so many things.

- Tea, if you think about it, is the oldest and most original wellness product.

It's been used by so many cultures for not just, not just for values of what you take in, but for gathering with community, so when you talked with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, one of the first things is about your relationships.

And so you have tea with people.

You have tea on your own as well, but throughout time, it's been about gathering, right?

And so we just wanted to go to that source.

That original, that origin.

- [Danielle] Rose petals.

- Opens and soothes the heart.

Towards healthy libido and reproductive system.

We need that.

- I know, can we have too much of this?

- [William] Let's just have shatavari tea.

- Cardamom.

- The beans are all, even the vanilla bean, and now that I read that, I can absolutely taste it and smell it.

Orange blossom, uplifts mood and promotes joy.

- How did this philosophy of Waris develop?

Does it come from your heritage?

Is it through life experiences?

What do you want people to take away from The House of Waris?

- It definitely comes from the experiences I had at home.

My parents, what my late father brought to the table.

His humor, his likeness, his ability to even after, you know he, he had a PhD in linguistics, and he had a stroke when I was 12, when he was in his early 40s and he became paralyzed and he had to learn to read and write again.

A man who wrote a book about this big about language had to learn how to say, how to write ABC again.

I have nothing compared to that suffering that was brought upon him.

You have to realize that that is part of life.

That is the agreement that we made when we were birthed.

That first breath, that signature that we made.

That is the agreement we made with the universe, with existence.

That we're gonna suffer, and we're gonna live.

but we're gonna celebrate through it.

The answers have always been there.

- They're not complicated.

- They're not complicated, they've always been there.

Whether it's what's in your hand right now in that cup.

These herbs have always been there, right?

It's been, things that are from the planet for the world.

- There's so much truth in what you're saying, and it's so simple, and it's so tangible as well.

I'm so glad that you've made that a physical embodiment of this reality here.

- We're currently dealing, as a people, not just in New York, and not just in the cities, but in the suburbs, and as a country, as a nation.

We're facing an insidious epidemic that no one's talking about.

And that's stress.

So, to counteract that, that's what thoughtful living is.

To think about those moments, to not take the shortcut.

To take that moment to slow down.

The beauty of what I'm talking about, is it's free.

It's free.

Take that breath, pause.

This is a marvel of science, of art, of nature.

It's built to heal itself.

- [Danielle] William and I definitely feel a little more peaceful after taking part in this ancient ritual of sharing.

100 miles north of New York, on the fertile flood plains of the Wallkill River is Gopal Farm, a 90 acre reserve in the Hudson Valley town of New Paltz.

It's here that Nimai Gupta, a former monk, practices agriculture using ancient Ayurvedic methods meant to restore not just our health, but also our land.

- You farm organically here, but you also adopt a Ayurvedic approach to the farming here.

What does that mean, Ayurvedic farming?

- Well modern Ayurveda, it is the Vedic, Ayurvedic is also coming from Vedas.

And the Vedas is actually the books of knowledge from India.

Which I suppose is about all different aspects of the world and existence.

Ayu means life, veda means knowledge.

Knowledge of life.

- [Danielle] The farm is focused on growing heirloom Indian vegetables, spices, and Ayurvedic herbs.

- [Nemai] These are the bottles, the squashes.

- [William] Wow, these are huge.

- Yeah, and when I started taking this to the Union Square Market.

And only they grow like this big too.

And people said oh, they were so scared, well how am I gonna take it through the subway?

(laughing) - It also weighs like 90 pounds.

- I know, so then I said I think, "Oh my God, what do I do?"

And I said, "Oh, you have these yoga mat carriers."

(laughing) But, the jokes are aside, then taking only the smaller versions.

- [William] Nimai, is this a bitter melon?

- [Nemai] Yeah (laughing) it is.

- This is absolutely beautiful.

Is this a miniature variety, or are they just babies right now?

- No, this is what it is.

- [William] This is full size?

- [Nemai] Yeah.

- [William] Wow.

This is absolutely gorgeous.

It looks almost alien, doesn't it?

- I call it the dinosaur's play ball.

- 'Cause the Chinese have a bitter melon, but it's much smoother.

- Without the spike, yeah.

- Yeah, this is the spiky variety.

- Actually, this bitter melon, it originated in a place in India called Kerala.

- There's something about bitter in Indian Ayurvedic medicine too, this idea of bitter being good for you, right?

- Right, bitter is better they say.

- [William] Why is that?

- Because, it produces, right in the beginning of the meal, according to Ayurveda, one should take bitter things.

Right at the beginning.

Because it is a appetizer.

It gets the bile going in the stomach.

This is the okra.

- Oh, really?

They're so small.

- This is the Indian heirloom variety.

And you can see there there's 10, like ladies finger.

- [William] So it starts with this beautiful blossom, and then it turns to the seed pod.

- That's right.

- Wow.

So in Ayurvedic farming, is the idea, is to let the land do most of the work?

- A lot, and the river, and all the elements.

And you just move with that.

Anything which starts growing has, and produces byproducts is a life, a soul.

Yeah, because of the soul there is life force which is called consciousness.

- Animals at Gopal Farm are part of the Gupta family.

The cows live out their natural lives, they even receive comfort care in their later stages.

And 10% of revenue from cow products is deposited in a retirement fund that supports cows in their old age.

It's an ethical business model that Nimai calls, ecownomics.

When I heard that there was a farm just an hour and a half right outside New York City, named after a happy cow, I had to visit.

- Yeah, that, Gopal means.

Go means cow in Sanskrit.

And pal is like Sanskrit and English the same name.

Same meaning, is like a friend.

So it's a friend of the cow farm.

- [Danielle] So what came first at your farm, the cows, or?

- Cows, cows came first.

Because everything starts with the cows, because of the manure and the urine.

And actually it says in India, that once their pasturing, when their hoof print goes on the land, then it blesses the land, then it'll produce everything.

- That's beautiful.

I mean you're raising the cows for their milk products.

- And their cow dung and cow urine, yes.

Right now their cow dung and cow urine is giving us fertilizer, natural fertilizer for the organic farming of our Indian heirloom vegetables.

- [Danielle] Gopal produce is sold weekly in Manhattan at the Union Square Farmer's Market, where customers are increasingly looking to purchase ethical food products, as well as those with healing properties and functional ingredients.

- I will just say to people that, why don't you try this way?

It has been practiced in India for a millennium.

And with the cows as part of the culture, why not try this manner to keep cows with, I mean now what happens is if there's a dairy farmer and if there's a vegetable farmer.

But combine together is very rare, but they are meant to be together.

(electronic music) - [Danielle] Sumay Yu is a social worker turned chef, cookbook author, and devout foodist, who cooks with an understanding that food is medicine.

I've known auntie Su-Mei for decades, and here at her beautiful San Diego home, she's creating a menu for me and William based on our core elements of fire and earth.

- And in order to stay healthy, you need to know who you are.

And so you are earth and fire together, which I'm not surprised, because you have these fantastic ideas, your brain goes all the time.

You always come up with really, really strong idea, and a strong workaholic.

So, William, I looked you up.

And where she is both earth and fire, you are complete fire.

And what is interesting about the fire people is that they're very intense.

They come up with fantastic ideas all the time.

Their mind never stop working, and they just keep coming up with these ideas.

It's exhausting, and what happen to fire people is that their mind never stop, so they can't sleep very good.

I created this for basically a combination of earth and fire.

What it is is it's a seasonal paste.

Now this is central to Thai cooking.

Because for the longest time, Thai people don't have doctors.

They have to create something as a foundation for them to cook with.

So that they could stay healthy.

So food, all these different ingredients serve as a way not only to keep you healthy within your elements, but in the season, and that if you're sick, certain ingredients are used much more to try to help you to gain that balance.

Salt is earth, because it's salty, but everything else that you see here are wind.

So when you add all this together, it becomes a central foundation.

This is white pepper.

And this is, I think, cinnamon.

And this is cardamom.

This is cardamom.

And then turmeric.

And coriander seeds.

You do up and down.

Up and down, up and down.

Up and down, up and down.

Up and down, up and down.

Up and down, up and down.

And the way you keep the rhythm is if you need to find a piece of music you like and you pound.

If you are a slow pounder, you use something slower.

But if you are in a hurry, you beat something quickly.

- Like Beyonce.

- Yeah.

- [Danielle] In Su-Mei's sunny al fresco kitchen, she shows us her bounty of Thai herbs.

Lemongrass, galangal, holy basil, plus chilis.

We help her prepare a feast that will leave us feeling healed.

Not just by the healthy and delicious food, but by Su-Mei's warm hospitality.

- [Su-Mei] Very good, isn't this beautiful?

- [William] Oh!

- [Danielle] It's gorgeous.

- [William] More, don't let it dry.

- Okay, she's not drying it, she's really being very, very good.

- I know what I'm doing.

- Okay, that is.

- Okay, more honey.

See?

The color of the bubbles?

- [Danielle] Gorgeous, I have to be more conscious when I'm cooking Su-Mei.

- Look at the color, it's picking up all those things that we pounded.

- [Danielle] Beautiful.

- It's all the combination, anise, cloves, cinnamon.

- Gorgeous.

- Going to be very sedative effect.

- [William] So we'll try this, okay.

- That's like the Asian bouquet garni.

- Right, you tie this up, and then you gonna put this in.

- The best memory I have is we went to this super, super gourmet fancy restaurant that you cannot get reservations at in New York, and Su-Mei brings her own salt and chili powder, and she's like adding it to the food and the chef comes over and is like, - Oh my God, you're my spirit animal.

- Can you please taste the food before you add?

- Talk, but you have to keep stirring.

Well now you'll add a little bit more, - Pay attention.

- A little bit more honey, a little bit more, not too much now, a little bit more, a little bit more.

Okay, that's good.

This is from Scotland, and it's not farmed.

It was swimming in the ocean until somebody caught it and sold it to somebody in San Diego.

Okay, so we're gonna put it like this.

Then that's good enough.

This is banana, banana squash.

That has been baked with sage and a little salt and olive oil.

It's already been cooked so it doesn't take a long time.

All over the salmon, honey, the whole thing.

- [William] Bath it, bath it.

- [Su-Mei] A little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

- [William] Stop, crispy shallots and sesame seeds.

Gorgeous, okay.

- [Su-Mei] So, here's a plate.

- [William] Oh my God.

- [Su-Mei] And we're gonna serve this with rice.

- No single ingredient sort of screams out, it's kind of this incredible balance and blend of all the different spices, it's really, really beautiful.

- Thank you, so the lesson behind this is that, William, when you cook, you can create your own curry paste.

I mean a seasoning paste.

You don't have to do what traditional Thai people recommend you to do, although you can do that as well if you're gonna cook Thai food.

You can use a base, which is the salt, which is the earth, and then type of a corn, coriander seeds, and garlic.

That's the four foundations of Thai things.

The rest of them, you can add on.

- So depending on how I'm feeling, if I'm feeling a little tired, or a I feel like, you know, I need some antioxidants, or antiinflammatory, I can add the functional foods that work with-- - But as a cook, it has to come together.

Because there's a lot of new chefs now, many of them don't understand ingredients, so they add this and they add that, and everything kind of go haywire, right?

So, it's important for you to know how it will come together.

You add as you understand the ingredients besides it's medicinal purposes.

Because, if it doesn't taste good, it's like going to a doctor and getting a shot, right?

You don't wanna do that, right?

So you want something that taste good, that's also medicinal as well as being helpful.

So you use that as a base line.

Now if you wanna make it really, really Thai, I call it the three queens, the lemongrass, galangal, and kefir, okay?

If you don't have kefir which is really hard to find.

I recommend that they use very, very, green lime rind.

It doesn't have the sense of smell, but it doesn't, it has somewhat of a same thing, which is that oily, astringent, bitter, that really add onto the taste.

When you cook, it's like an honor, because you're giving something of yourself.

- [Danielle] For our final bit of enlightenment, we're back on the East Coast, at Atina Foods in the Catskills region of New York.

Suresh and Carrie have created a line of traditional Asian herbal jams, pickles, and pastes from home recipes that integrate Ayurvedic healing traditions from Suresh's family.

- This is rhubarb.

We planted 60 crowns this year, and it is really sour, so we can replace tamarind in our recipes with it.

And the thing that's exciting about that, is that in Ayurveda, it's not just about importing foods that are traditionally used.

It's also about finding the health benefits where you live.

So, rhubarb is a really great one for us to be incorporating.

- Does everything you use come from the local area?

- Not everything, but as much as we can.

So we have two different lines, so for our sweet ones, we use garlic and rhubarb that are local for our seasonal pickles, we use lots of things, we can make lots of pickles from anything, so.

That's part of our mission is also learning about the land, learning about what foods come from it, not just Pango Maj, the people that were here, but learning how we can be healthy and sustainable and regenerative with the land that we live in, so that's really exciting is to not just mix them or replace them, but finding what is local.

- So really taking sort of an Ayurvedic culture, but then grounding it locally here, blending.

- Exactly, and it could be anywhere depending on where we are.

There's all these global communities, people are moving around, there's diaspora communities.

people are all like living in different locations, you know?

So it's really important to us to understand the location we live in.

The stalks Carrie and I picked from her rhubarb patch will go into a salty, sweet and spicy rhubarb ginger jam.

A versatile condiment that adds a punch to everything from stir fries to cocktails.

- So the ginger and the turmeric has a very unusual property.

In a sense, like a, the reason why we are eating it is it absorbs heavy metals from our body.

(lively music) - [William] We're gonna make the rhubarb herbal jam.

- Yes, a type of dish.

So basically we're using black pepper, kimi, fenwick, - Oh my God, smell it.

- Black mustard seed, the curry leaves.

So these are the diced vegetable.

- Wow, that smells incredible.

And then you grind it up?

Look how powerful that fire is, that is major fire.

- Oh, the plum sugar.

- Now we are going to add the rhubarb and ginger into this, this a turmeric ginger rhubarb.

- Oh my.

- Now needs to be cooked first, with perfect 15 minutes to very low fire and it becomes thick.

- Are you thinking about all the, the wellness benefits, the health benefits, and really treating food as medicine.

Is that what you think about when you put just the combinations together?

- This recipe of making rhubarb ginger, it's coming from another recipe.

One of where very little ingenuity, ginger tamarind.

Ginger tamarind is from a food history perspective, it's one of the oldest known recipes preserved in southern, in my part of the world.

'Cause it's born where the ginger was born, like western parts.

So this is cooked during big festival of 10 days of eating.

So, every day, like 10 days, they start with ginger tamarind.

Because it's an excellent appetizer, and it is so many complex layers of taste.

Really we're trying to replace important ingredients, like tamarind, with what?

So this question, for almost a year, we tried many, finally we stumbled upon, or we discovered that rhubarb is a very good one.

We replace tamarind with the rhubarb, So the entrance of medical benefits, they are huge, but I look at the taste part of it.

Because I'm a cook.

And on the day that you taste it, you like it.

- [William] Taste comes first.

- Exactly.

- I'm curious about the six tastes of Ayurveda.

- Beginning with the sweet, first is sweet.

Then we have a salt.

Then we have a lemon, lemony.

- Sour.

- Yes sour.

Then we have bitter, that these roots are all bitter.

Then we have astringent, this is astringent.

- [Danielle] Astringent.

- Yeah and here is also astringent, this is the six combinations comes together so that, what constitutes a cook, is someone who can balance all these six together.

- Is that one a braise, some amazing lamb?

- Ah, beautiful.

- I'm so glad that we did this meal, because now I fully understand how these products work with food, you know?

So, it's not a jam or a jelly, it really is the basis of any meal, right?

As a flavor enhancer, or.

- It's a cooking, cooking medium, yeah.

- a cooking method.

From coast to coast, we've been to some beautiful places and seen how farmers and cooks devoted to conscious lifestyles can use foods to heal our bodies and our souls.

Whatever's ailing you, nature has a cure for it.

(orchestral music) (electronic music)