Creative Types: Babita Shrestha

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Born in Nepal and a resident of Lexington for the past decade, Babita Shrestha can recall very few special memories from her past where food was not the focal point. Growing up in a small village before moving to the nation’s capital of Kathmandu at 12, she says that cooking two or three meals a day with her mom and grandmother was a regular occurrence, a practice that was  ingrained into her DNA from a young age.

“The culture was that everyone cooked at home,” explained Shrestha, who is celebrating the recent release of “Garden Exotica: International Plant-based Fusion Cuisine,” the second cookbook in her “Plant-Based Himalaya” series. “There was no going out to eat and there weren’t even many restaurants. However, there were places people would go to sell their food, similar to the Lexington Farmers’ Market, because everyone had land and the weather allowed for growing year round.” 

Those childhood culinary experiences continue to feed and inspire Shrestha’s relationship with food. 

“Even now I can’t eat out much,” she noted. “My body simply doesn’t function right if I’m not regularly eating home-cooked meals.”

After a brief stint in Kathmandu, Shrestha relocated to Hong Kong during the Nepalese Civil War and found work as a domestic helper, but she wasn’t satisfied. With hopes in mind of chasing a brighter future and following her friends, she eventually moved to the United States and settled in Minnesota, where she earned a graphic design degree from St. Cloud State University in 2015. But an inner restlessness persisted even after graduation, and eventually she began pivoting from designing pamphlets and other products for clients, to writing, photographing and producing her own books.

An initial passion for directing films in college had led her to explore photography and design, and she used those skills to create both of her cookbooks, doing all her own photography and design work.

“For a while I thought I’d be doing that kind of stuff for magazines, but instead it shifted into doing all those things — and writing — for my own books.”

Released in November, “Garden Exotica” is a follow-up to 2022’s “Plant-Based Himalaya: Vegan Recipes From Nepal.” Each of the books feature dozens of plant-based recipes from Shrestha’s Nepalese homeland as well as other international influences, from sauces and salads to curries, dal, sandwiches and desserts. The books are as beautiful as they are informative, with a special focus on wholesome and nourishing home-cooked meals that celebrate sustainability and local ingredients.

Shrestha’s vision and hard work have not gone unnoticed — her first cookbook won the “Special Award of the Jury” at the 31st Gourmand World Cookbook Awards last year, and “Garden Exotica” is nominated for this year’s award program. She was also recently awarded a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women which will support her first multi-sensory photo exhibition, “The Art of Nourishment,” which will debut later this year (details forthcoming).

• Click here for a link to Shrestha's recipe for Sesame Noodle Salad! •

During a recent conversation with Shrestha at Martine’s Pastries, the author spoke about the inspiration behind her books, favorite recipes, creative plans for the future, and more.

What was the turning point that led to you wanting to create your own cookbook? It took me graduating to realize that [traditional graphic design] wasn’t what I wanted to do. I was also stressed because international students only have three months to find a job after they graduate before they’re forced to leave the country, but then a big earthquake hit Nepal in late 2015 that resulted in me getting temporary protected status. That event spurred a move to Lexington to be closer to my sister [who lived there at the time] and a return to focusing on cooking, something I’d continued to think about even as I was progressing through design school. 

That’s also when I first started Vegan Nepal, a pop-up that sold fresh, plant-based Nepali food around town. After a few years doing that, followed by my first visit to Nepal in over a decade in 2020, my first cookbook, “Plant-Based Himalaya,” began taking shape. It was my husband who really inspired me to put all of it — from the photography to the design and food — together into something that was much more than just a cookbook. It was a daunting task because I’d never written before, but in reality, I had all of the skills and know-how. It was just a matter of applying what I already knew in a different manner than I’d ever done before.

What’s one staple recipe from your new cookbook that you think everybody will love? Samosas are always a popular item. They’re basically a fried potato pastry, but with a savory inside. There’s a variety of different things you can put inside, from chickpeas and potatoes to green chiles, mango powder and a bevy of spices and dipping sauces. If you have extras, you can even break them down and top them with homemade yogurt sauce, pomegranates and toasted peanuts to make a samosa chaat. But aside from just the samosa recipe, the book contains so much knowledge about samosas, from tips to achieving optimal crispiness when cooking them to how to properly wrap one and where to get ingredients.

Sounds like it’s more of a culinary encyclopedia than a cookbook! How did you go about keeping the recipes as authentic as possible while also keeping it approachable to people not as fluent in Nepali cuisine? Yes! A lot of people have also said it’s a good coffee table book, but I see it as more than just that — it’s a historical moment for me. Not only had a book centered around vegan and plant-based Nepali food never existed before, but it also encompasses so many different cultures, especially in a place like Kathmandu. There people eat everything from Thai food to Japanese, Mediterranean and more. I tried really hard to capture that fusion of styles in this latest cookbook while keeping things as accessible as possible to people who either aren’t familiar with the food or as comfortable in a kitchen setting as someone like me who’s been doing most of this since childhood.

You’ve had a pop-up, held cooking classes and have written your own cookbooks. What’s the next step in your culinary journey? My husband [Charles Moreland] is a musician, so we’re always talking about art. Those conversations got me thinking about presenting my work in different art galleries and museums. I recently won my first photography grant through LexArts and got to showcase some of my work during a book release event I held in December. I also have another show planned for this spring that I’m hoping to make into a sensory experience where you come in and can smell and taste some Nepali food while observing my photography with music and dance taking place in the background. 

To me, food is just one part of the larger spiritual journey to healthy living, so getting to combine all of those elements would be a dream come true.